<p>I would like to avoid using native libaries if at all possible.  Surely there is a better way to solve this issue for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.</p>

You can use the Java Sound API.  I believe this is part of java 5.  This may allow you to do what you want to do.
http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/sound/
here are some examples:
http://www.jsresources.org/examples/