I seem to recall that the audio library needs to have periodic calls made to keep things flowing, similar to pygame.event.pump ? (from the docs: "...you will need to make some sort of call to the event queue. This ensures your program can internally interact with the rest of the operating system.) I've been here trying to find where I read that about the audio library for too many hours now, but I've not found anything. If I'm way off-base, I do apologize. If not, your help will be gratefully appreciated, Thanks!