http://www.voxforge.org/home/read2/comments http://www.voxforge.org/home/read2/comments/firefox-on-linux-w-sound-emitting-flash-controls I had the same problem as the poster above. This problem happens in Firefox on Linux if you have a flash component in one of the browsers other tabs that causes firefox to grab control of the soundcard, so that Java is unable to get exclusive access to the card when it needs it (Java does not go via firefox). Essentially the problem is that niether firefox nor Java connect via ALSA which allows all applications to connect at the same time, but try to take control of the raw sound device themselves. This is what I see when I run the lsof command to see which applications are using the sound devices: root@dominic-laptop:/etc# lsof | grep snd mixer_app 5578 dominic 19u CHR 116,10 14218 /dev/snd/controlC0 totem 30649 dominic 17u CHR 116,10 14218 /dev/snd/controlC0 firefox-b 30797 dominic mem CHR 116,8 14183 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p firefox-b 30797 dominic 44r CHR 116,2 13897 /dev/snd/timer firefox-b 30797 dominic 49u CHR 116,8 14183 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p As you can see, whereas totem and mixer_app connect via ALSA (controlCO) at the same time, firefox connects directly to the raw sound device (pcm...) and so prevents Java. This problem goes away by closing the tabs that have sound producing flash controls. http://www.voxforge.org/home/read2/comments/firefox-on-linux-w-sound-emitting-flash-controls Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:27:47 -0500 http://www.voxforge.org/home/read2/comments/playback-of-recorded-prompts-fails Robin said (from this post): A new Dutch 'speech submitter' tried to playback the prompts he recorded using the Java submission app. He got this error: unable to open the line: javax.sound.sampled.LineUnavailableException: Audio Device Unavailable He posted a screenshot here: http://forum.ubuntu-nl.org/message/209808#p209808 http://www.voxforge.org/home/read2/comments/playback-of-recorded-prompts-fails Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:56:53 -0600