Setting HTML5 audio position

Both audio and video media accept the #t URI Time range property

song.mp3#t=8.5

To dynamically skip to a specific point use HTMLMediaElement.currentTime:

audio.currentTime = 8.5;

Works on my chrome...

$('#audio').bind('canplay', function() {
  this.currentTime = 29; // jumps to 29th secs
});

A much easier solution is

var element = document.getElementById('audioPlayer');

//first make sure the audio player is playing
element.play(); 

//second seek to the specific time you're looking for
element.currentTime = 226;

To jump around an audio file, your server must be configured properly.

The client sends byte range requests to seek and play certain regions of a file, so the server must response adequately:

In order to support seeking and playing back regions of the media that aren't yet downloaded, Gecko uses HTTP 1.1 byte-range requests to retrieve the media from the seek target position. In addition, if you don't serve X-Content-Duration headers, Gecko uses byte-range requests to seek to the end of the media (assuming you serve the Content-Length header) in order to determine the duration of the media.

Then, if the server responses to byte range requests correctly, you can set the position of audio via currentTime:

audio.currentTime = 30;

See MDN's Configuring servers for Ogg media (the same applies for other formats, actually).

Also, see Configuring web servers for HTML5 Ogg video and audio.