There are many ways of playing sounds on Windows. Which are the differences, advantages and disavantages of each method?

I know there are at least 5 methods:

  1. 1991 WinMM.dll/mmsys.dll PlaySound
  2. 1995 MCIWnd (as suggested by @casablanca)
  3. 1996 DirectSound
  4. 1998 WaveOut
  5. 1999 ASIO
  6. 1999 Windows Media Player ActiveX control?
  7. 2005 WASAPI (which is used by XAudio2 - as suggested by @Han)
  8. 2007 XAudio2
c++ windows audio-player
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