The HTML5 specification introduces the and media elements, and with them the opportunity to dramatically change the way we integrate media on the web. The current HTML5 media API provides ways to play and get limited information about audio and video, but gives no way to programatically access or create such media. We [...]

Above shows the work of some awesome developers. Alistair MacDonald, David Humphrey, Thomas Saunders and Corban Brook have collectively done some great forward looking work with audio sampling and JavaScript. You have to use a custom build of Firefox to make it work right now, but listen to the story of how this came about. [...]

The doctor is in, and this time the specialist is Mark Boas who walks us through HTML5 Audio in various browsers and how to get audio working on the various implementations that are in the wild today.
This early in the game especially, all implementations are not equal. For one there is the codec support:

But also [...]

Brian Arnold created a fun sample drum machine simulator using HTML5 <audio>.
PLAIN TEXT
JAVASCRIPT:

function playBeat() {

        if (isPlaying) {

                var nextBeat = 60000 / curTempo / 4;

                // Turn off all lights on the tracker’s row

        [...]

Scott Schiller has updated his popular SoundManager 2 library to include new functionality made possible by Flash 9, such as:

* Full-screen MPEG-4 video (HE-AAC/H.264) and audio support
* “MultiShot” play (layered/chorusing effects)
* Waveform/frequency spectrum data
* Peak (L/R channel volume) [...]

Eric Wahlforss, the founder of SoundCloud, wrote in to tell us about “The Cloud Player“, a iTunes / Songbird clone written entirely in Ajax:

we just released an open-source itunes-clone built in jquery (and app engine, soundmanager 2, soundcloud api), complete with smart playlists, drag’n’drop, keyboard shortcuts, load-as-you-scroll playlists, playlist sharing, waveform display of tracks, etc. [...]

Another experiment with sound, data: URIs, and the embed tag.
SK has shown that it’s possible to generate wave file in Javascript and play it. All this happens in the browser and without requiring Flash. He’s built a sine wave generator and a song player.

I came across a post about putting .wav files in data: URIs [...]

Cameron Adams has another fun Javascript experiment in JS-909, a drum machine he built from scratch. It plays sound without Flash, along with a check that your browser is capable of playing sound this way, and also includes a little canvas-powered psychedelic graphics engine.

At the recent Web Directions JavaScript libraries panel, I was in charge [...]