The effect of mixing surfactants (anionic, zwitterionic, and nonionic) and alcohols on the sonoluminescence (SL) generated by 3.5 ms pulses of 515 kHz ultrasound in air-saturated aqueous solutions has been examined. Each surfactant/alcohol system influenced the SL in significantly different ways. It was concluded that the surface active solutes competitively adsorbed to the cavitation bubble/solution, interface and affected the sonoluminescence through both inter- and intrabubble processes. Modeling of the competitive adsorption of the solutes based on Langmuir type adsorption isotherms, however, could not completely account for the trends observed in the SL data. The poor quantitative correlation between the experimental results and model calculations was attributed to the cavitation bubbles not being sufficiently long-lived to allow the solution species to equilibrate with the surface of the cavitation bubbles. It was estimated that the persistence time of the sonoluminescing bubbles in the sound field, under the experimental conditions used, was less than 10 ms.