DirectSound8 has different behavior on windows 7 vs windows 10 wrt headphones plugged in

On a windows 10, with no headphones plugged in:

DirectSoundCreate8 returns S_OK
IDirectSoundBuffer8::Play returns 0x8889000F (potentially AUDCLNT_E_ENDPOINT_CREATE_FAILED) 

and this is the first call to return any error.

On a windows 7, with no headphones plugged in:

DirectSoundCreate8 returns DSERR_NODRIVER;

The problem is, if the Play() call is the first call to return that anything is amiss, I have to have already loaded and decoded a sound (expensive) just to figure that I can't play sounds...

This seems crazy so I must be doing something wrong.