hi i want to make a voice chat software for windows. I dont have much experience on programming on windows. I want to capture the sound data coming from microphone and then borad cast that data. my client will catch that data and convert it into sound. but i dont know how to capture the sound data coming through microphone. please tell me how i can do that? how helpful will directx be? is there any thing other than directx that can be more handy? as if now i am totally new to directx. please help

I think you should better use the Direct Play Voice in Direct Play to do it. This is very easy to do what you need that you do not need much more consider about the networking and the sound buffer management.