Determine if windows is currently playing sound

.net, powershell, powershell-2.0, windows, windows-7

Solution

Here's how to use the code that Simon Mourier provided.

Run the code below:

Add-Type -TypeDefinition @'
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace Foo
{
    public class Bar
    {
        public static bool IsWindowsPlayingSound()
        {
            IMMDeviceEnumerator enumerator = (IMMDeviceEnumerator)(new MMDeviceEnumerator());
            IMMDevice speakers = enumerator.GetDefaultAudioEndpoint(EDataFlow.eRender, ERole.eMultimedia);
            IAudioMeterInformation meter = (IAudioMeterInformation)speakers.Activate(typeof(IAudioMeterInformation).GUID, 0, IntPtr.Zero);
            float value = meter.GetPeakValue();

            // this is a bit tricky. 0 is the official "no sound" value
            // but for example, if you open a video and plays/stops with it (w/o killing the app/window/stream),
            // the value will not be zero, but something really small (around 1E-09)
            // so, depending on your context, it is up to you to decide
            // if you want to test for 0 or for a small value
            return value > 1E-08;
        }

        [ComImport, Guid("BCDE0395-E52F-467C-8E3D-C4579291692E")]
        private class MMDeviceEnumerator
        {
        }

        private enum EDataFlow
        {
            eRender,
            eCapture,
            eAll,
        }

        private enum ERole
        {
            eConsole,
            eMultimedia,
            eCommunications,
        }

        [InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown), Guid("A95664D2-9614-4F35-A746-DE8DB63617E6")]
        private interface IMMDeviceEnumerator
        {
            void NotNeeded();
            IMMDevice GetDefaultAudioEndpoint(EDataFlow dataFlow, ERole role);
            // the rest is not defined/needed
        }

        [InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown), Guid("D666063F-1587-4E43-81F1-B948E807363F")]
        private interface IMMDevice
        {
            [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.IUnknown)]
            object Activate([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStruct)] Guid iid, int dwClsCtx, IntPtr pActivationParams);
            // the rest is not defined/needed
        }

        [InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown), Guid("C02216F6-8C67-4B5B-9D00-D008E73E0064")]
        private interface IAudioMeterInformation
        {
            float GetPeakValue();
            // the rest is not defined/needed
        }
    }
}
'@

I replaced all `var` types as that seems to fix the issue with the code not compiling on PowerShell version 2.

Once loaded you can check the state like so:

[Foo.Bar]::IsWindowsPlayingSound()
True or False

I've tested this working with Windows 10 1703 on PowerShell 5.1

But there are caveats:

this is a bit tricky. 0 is the official "no sound" value
but for example, if you open a video and plays/stops with it (w/o killing the app/window/stream),
the value will not be zero, but something really small (around 1E-09)
so, depending on your context, it is up to you to decide
if you want to test for 0 or for a small value

So if you change `return value > 1E-08` to `return value > 0` you will get true when a video is paused.

Problem

So I've been pondering on this problem for a while and I can't figure out what the right way to go about this is. I want to determine if Windows is outputting sound at a certain time using a `Powershell` script. I can determine whether or not the audio driver has an error, but I cannot for the life of me figure out if the system is playing sound. I looked at the `.NET` class for `System.Media` and the three classes inside all had to do with playing sound or manipulating the system sounds. I'm not asking for code to be written for me, I just need to know where to start to check if the windows system is currently playing sound. I have a sound monitor that is continuously monitoring sound on the Node.js platform and when it loses sound it sends me a text. Well, I also want it to go through all the systems its hooked up to and see where the fault lies. That's why I want to see whether or not the windows computer is playing sound.

Original source

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