In reply to:

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so you don't get a 3500hz full-deflection sine wave shuffled in with your Britney Spears tunes.

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I don't know, compared to Britney, some bottom-octave rib rattling tone might be less painful.

Seriously, I don't see any reason why you couldn't write an app that kills the player and talks to the audio hardware directly, once you've finished fiddling, the app calls the player then exits.

In fact, the first app I compiled for my empeg did just that, it beeped then quit. It's the sort of thing I'd love to write myself, but between work, running a student radio station and trying to pay attention to the g/f, I haven't got the time to do anything else.