wrote:

IIRC, part of the original question was something like:

"Where/How can one learn to program soundcards?"

I, too, would be interested in the answer to that question.

Windows is not your friend in this area. Linux, on the other
hand makes this easy. The sound card is a device like
any other. Read from /dev/dsp and you get samples. Write to
/dev/dsp and you make noise.

There is a little bit more setup to buffer things properly,
and you use ioctl() to configure the sample rate, sample
size, and so on, but it's nothing compared to the contortions
Windows programmers go through.

What to do with the samples once you've got them, or
how to generate interesting samples for output is another
matter. Any decent textbook on DSP will help you. I
like Ifeachor & Jervis as a good nuts and bolts introduction.

Laura Halliday VE7LDH "Que les nuages soient notre
Grid: CN89mg pied a terre..."
ICBM: 49 16.05 N 122 56.92 W - Hospital/Shafte