It needs to play the sound to stay active otherwise the browser tab will go inactive and you need to check it very regularly to keep it active. You can mute browser tabs on windows (not sure about other operating systems) but there can be other alternatives? like playing video without sound or sound with very low volume or picture in picture mode?

I am not sure what you are trying to say but i know that on android and probably ios it normally does this automatically. there is a trick you can use with web audio api instead of the normal way to play audio files to make it so the sound does not get interrupted. but i forgot how it works. on windows and linux and probably mac os this should not be a problem unless there is something else wrong