Setting the volume for sounds in Flash is done quite easily using "setVolume" - which is a built in class for ActionScript. You'll find it under Built-in Classes > Media > Sound > Methods.
File > Import to Library > then Browse to the sound file you would like to use.
The sound is going to play as soon as it is loaded. To do that we'll need a little bit of ActionScript. Luckily, if your programming skills are as lacking as mine, we can use one of Flash's built-in Behaviors for loading sounds. But before we do that we need to define the Linkage Properties for the sound file so we can later assign an Instance name for referral in the ActionScript.
In the movie's library, Right-click on the sound file's name and choose > Linkage.
We can just accept the default Identifier for the name, which in my case is countrybeat1. Make sure that both "Export for ActionScript" and "Export in first frame" are checked. Click OK.
Now click on Frame 1 in the timeline of your movie. Click on the + sign in the Behaviors Panel. Go to > Sound > Load Sound from Library. This will bring up a dialogue box asking you for the linkage ID (which we just assigned in the previous step) and we'll also need to create an Instance name for the sound. I typed in countryBeat. Also, check "Play this sound when loaded" and click OK.
Now, click on the Frame that the ActionScript is on and hit F9 to bring up the Actions Panel. We can now see what Flash wrote for us. Aren't you glad we didn't have to do it!
You'll notice that this is a Play Internal Sound Behavior. We could have also loaded an outside MP3 file if we wanted to.
I'm not going to go into great detail what is going on in the script but it's good to point out that an empty movie clip was created for the sound file.
Setting the Volume
This tutorial deals with setting the volume of a sound file. You'll remember that in the first paragraph, I stated that this is done using "setVolume" - and that's easy enough. However, we need to alter the code in the right spot.
Go down to _global.Behaviors.Sound.countryBeat.start(0.1); in the code below. You'll notice that right after that I've added the line:
//set the volume
_global.Behaviors.Sound.countryBeat.setVolume(20);
That's all you need to do to change the volume of the MP3 file. The number amount after setVolume is a percentage in relation to the original sound. A setting of 0 (zero) would be a mute sound and a setting above 100 will give a distorted effect - something you might want or not.
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