MME

Abbreviation for Multimedia Extension, a driver for the Windows operating system that enables certain audio or video functions. The MME drivers were invented by Microsoft with the not very well known operating system called “Windows with MultiMedia Extensions 1.0” that was based on Windows 3.0 and was the base for later released Windows 3.1 and 3.11. The name of the OS (“MultiMedia Extensions”) was also used for the API (Application Programming Interface) to access soundcards. Windows MME 1.0 was really the first Microsoft operating system that provided a universal API that worked with any soundcard hardware exactly the same way. A soundcard driver API is used by audio software to access the hardware. Previously, all Windows applications used MME for sound. It would create a multimedia engine; the sound card would hook up to one side of it, and the host application to the other. The host application would be able to do basically nothing other than send a data stream to the engine, and the OS would send that information to the card. All that system overhead leads to rather high latencies, often well over 500 milliseconds, which ultimately forced the issue for more updated driver systems such as WDM, etc.