ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

Sound.onLoad() Event Handler

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Flash can play a maximum of eight individual sounds simultaneously. When loaded via

attachSound(), each sound needs its own Sound instance.

To determine whether the Flash Player being used supports MP3 audio playback, use

System.capabilities.hasMP3.

Usage

Compressed MP3 files often contain minor imperfections (such as an initial delay) that

affect looped playback in Flash. To compensate, a loaded event sound can be offset by a

small amount, as follows:

loopSound.start(0.05, 3);

However, this technique does not account for any ending silence on the sound, so results

may vary. For best loop performance, use ADPCM or MP3 compression directly in Flash

and attach the loop sound from the Library using attachSound().

Example

To load a sound, we first create a Sound object, then call the loadSound() method. Often,

it’s also a good idea to respond to the completion of the sound’s download by defining a

callback function for onLoad(), as shown in the following example. First, we load an event

sound; notice that the onLoad() handler must be defined before the loadSound() call:

// Create a Sound object

music = new Sound();

// Define an onLoad() callback function for our object

music.onLoad = function () {

// Place code here to respond to ...