Recording from microphone

Hello,
I asked a similar question in the C++ forum, but forces seem to be driving me to VB.
I want to develop a Windows app, with gui interface. To do this, I need to record sound from the microphone, manipulate the audio data numerically, and play it back through the sound card. I don't necessarily want to store the data to a file, and in general don't want to do so. The audio samples are not very long and will fit in memory.

My questions are:

(1) What functions/libraries should I consider, esp for the audio input/output?
(2) Can you point me to some good code samples? The VB DirectSound example code seems all oriented toward playing sounds from files -- I don't see anything that would capture sound from the microphone.
(3) What books/resources are good for learning how to get around in and create a gui with Visual Studio?

Thanks!
SaxMaam

[960 byte] By [SaxMaam] at [2007-12-16]