Android Studio does or the emulator does? If Android Studio does then I'd be more up in arms. For the emulator to do that, I'd assume it's just a matter of la

Android Studio does or the emulator does? If Android Studio does then I'd be more up in arms. For the emulator to do that, I'd assume it's just a matter of laziness on the part of the developers. The emulator probably just opens the audio junk at startup and doesn't bother with the rigamarole of opening and closing it as needed - it's a device emulator intended for development use, they probably don't expect it to be running constantly unattended on a developers workstation. File a bug upstream, if it's closed with EWONTFIX, then break out the tinfoil hats and shout from the hill tops.