An audio driver is the low-level software component that mediates between an operating system’s audio subsystem and physical sound hardware, translating generic playback and capture requests into device-specific commands. It manages buffering, sample-rate conversion, latency and device enumeration, and is a prerequisite for any higher-level audio pipeline to reach speakers, headphones or microphones. In spatial and immersive computing, driver latency and buffer size directly affect the achievable audio-visual synchronisation.
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- An audio driver is the low-level software component that mediates between an operating system’s audio subsystem and physical sound hardware, translating generic playback and capture requests into device-specific commands. It manages buffering, sample-rate conversion, latency and device enumeration, and is a prerequisite for any higher-level audio pipeline to reach speakers, headphones or microphones. In spatial and immersive computing, driver latency and buffer size directly affect the achievable audio-visual synchronisation.