So i got my AS3 books finally. Essential AS3 by Moock, AS3 animation/making things move and AS3 design patterns. Of these 3, none give particular interest in the sound API. Making things move takes a fleeting glance at AS3 sound, limited to a = new Sound(); a.play();, and Design Patterns makes an equally simple example.
The AS3 docs (F1 in the IDE) suggests a hack of a class to encapsulate Sound handling and otherwise assures us that the AS3 api is "powerful". I still fail to see why. When Andre Michelle makes an AS3 303 emulator we're all impressed, but we somehow fail to realize he made it with *hacks*. Advanced AS3 sound manipulation is effectively barred to those not of his calibre. For "the rest of us", we're stuck waiting for someone to build a robust sound control API wrapper for AS3's frankensteinian mess. In my opinion, AS3 sound is only as strong as you're willing to take punishment. Things were rough in AS2, but we could work it. In AS3 it's equally rough, with added edges. Considering the *vast* improvements AS3 and the new VM gave us, i find it bewildering how something so core to the multimedia experience has been either ignored completely or thrown in as an afterthought. I'm told by peers that "oh you know, Sound is weak in Flash". Like a dogma. Which makes me think engineers threw a roundtable to somehow assure that in their shiny new VM, Sound remained weak. I have never seen an AS topic so skirted. It's like a dark secret nobody really wants to discuss. Like pooping. Either people out there *don't care about sound* which blows my mind, or Adobe didn't give a shit. I'm trying to port my AS2 3d sound positioning and effects control library to AS3 and, right now, it's disillusioning and sometimes infuriating. Dual stop methods for streaming and preloaded audio, the contextually "wrong" of which doesn't generate exceptions, but sound glitches. Soundchannels allow for quick and easy orphaning of sound. Go orphans! Soundmixer only really stopping sound and giving an *incomplete* spectrum, ignoring Microphone. There's parts of AS3 that force us to get stricter, and this is fine. The sound library forces us to either wrap or get sloppy. So am i right about this? Do Flash developers really care this little about audio? Positive sides? Loading sound resources externally and SoundTransform. And still being able to actually play audio. I don't know of a fix for this beyond doing the sound API over with a little more consideration. But i'd love to hear some best practises and experiences from other developers. Anything to learn more about this POWERFUL NEW API. Yeah. - Andreas SJ _______________________________________________ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
