Windows 7 and XAudio 2.8

Question

I'm developing an game engine and I spotted some difficulties. In the past, I was trying to use DirectX SDK (June 2010), but I had too many conflicts with Windows 8 Kit and its own Direct. I decided to make the engine using only Direct3D from Windows Kit. Now, I have only one problem: can I develop an app only with XAudio 2.8 support that aims in Windows 7's users? Or do I have to make it only with old XAudio 2.7 support?

Answer 1

XAudio 2.7 is the last version to support Windows 7. XAudio 2.8 is Windows 8 or later.

You can and should make use of the Windows 8.x SDK, and you can use the legacy DirectX SDK to get access to XAudio 2.7 with it but it takes some extra setup because there are filename conflicts between the two but you want to use the 'older' versions in the DirectX SDK in some cases, but the 'newer' ones in the other.

See The Zombie DirectX SDK and XAudio2 and Windows 8 .

Keep in mind that Windows 7 RTM is out of support. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 went out of mainstream support in January 2015.