Warren, This depends on whether you have a sound card or not, and how do you have that set up. Some mother boards have that on-board, so, they can play waveforms. But, some systems will have audio disabled, Maybe, OP is talking about some embedded system, like teller machine or something of that kind, where there's no audio card, and the only thing that there is - is a speaker connected to the mother board (that's the one that beeps when you hit reset on the PC tower for example).
Best. Oleg
