Note that some lines, once closed, cannot be reopened. Attempts to reopen such a line will always result in an LineUnavailableException.

Some types of lines have configurable properties that may affect resource allocation. For example, a DataLine must be opened with a particular format and buffer size. Such lines should provide a mechanism for configuring these properties, such as an additional open method or methods which allow an application to specify the desired settings.

This method takes no arguments, and opens the line with the current settings. For SourceDataLine and TargetDataLine objects, this means that the line is opened with default settings. For a Clip , however, the buffer size is determined when data is loaded. Since this method does not allow the application to specify any data to load, an IllegalArgumentException is thrown. Therefore, you should instead use one of the open methods provided in the Clip interface to load data into the Clip.

For DataLine's, if the DataLine.Info object which was used to retrieve the line, specifies at least one fully qualified audio format, the last one will be used as the default format.