Starting from Windows 2000, MME supports up to 384000 samples per second, up to 8 channels, and up to 32 bits per sample. In earlier Windows version, MME supported up to two channels of recording, 16-bit audio bit depth and sampling rates of up to 44100 samples per second with all the audio being mixed and sampled to 44100 samples per second. Starting from Windows XP, MME started to support recording device sharing. Starting from Windows 2000, MME supports playback device sharing (multi-client access) and can mix playback streams together. But some sound card drivers can emulate more than one MME device (or support more than a single streaming client) so it could work with MME too. In Windows 95/ME, MME lacks mixing multiple audio streams during playback and device sharing, so only one audio stream can be rendered at a time. Microsoft developed the Windows Sound System sound card specification to complement these extensions. Windows 3.1x would later incorporate many of its features. The Multimedia Extensions' new features were not available in Windows 3.0 real mode, only in standard and 386 enhanced mode. The Multimedia Extensions were released to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), mainly CD-ROM drive and sound card manufacturers, and added basic multimedia support for audio input and output and a CD audio player application to Windows 3.0. The Multimedia Extensions (WaveIn/WaveOut interfaces) were released in autumn 1991 to support sound cards, as well as CD-ROM drives, which were then becoming increasingly available.

The devices listed in the Multimedia/Sounds and Audio control panel applet represent the MME API of the sound card driver. Wave sound events played in Windows (up to Windows XP) and MIDI I/O use MME. The MME API or the Windows Multimedia API (also known as WinMM) was the first universal and standardized Windows audio API.

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