Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook

Play a Windows System Sound

The Windows operating system alerts users to system events by mapping them to sounds recorded in specific audio files. The problem is that these files are stored in different locations on different computers. In .NET 1.0 and 1.1, there's no easy way to find the default system sounds and play them in your own application. A new SystemSounds class in .NET 2.0 addresses this problem, allowing you to play the most common sounds with a single line of code.

Note

Need to sound the infamous Windows chime? With the new SystemSounds class, these audio files are right at your fingertips.

How do I do that?

The SystemSounds class in the System.Windows.Forms namespace provides five shared properties. Each of these properties is a separate SystemSound object that represents a specific operating-system event. Here's the full list:

• Asterisk

• Beep

• Exclamation

• Hand

• Question

Once you decide which sound you want to use, you simply need to call its Play( ) method to play the sound. Here's an example:

Note

To configure which WAV files are used for each sound, select the Sounds and Audio Devices icon in the Control Panel.

SystemSounds.Beep.Play( )

What about...

...playing arbitrary WAV files? The SystemSounds class works best if you just need an easy way to add a sound for simple user feedback. If you need to play an audio file of your own choosing, you need to use the SoundPlayer, as discussed in the next lab, "Play Simple WAV Audio."