I am posting this little Flash ActionScript hint here in case somebody googles the same problem...
When a sound is embedded directly in the timeline of a Flash movie as opposed to being loaded dynamically, using the SoundMixer.computeSpectrum() method doesn't work. Well, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. I had a working sound visualiser when I went to bed last night, and this morning I didn't. No changes to the code at all.
After a lot of googling I found
this post by Jason Van Cleave on the [Flashcoders] mailing list. Thanks Jason!
Basically you have to load in an mp3 of silence, assign it to a channel and play it. Then your spectrum analyzer will work with your intended sound/music.
I know - its weird!
I also found loads of posts about how it is not a true spectrum analyser yadder, yadder which were quite interesting. If you like that kind of thing...
[CODE]
// Strange silent mp3 hack
var s:Sound = new Sound(new URLRequest("2sec.mp3"));
var channel:SoundChannel = new SoundChannel();
channel = s.play();
var ba:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
var g:Graphics = this.graphics;
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, loop);
function loop(e:Event):void
{
SoundMixer.computeSpectrum(ba, true, 4);
g.clear();
g.lineStyle(3, 0xFFFFFF, 1);
g.beginFill(0xC11226);
g.moveTo(0, 250);
for(var i:uint=0; i<256; i++)
{
var num:Number = -ba.readFloat() * 500;
g.drawRect(i*2, 250, 2, num/15);
}
}
[CODE]
