An AudioClip
represents a segment of audio that can be played
with minimal latency. Clips are loaded similarly to Media
objects but have different behavior, for example, a Media
cannot
play itself. AudioClip
s are also usable immediately. Playback
behavior is fire and forget: once one of the play methods is called the only
operable control is stop()
. An AudioClip
may also be
played multiple times simultaneously. To accomplish the same task using
Media
one would have to create a new MediaPlayer
object for each sound played in parallel. Media
objects are
however better suited for long-playing sounds. This is primarily because
AudioClip
stores in memory the raw, uncompressed audio data for
the entire sound, which can be quite large for long audio clips. A
MediaPlayer
will only have enough decompressed audio data
pre-rolled in memory to play for a short amount of time so it is much more
memory efficient for long clips, especially if they are compressed.
Example usage:
AudioClip plonkSound = new AudioClip("http://somehost/path/plonk.aiff");
plonkSound.play();