Inability to take audio focus

[FarrelBuch]

On one of my Windows machines, HP Pavilion HPE h8z Series with integrated audio running Windows 8.1, the audio package does not play if something else has the audio focus. So for instance, if I am listening to music on Google Play through my Chrome browser or if I am listening to music on iTunes for Windows or on Pot Player by Daum then I cannot hear the audio output.

play(sin(1:10000/20)) is is not heard.

If those audio applications are off then I can hear it. Interestingly enough, I was playing music in Google Play and I reduced the volume on the webpage to zero, and then issued the play command in R. I heard it. But if the volume in Google Play was audible in any way, no matter how softly, then I could not hear what R played.

Is this the appropriate place to seek troubleshooting support? I do not know if it is a software bug or an idiosyncratic problem in my computer. After all, it does not happen on my other computer at work.

[s-u]

It's the right place, but I have stopped developing for Win32 some 10+ years ago, so if someone can point out to the API that handles this and/or provide a pull requests that would be very helpful. audio uses Windows Multimedia (MM) API for playback - in particular waveOut*. I don't see any obvious way except if the other application set the volume to 0 for R - in that case we could try waveOutSetVolume to restore it, but I don't know the equivalent of audio session control on OS X for Windows.