AudioCategory Enum

Definition

Describes the purpose of the audio information in an audio stream. Used as a value by AudioCategory.

public enum class AudioCategory
/// [Windows.Foundation.Metadata.ContractVersion(Windows.Foundation.UniversalApiContract, 65536)]
enum class AudioCategory
[Windows.Foundation.Metadata.ContractVersion(typeof(Windows.Foundation.UniversalApiContract), 65536)]
public enum AudioCategory
Public Enum AudioCategory
Inheritance
AudioCategory
Attributes

Windows requirements

Device family
Windows 10 (introduced in 10.0.10240.0)
API contract
Windows.Foundation.UniversalApiContract (introduced in v1.0)

Fields

Alerts 4

Audio is for system or application notifications, for example ring tones.

BackgroundCapableMedia 2

Audio is for general media, for example audio for video, or streaming audio, and can be played as background. This enumeration value is deprecated. For more information, see Remarks.

Communications 3

Audio is for peer-to-peer communications, for example chat or VoIP.

ForegroundOnlyMedia 1

Audio is for general media, for example audio for video, or streaming audio, but should not be played as background. This enumeration value is deprecated. For more information, see Remarks.

GameChat 8

Game chat audio. Similar to Communications except that GameChat will not attenuate other streams.

GameEffects 6

Audio is for game-specific sound effects.

GameMedia 7

Audio is background (non-event or ambient) audio for games.

Media 11

Stream that includes audio without dialog.

Movie 10

Stream that includes audio with dialog.

Other 0

All other streams.

SoundEffects 5

Audio is for sound effects.

Speech 9

Audio is speech.

Remarks

These enumeration values are used by the MediaElement.AudioCategory property. If you use the MediaPlayerElement control, you use the MediaPlayerAudioCategory enumeration values to set the AudioCategory directly on the underlying MediaPlayer instead.

Starting in Windows 10, version 1511 the ForegroundOnlyMedia and BackgroundCapableMedia enumeration values are deprecated. For more info about using background audio in your app, see Play media in the background.

Games should categorize their music streams as GameMedia so that game music mutes automatically if another application plays music in the background. Music or video applications should categorize their streams as Media or Movie so they will take priority over GameMedia streams. Game audio for in-game cinematics or cutscenes, when the audio is premixed or for creative reasons should take priority over background audio, should also be categorized as Media or Movie.

Applies to

See also