Monday, July 7th, 2008
SoundManager 2 Update: Flash 9 and Chorus effects
Category: Sound
Scott has updated SoundManager2 with some nice new features.
The biggest is the update to support Flash 9, which brings with it:
multiShotproperly allowsplay()to be called multiple times on a sound object, creating desired "chorus" effect. Will callonfinish()multiple times, butwhileplaying()etc. are called only for the first "play instance" to avoid complications.- New
soundSpectrumandpeakDatasound features (spectrum graph / "VU" meter-style data) available- Sounds can be actually unloaded ("null" MP3 no longer needed to cancel loading of an MP3), but URL cannot be changed without destroying and recreating the related Flash sound object. The Flash 9 version does this to maintain API consistency.
Give it a download but remember the disclaimer that Scott himself puts on the software:
Not every button, link, element or paragraph on the web needs to zoom, move, change colour and be noisy, repetitive and annoying all at the same time. Use your own discretion!
Sites which automatically start playing background sound, and/or don't have volume or mute controls are the kind of things you should avoid building. As a developer, gentle reader, you may eventually find yourself in such a situation. Please do your part in enhancing the web with sound if you use SM2, while at the same time keeping it audibly usable. :)
I want to create a shim that implements the Gears Audio API that is currently being talked about in the community:
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var audio = google.gears.factory.create('beta.audio');
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audio.src = 'http://blahblahblob.com/sampleaudio.wav';
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audio.load();
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audio.play();
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Related Content:
Not every button, link, element or paragraph on the web needs to zoom, move, change colour and be noisy, repetitive and annoying all at the same time. Use your own discretion!
Don’t I know it! Been there, done that. Takes me back to the days of working at Thomas Dolby’s Headspace / Beatnik, and our grand mission to “Sonify the Web”. Yeah, that turned out well ;-) Pokemon sound effects on your links, anyone?
I’m sure we’ll eventually have audio APIs as part of Web standards. In the meantime, I’ve seen two companies burn through massive amounts of VC money pursuing that vision. Been through it with Beatnik, and then Sonicopia, which was bought by Pulse. Not to mention AudioBase in Sausalito that I almost did a stint at (really glad I didn’t).
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2001_Sept_11/ai_78121462
Anyway, it is nice to see someone still paying attention to audio APIs. Is there any action in the W3C on this front?
BTW, Scott, hope you’re doing well these days. Zazzle was always bummed to have lost you to Yahoo…
FYI, this article seems to have been taken over by spam on my Google Reader RSS feed.
Ditto, spam right here visible in the source of this page.
Lots of links to subdirs under http://www.johnnybrendas.com/wp-content/
It’s not just this post, appears to be adspace on Ajaxian is compromised.
…is filled with that garbage!
if you look at the source of the page you’ll see… spammers shame on you..
@Uize: I didn’t know you were involved with the Beatnik etc., that’s neat. I recall the phrase “sonify the web” and looking at that project when I was doing “V1″ of this sound thing back in 2002. Re: Zazzle, perhaps you’re confusing me for someone else – I was in Canada prior to Y!.
On the audio standards front, there might be some ideas for future HTML 5 audio API stuff; I haven’t dug into the details of what’s currently out there, but my understanding is it’s fairly basic – perhaps for good technical reasons.
@Schill
I don’t recall if we did a phone screen or what, or it may have been that our recruiter tried in vain to approach you via e-mail at the insistence of the UI engineering staff, but Zazzle was definitely excited by your Web site, your background, and your obvious talent. Your name is known.
Yeah, Beatnik was definitely a blast. Structured audio is a lot of fun to have fine-grained control over. You can do a lot of “sonifying” with a sample-based synthesizer running on a Web page, where you can play every sound at a 100+ pitches, apply a few effects like chorus, and all that.