I can understand why someone might need a sound to play on a website, but most people HATE it when a webpage decides to play a sound. In fact I explicitly never visit a site again if it either requires (as in mandatory & no way to shut it off) sound or requires Flash as in no other lo-fi HTML version.

I used this google search and came up with some info. According to my research things like EMBED & BGSOUND are not web (w3c) standards. Other google hits indicate that this might be dependent on the OS and the plugins meaning that webdevelopers assume that the person viewing the page is running Windows and IE. If people embed a mp3, then either windows media player, quicktime (if it is configured for it) or another plugin will play the sound. Thus you will never know exatly how & with what the sound will be played. Since other OSs like linux or unix do not have windows media player, then they require a some kind of plugin

I found this via google: http://www.computing.net/webdevel/ww...orum/1279.html
Try searching the Mozillazine forums: http://forums.mozillazine.org/search.php
I hope this helps.
James