Shoutbox

If you both show a toast and play a sound, it is logical that the sound is only played as long as the toast is shown as they are linked together... This is not a bug.

If you want to play a sound longer than the duration of a toast, then only play a sound and do not show a toast. Or make two independant events.

As for the notifications sounds themselfs: they are meant to be notification sounds, thus short and not the complete version of Mozart's requiem. Although Patchou could increase the (already big) limit.

As for the toasts: note that there is a perfect reason why there should be a limit on the toast duration. Toasts are cued and Plus! toasts will not show when Messenger toasts are shown. If you remove the limit (or set it too high) the toasts will stack up and you will be missing notifications (as they appear out of sight, and other toasts aren't able to show at all...

If you want a toast to be longer visible, the reason is most likely that you're away from the PC for a while. But in that case you should be using the event log, which is the proper way to 'log' such events. Toasts are meant for quickly notifying you when you're working at the PC, not to log events.