[Vm-dev] Sound driver "plays" silence

[Andreas Raab]

Andrew Gaylard wrote:
> So now I'm curious.  Why was it built this way?
> And why do released images have this preference off?

Purely historical coincidence. Things used to work more smoothly on Mac 
  OS 7-9 if we kept sending silence instead of turning the whole 
soundsystem on and off. I added the preference since on Windows ('95 and 
'98) access to the sound device is exclusive so having had Squeak play a 
sound once would make it inaccessible for other apps.

I don't think any of these concerns are valid any longer.

Cheers,
   - Andreas