Get the full name of a waveIn device

Yes, there's a workaround. I've solved this problem several times in shipping code.

Enumerate audio capture devices with DirectSoundCapture. The API is DirectSoundCaptureEnumerate. It will return you the full length name of the devices.

Of course, you're probably thinking "That's great, but the rest of my code is setup to use the Wave API, not DirectSound. I don't want to switch it all over. So how can I map the GUID IDs returned by DirectSoundCaptureEnumerate to the integer IDs used by the WaveIn API?"

The solution is to CoCreateInstance for the DirectSoundPrivate object (or call GetClassObject directly from dsound.dll) to get a pointer to an IKsPropertySet interface. From this interface, you can obtain the DSound GUID to Wave ID mapping. For more details see this web page:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb206182(VS.85).aspx

You want to use the DSPROPERTY_DIRECTSOUNDDEVICE_WAVEDEVICEMAPPING as described on the web page listed above.

I completed the names of waveIn devices, exploring the names returned from MMDeviceEnumerator. For each waveIn device, when the name incompleted is part of full name of one of EnumerateAudioEndPoints, I used this full name for populate combobox in the same order of waveIn devices.

VisualBasic .NET:

   Dim wain = New WaveIn()
    Dim DeviceInfoI As WaveInCapabilities
    Dim nomedevice As String
    For de = 0 To wain.DeviceCount - 1
        DeviceInfoI = wain.GetCapabilities(de)
        nomedevice = DeviceInfoI.ProductName
        For deg = 0 To devices.Count - 1
            If InStr(devices.Item(deg).FriendlyName, nomedevice) Then
                nomedevice = devices.Item(deg).FriendlyName
                Exit For
            End If
        Next
        cmbMessaggiVocaliMIC.Items.Add(nomedevice)
    Next
    cmbMessaggiVocaliMIC.SelectedIndex = 0
    waveIn.DeviceNumber = cmbMessaggiVocaliMIC.SelectedIndex

Improved/full C# WPF code based on @Andrea Bertucelli answer

using NAudio.CoreAudioApi;
using NAudio.Wave;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Windows;

namespace WpfApp2
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml
    /// </summary>
    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            foreach (KeyValuePair<string, MMDevice> device in GetInputAudioDevices())
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Name: {0}, State: {1}", device.Key, device.Value.State);
            }
        }

        public Dictionary<string, MMDevice> GetInputAudioDevices()
        {
            Dictionary<string, MMDevice> retVal = new Dictionary<string, MMDevice>();
            MMDeviceEnumerator enumerator = new MMDeviceEnumerator();
            int waveInDevices = WaveIn.DeviceCount;
            for (int waveInDevice = 0; waveInDevice < waveInDevices; waveInDevice++)
            {
                WaveInCapabilities deviceInfo = WaveIn.GetCapabilities(waveInDevice);
                foreach (MMDevice device in enumerator.EnumerateAudioEndPoints(DataFlow.Capture, DeviceState.All))
                {
                    if (device.FriendlyName.StartsWith(deviceInfo.ProductName))
                    {
                        retVal.Add(device.FriendlyName, device);
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }

            return retVal;
        }
    }
}