do I need to close an audio Clip?

Question

have an application that processes real-time data and is supposed to beep when a certain event occurs. The triggering event can occur multiple times per second, and if the beep

Answer 1

Memory leaks in Java have to do with objects that are still being referenced even after their useful lives have ended. In many cases, this will be due to something like repeatedly making 50 objects but only eliminating references to 49 of them later on.

Nothing like that seems to be going on in your code. Since prepareProcess() only runs once, it's not highly suspect. That leaves playSound(), which doesn't contain any object instantiation at all, much less a faulty reference elimination loop.

The caveat is that I'm not sure what goes on behind the scenes in your sound clip object, and it's hard to check because majuscule-C Clip is only an interface. Unless you're using third-party code, though, I'd be very surprised to find a leak there.

Long story short, I wouldn't worry about it unless and until you actually see something like an OutOfMemoryError.