How does Flash stream / progressively play sounds

Question

Hello, I've been making an MP3 player using Flash (MX 2004).
The player is to stream/progressively play MP3 files on my file
host.
I have already overcome the security part, as it seems that
my file host has allowed cross-domain access.
In my script I set _soundbuftime to 10 seconds
The problem: When testing the player, I notice 2 different
kinds of behaviours at random occasions:
1. The player loads 10 seconds of the song and begins
playing. If the player reaches the end of the loaded data but has
not loaded enough for it to continue playing, it will wait until
the next 10 seconds are loaded before continuing playback.
2. The player does not buffer as much as stated by the
_soundbuftime parameter. It loads one second, plays it, stops,
loads another second, plays it etc.
What I would like to know:
1. Is behaviour 2 a known issue in Flash 7, or is it because
I am using Flash Player 9 to test it?
2. Does the player buffer as much as specified by
_soundbuftime each time it has run out of data to play, or does it
do so only for the initial buffer?
3. Do more recent versions of Flash (such as 8 or 9) and/or
Flash Player show behaviour 2?
Would appreciate if anyone could help me.

Answer 1

You should be using the Media Components for playing and
progressively downloading your .mp3 files, the buffertime in these
components will work correctly. You will also then have the ability
to seek, pause, play, stop and a bunch of other commands that you
just won't get when using the .loadSound() functions of flash 7. To
actually stream your .mp3 files you will need to use the Flash
Media Server, this will allow you to seek to all points of your
audio before it has been fully downloaded. In addition the problems
you are experiencing seem to be bandwidth issues, depending on your
host you may not see any improvements.