Detecting if wave device is in use...

Hey everyone,
Its been a while since my last post but i'm finally getting some time to program for fun again! imagine that!

My problem is that I am trying to write some software using the MS Speech SDK (which i will possibly be writing a brief tutorial on for everyone who has emailed me with questions about it). this application is a piece of chat software that read aloud the text that is sent to it. If the user is already running an application, like an mp3 player, that uses the sound card and he/she receives a message in my chat program, an error pops up saying the memory address is already in use and closes my program.

is there any way to determine if that address is in use (meaning the sound card is being used) before using it myself? this way i could simply check to see if its in use, if not go ahead and speak, if so then do not speak. make sense?

Thanks in advance to anyone with ideas!!

Jeff