Well I figured out the reason my code was throwing an error. I didn't link to the Microsoft.DirectX library. I added this line:"Imports Microsoft.DirectX" and now it runs fine. I found that using the direct sound isn't really that hard. Dim a device object, dim a secondary buffer object, set the device cooperation level to the form that is calling direct sound, load the sound into the secondary buffer and viola' you are using direct sound. Easy as pie.