I have written a very simple code to play .wav files using Java sound api.My question is this that why do I need to put Thread.sleep() to halt the execution after calling clip.start() method.The behaviour of startn is not clear to me actually.I have seen java docs for Clip as well as Sun's doc for Sound API.
Apparently calling start will create a daemon thread for playing the clip in the background without blocking until it's ready, and this daemon thread does not cause the JVM to stay alive. Therefore, when your main method ends, so does the clip. Also, when the loop hits the next iteration, the clip is overwritten, causing the existing clip to stop.
If you need to play music files and block until they are done, you should use either JMF or a third party library. JMF is event based so you'd need to write your own method to wait for the end. A quick approach: