In summary: "there's some profanity ahead because HTML5 Audio is still that fucked up".
My experience is entirely aligned. I was trying to use <audio> earlier this week for an incredibly simple task (occasionally play a 0.5s notification sound).
The only thing that worked reliably was Chrome (9) with a data: URI. FF3.6 (or Chrome with a normal URI) would only play the sound once, and Safari wouldn't play it at all. (These are all the Mac versions, and I didn't test Opera).
My experience is entirely aligned. I was trying to use <audio> earlier this week for an incredibly simple task (occasionally play a 0.5s notification sound).
The only thing that worked reliably was Chrome (9) with a data: URI. FF3.6 (or Chrome with a normal URI) would only play the sound once, and Safari wouldn't play it at all. (These are all the Mac versions, and I didn't test Opera).