Question

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to why this code will not play this audio clip continuously? It plays it once and stops.

final Clip clip = AudioSystem.getClip();
final AudioInputStream inputStream = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(new File("Alarm_Police.wav"));
clip.open(inputStream);
clip.loop(Clip.LOOP_CONTINUOUSLY);

Answer 1

If you are running a bigger application, this answer may not apply. But for a simple test with only that piece of code, this may help:

Clip.loop() starts it’s own thread, but that thread will not keep the JVM alive. So to make it work, make sure the clip is not the only thread.

If I leave out Thread.sleep(..) from this snippet, I get the same issue as you;

import java.io.File;

import javax.sound.sampled.AudioInputStream;
import javax.sound.sampled.AudioSystem;
import javax.sound.sampled.Clip;

public class Snippet {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        AudioInputStream inputStream = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(new File("notify.wav"));
        Clip clip = AudioSystem.getClip();
        clip.open(inputStream);
        clip.loop(Clip.LOOP_CONTINUOUSLY);
        Thread.sleep(10000); // looping as long as this thread is alive
    }
}