Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) is an initiative unveiled in 2002 by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

to standardize the hardware and

class driver {{inline, date=May 2015 In computing, a class driver is a type of hardware device driver that can operate a large number of different devices of a broadly similar type. Class drivers are very often used with USB based devices, which share the essent ...

architecture for audio devices in modern

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s. Three classes of audio devices are supported by default:

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

, IEEE 1394 (

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

), and Intel High Definition Audio, which supports

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and

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

. Starting with

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, Microsoft requires all computer and audio device manufacturers to support Universal Audio Architecture in order to pass Windows Logo certification.

Overview

The goal of the Universal Audio Architecture is to solve a very common problem in older Microsoft Windows products, that of inconsistent support for audio. Due to the lack of a common system by which audio devices could describe their capabilities to the operating system, not to mention a lack of ability to control those capabilities, audio device manufacturers (such as Creative Labs,

Realtek Realtek Semiconductor Corp () is a fabless semiconductor company situated in the Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Realtek was founded in October 1987 and subsequently listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1998. Realtek currently manufactu ...

, Turtle Beach and others) have had to provide a series of control panels and custom interfaces to let a user control the device. This, in turn, requires kernel-mode drivers so that the user's actions can be communicated to the hardware itself. Poorly written audio drivers have been a common source of system instability in Windows, especially with games that make use of extended audio card capabilities. These concerns prompted Microsoft to disable the audio stack entirely by default in

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

. UAA seeks to resolve problems by putting forth a standardized interface which audio devices can follow, ensuring that the device's capabilities will be recognized and used effectively by Windows, without the need for additional drivers or custom control panels. It also provides a reasonable assurance that an audio device will still be able to work many years down the road, without requiring vendor-supplied drivers for a newer version of Windows. Another goal of UAA is to provide better support for multi-channel audio in Windows so that, for example, multi-channel

WMA Pro Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The or ...

audio streams can be played without special driver support. UAA is intended to be a complete replacement for developing WDM Audio Drivers; however, in some cases it may be necessary for an otherwise UAA-compliant audio device to expose capabilities that cannot be done through UAA. Windows will continue to fully support audio drivers that use the PortCls and AVStream drivers.Getting Started with WDM Audio Drivers
provides further information on when it is appropriate to develop a custom audio driver.

History

In 2004, Microsoft provided the first version of UAA as an update to Windows 2000 Service Pack 4,

Windows XP Service Pack 1 Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

and

, but is only available by contacting Microsoft support directly.MSKB 835221
describes the initial driver release, an
MKSB 888111
describes the 1.0a update. However, almost all manufacturer supplied drivers contain the UAA class driver. Windows XP Service Pack 3 also includes the updated driver, as well as Windows XP Professional x64 Edition with Service Pack 1 and 2. In

, the Windows Logo program requirements state that any machine shipped with Vista must include a UAA-compliant audio device that works without additional drivers.

References

External links

Audio Device Technologies for Windows
— Windows Hardware Developer Center web site
Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) High Definition Audio class driver (Q888111) for Windows XP with Service Pack 1
{{Windows Components Device drivers Windows audio

Overview

History

See also

References

External links