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Flash supports audio better than any other program. There are many options on how Flash will play your sounds, for example, whether it plays and finishes naturally (Audio Event) or whether you want it to lock itself to the timeline so images remain synchronized no matter what (Audio Stream).
You have two places in Flash that will allow you set the quality of sound used on your pages. One of these is the Sound Properties dialog box, and on the Flash tab of the Publish Settings dialog box.
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To set the default sound format for every sound in a Flash move, select, File > Publish Settings... Make sure under the Formats tab that you've checked Flash (.swf), and then click the Flash tab. There are two different sound settings in this dialog box: Audio Steam (uses the Steam sync setting), and Audio Event (uses the Event sync setting).
If you click the Set button near the bottom of the dialog box of the Publish Settings, you can see all the Compression Options available. The following list provides a brief description of these options.
Click to see the Sound Export Options...
There's a Set button next to both Steam and Event so you can set the compression for sounds used each way separately.
There are five choices for sound compression: Disable, ADPCM, MP3, Speech, and Raw.
Upon review of the above options, you will notice another check box, one called Override Sound Settings. This is a quick way to override the settings for all the sounds in your movie. Override can be useful when you want to publish a single copy for a special purpose. Perhaps this copy is to be used on your hard drive, not the Internet, so it will play much faster. In this case you can set the quality to Raw, which is the highest setting and quite capable to be used from the hard drive.
Each sound item in your Library can have its own individual settings that will carry to each instance of the sound in your movie. Just double-click a sound in the Library and you'll see the Sound Properties dialog box. In this box you have the choice to update any sound that was edited outside of Flash in a sound editor, and to use the default settings you specified in the Publish Settings. Bottom line, you have more than enough choices available to please just about anyone.
Here's something to consider, sound adds significantly to the size of the Web page. Do you really need the sound on the page? Or, is it there because you know how to insert the sound. If it adds immeasurably to the site, then go for it. Maybe a short loop sound would be just as good as a longer linear sound track.
Another thing to consider, does it have to be stereo? You could reduce the size in half with a mono sound. Remember, if panning is what you desire, mono can pan the left and right channels without a stereo sound. So there are things you can do to reduce the file size before you have Flash compress the page.
Page Updated on January 28, 2003
