I keep getting the messages “Java has caused an error in KERNEL32.DLL” and “Java has caused an error in WRAP_OAL.DLL” when trying to run lesson1 (SingleStaticSource). Anyone with any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Jeff
What OS, sound card, OpenAL version, and driver version are you using?
Are you using the latest version of JOAL (i.e., the nightly build from the JOAL home page)?
We’ve tested this on all of the supported operating systems and it seems to be working. There was a bug due to the naming of the JOAL native library a while back conflicting with one of OpenAL’s but that was fixed in both JOAL and OpenAL a while back.
Windows ME. Using the build in sound device and an old CreativeLabs driver. I played Tribal Trouble just fine with it and it uses OpenAL.
Sorry, I don’t think I can help you. If it seems to be working for you, you may want to look into using LWJGL’s OpenAL wrapper.
The creative labs drivers shipped with cards are broken. Tribal Trouble ships its own openal.dll which works. You can use that one with JOAL.
Cas 
My guess is that you were crashing because you were using the copy of joal that came with the lesson. There is a bug in this that was fixed in later versions of joal. But, the api also changed, making the tutorial out of date.
To get the tutorial to work as-is, you need to place the joal.dll and joal.jar into your lib/ext directory. Then you MUST remove all instances of those libraries from your classpath. It should work then.
Migrating to the new API is pretty easy. Mithel started some updated tutorials at http://www.starfireresearch.com/services/java/docs/joal.html. Grab the latest version of joal and try that.