DirectSound vs OpenAL vs XAudio - what is the difference?

Hello and welcome to the forum, it's my first post here .

After trying the tech demo, I decided to buy the game, and after I went to the options menu, I noticed "Audio Provider" option. In the drop-down list there's a DirectSound, Null, OpenAL and XAudio in it. Obviously "Null" will simply not render any sound, possibly granting some extra FPS due to no CPU usage due to sound playback (hopefully), but I was wondering about the rest - DirectSound, OpenAL and XAudio - what's the difference between them all? I suspect there may be some compatibility issues with using a different providers with different sound cards, but is there any quality or performance differences between them? Which one should be chose and when/what for? I've got an integrated sound card (VIA Vinyl VT1828S). Thanks for the replies and any tips, and for all the clarifications.

 

I know that I might be digging a dead mans grave up here on this thread. But I have a question about this too. Direct Sound is annoying because it just blares the engine and wheel-related sounds. XAudio2 glitches the engine in the cockpit across both channels which is disorienting. Whereas Open AL requires a reboot of the game to start and is just another Xaudio2 to me? How can I fix this channel switching? Do I need a premium dedicated sound card to fix this sound catastrophe? What does it take to enhance the sound dynamics of this game? Is it possible before the devs rework the sound? I have used default and edited sounds... I just want to fix Open AL / XAdudio2 incar/cockpit sounds.

Please Help Me
Sincearly, Slayersen

Note: On many other games on my system I get this distinctive ugly channel switching and at times sounds choose to play on no channel for about a millisecond depending on the orientation of the sound source in the game.
(when using hardware-mode sound only)