Actionscript Cookbook

13.12. Controlling the Panning of a Sound

Problem

You want to control the panning of a sound.

Solution

Use the setPan( ) method of the Sound object that controls the sound.

Discussion

You can use Sound.setPan( ) to programmatically control the panning of a sound between the left and right channels. A value of -100 plays the sound entirely in the left channel, and a value of 100 plays the sound entirely in the right channel. A value of 0 plays the sound equally between the two channels.

// Set the panning of a sound to 100, meaning that the sound is played completely in
// the right channel and not in the left.
mySound_sound.setPan(100);

You can use getPan( ) in conjunction with setPan( ) to set the panning relative to its current value:

// Set the panning of a sound 15% to the left of the previous setting.
mySound_sound.setPan(mySound_sound.getPan(  ) - 15);

You can use setPan( ) over time to create the effect of a sound moving from one side to the other:

#include "Sound.as" mySound_sound = Sound.createNewSound( ); // Attach a sound from the Library. mySound_sound.attachSound("MySoundSymbol"); // Start the playback of the sound. mySound_sound.start( ); // Define a function to call on an interval. function moveLeftToRight ( ) { // Get the current position and the total duration of the sound. var pos = mySound_sound.position; var dur = mySound_sound.duration; // Determine the panning for the current position. At the beginning of the sound, // the panning should be to the left, and at the end ...