Loading external sound files

Flash Player 9 and later, Adobe AIR 1.0 and later

Each instance of the Sound class exists to load and trigger the playback of a specific sound resource. An application can’t reuse a Sound object to load more than one sound. If it wants to load a new sound resource, it should create a new Sound object.

If you are loading a small sound file, such as a click sound to be attached to a button, your application can create a new Sound and have it automatically load the sound file, as shown below: 

var req:URLRequest = new URLRequest("click.mp3"); 
var s:Sound = new Sound(req);

The Sound() constructor accepts a URLRequest object as its first parameter. When a value for the URLRequest parameter is supplied, the new Sound object starts loading the specified sound resource automatically.

In all but the simplest cases, your application should pay attention to the sound’s loading progress and watch for errors during loading. For example, if the click sound is fairly large, it might not be completely loaded by the time the user clicks the button that triggers the sound. Trying to play an unloaded sound could cause a run-time error. It’s safer to wait for the sound to load completely before letting users take actions that might start sounds playing.

A Sound object dispatches a number of different events during the sound loading process. Your application can listen for these events to track loading progress and make sure that the sound loads completely before playing. The following table lists the events that can be dispatched by a Sound object.

Event

Description

open ( Event.OPEN )

Dispatched right before the sound loading operation begins.

progress ( ProgressEvent.PROGRESS )

Dispatched periodically during the sound loading process when data is received from the file or stream.

id3 ( Event.ID3 )

Dispatched when ID3 data is available for an mp3 sound.

complete ( Event.COMPLETE )

Dispatched when all of the sound resource’s data has been loaded.

ioError ( IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR )

Dispatched when a sound file cannot be located or when the loading process is interrupted before all sound data can be received.

The following code illustrates how to play a sound after it has finished loading: 

import flash.events.Event; 
import flash.media.Sound; 
import flash.net.URLRequest; 
 
var s:Sound = new Sound(); 
s.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onSoundLoaded); 
var req:URLRequest = new URLRequest("bigSound.mp3"); 
s.load(req); 
 
function onSoundLoaded(event:Event):void 
{ 
    var localSound:Sound = event.target as Sound; 
    localSound.play(); 
}

First, the code sample creates a new Sound object without giving it an initial value for the URLRequest parameter. Then, it listens for the Event.COMPLETE event from the Sound object, which causes the onSoundLoaded() method to execute when all the sound data is loaded. Next, it calls the Sound.load() method with a new URLRequest value for the sound file.

The onSoundLoaded() method executes when the sound loading is complete. The target property of the Event object is a reference to the Sound object. Calling the play() method of the Sound object then starts the sound playback.

Monitoring the sound loading process

Sound files can be very large and take a long time to load. While Flash Player and AIR let your application play sounds even before they are fully loaded, you might want to give the user an indication of how much of the sound data has been loaded and how much of the sound has already been played.

The Sound class dispatches two events that make it relatively easy to display the loading progress of a sound: ProgressEvent.PROGRESS and Event.COMPLETE . The following example shows how to use these events to display progress information about the sound being loaded: 

import flash.events.Event; 
import flash.events.ProgressEvent; 
import flash.media.Sound; 
import flash.net.URLRequest; 
 
var s:Sound = new Sound(); 
s.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, onLoadProgress); 
s.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoadComplete); 
s.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, onIOError); 
 
var req:URLRequest = new URLRequest("bigSound.mp3"); 
s.load(req); 
 
function onLoadProgress(event:ProgressEvent):void 
{ 
    var loadedPct:uint =         Math.round(100 * (event.bytesLoaded / event.bytesTotal)); 
    trace("The sound is " + loadedPct + "% loaded."); 
} 
 
function onLoadComplete(event:Event):void 
{ 
    var localSound:Sound = event.target as Sound; 
    localSound.play(); 
} 
function onIOError(event:IOErrorEvent) 
{ 
    trace("The sound could not be loaded: " + event.text); 
}

This code first creates a Sound object and then adds listeners to that object for the ProgressEvent.PROGRESS and Event.COMPLETE events. After the Sound.load() method has been called and the first data is received from the sound file, a ProgressEvent.PROGRESS event occurs and triggers the onSoundLoadProgress() method.

The percentage of the sound data that has been loaded is equal to the value of the bytesLoaded property of the ProgressEvent object divided by the value of the bytesTotal property. The same bytesLoaded and bytesTotal properties are available on the Sound object as well. The example above simply shows messages about the sound loading progress, but you can easily use the bytesLoaded and bytesTotal values to update progress bar components, such as the ones that come with the Adobe Flex framework or the Adobe Flash authoring tool.

This example also shows how an application can recognize and respond to an error when loading sound files. For example, if a sound file with the given filename cannot be located, an Event.IO_ERROR event is dispatched by the Sound object. In the previous code, the onIOError() method executes and displays a brief error message when an error occurs.

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