DirectX Audio

Hey guys I''ve got a few questions for which I can''t find good answers on the web, SDK or otherwise and I was hoping that someone had had more experience with this than me. Right now I have a game that uses DirectSound (DX7-type implementation) and I also have code to play MIDIs with DirectMusic (again, the DX7 way where you pass the DSound object to DMusic). However I''m not very happy with the ingame performance of DirectMusic as it does produce some nominal jitter even in a game optimized to run over 700fps most of the time on my set up. I''m pretty happy with the sound code... it loads in WAVs, generates duplicates and plays them all without any static, hiccups or slowdown at all. However once Music is added to the equation, it still tends to run up in the 700fps range, but just jitters (tends to hiccup) a tiny bit... maybe one or two long frames every second. It''s not THAT bad; most wouldn''t notice it at all, but I''m unhappy with it Thus I started looking into DX8 with hopes that its combined implementation would solve or at least help my problem, as well as just being more up to date with the implementation. It looks pretty solid, but I still can''t find some basic stuff like how to replicate buffers, etc. on the new implementation (without a direct DSound/DMusic interface object). Can anyone point me to a good tutorial for the new sound architecture in a GAME-type setting? Prefereably one that uses both MIDIs and WAVs. Secondly, will switching gain me anything at all? Lastly, what are my other options? I don''t really want to go to another sound system especially since the main point in using DMusic is to make sure that it sounds the same on all computers... Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!