Playing Stereo PCM with DirectSound

Question

Hey, I have simple 16-bit PCM player that I made using DirectSound. But when it plays, it seems that it plays only one speaker instead of both.

I don't know what code to post exactly, so you'll have to tell me if you need any. I can say that I create the sound buffer using, and lock the stream using:

 WAVEFORMATEX wfx;  ZeroMemory(&wfx, sizeof(wfx));
 LPDIRECTSOUNDBUFFER pDsb = NULL;

 memset(&wfx, 0, sizeof(WAVEFORMATEX)); 
 wfx.wFormatTag = WAVE_FORMAT_PCM; 
 wfx.nChannels = snd->channels; 
 wfx.nSamplesPerSec = snd->sample_rate; 
 wfx.nBlockAlign = snd->channels * 2; 
 wfx.nAvgBytesPerSec = wfx.nSamplesPerSec * wfx.nBlockAlign; 
 wfx.wBitsPerSample = 16; 

 DSBUFFERDESC dsbdesc; ZeroMemory(&dsbdesc, sizeof(dsbdesc));

 dsbdesc.dwSize = sizeof(DSBUFFERDESC); 
 dsbdesc.dwFlags = DSBCAPS_CTRLPAN | DSBCAPS_CTRLVOLUME | DSBCAPS_CTRLFREQUENCY | DSBCAPS_GLOBALFOCUS; 
 dsbdesc.dwBufferBytes = snd->size; 
 dsbdesc.lpwfxFormat = &wfx; 

 SoundMgr->CreateSoundBuffer(&dsbdesc, &pDsb, NULL); 

 pDsb->QueryInterface(IID_IDirectSoundBuffer8, (LPVOID*)&snd->voice);
 pDsb->Release();

 DWORD len;
 snd->voice->Lock(0, 0, (void**)&snd->data, &len, NULL, NULL, DSBLOCK_ENTIREBUFFER);

Answer 1

Have you tried playing sound through another application (like Windows Media player)?

I had a similar problem and after an hour looking at the code I realised that the cause was a dodgy speaker jack. After I waggled it both speakers started working.

If other applications do have problems it might not be the hardware. Also check the left and right speaker volume in Windows.