"gareth" writes:

Having been, before retirement, a professional real-time softy, I have kept
computers
out of the shack, not wishing to have a busman's holiday.

Now, I'm prepared to make the change, but in the true spirit of _REAL_
amateur radio to do everything myself.

My question is, what sound card drivers are used for the PC end of the
various softrock, SDRs, etc?

It seems to depend on the mood of the developers. I have been using a soundblaster for years and Windows 7 updated itself and told me that the device was invalid. It still works if I boot a linux machine. I'm guessing that you can't go wrong with a realTek (software based sound card - not pci). realTek never seems to have stable firmware for any of their devices. I remeber when I was picking up signals on TV after ``the broadcast'' ended...

Also be carefull of serial an parallel ports - ``why don't you convert your laser printer to wifi?'' I have a serial port that windows now calls ``unrecognized comm port''. So much for the eprom programmer. How can you break something so simple - no more 12 volts, just charge pump it....

Is it via a .NET component, or perhaps the age-old DirectX approach?

It's not recognized by windows 10, update.