Mathiew,

> SoundPlayer should not be writing zeroes constantly. Is
> there some reason it does this?

Yes. The Mac sound startup is *unbelievably* slow. However, I agree with you
that constantly writing zeros is not a good thing (in particular on Windows
where some sound drivers may block the entire device for other
applications). Which is exactly why there's a preference #soundStopWhenDone
which is shutting down the sound player when the last sound finished to
play. In theory, this should solve your problem. Note that this preference
is (amongst others) set according to platform preference. If there's a
general agreement in the U**x commmunity that this pref should be on, then
we can just change it generally.

Cheers,
  - Andreas