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Sound Triggers
Sounds in Flash can be triggered to start at any key frame in the movie. The four triggers for sounds in the timeline are:
Event
Start
Stop
Stream
Event - When Event is assigned to a frame of a button or the timeline, the sound will start playing as soon as the playback head enters the designated frame, regardless of what sounds are playing or what else is happening in the timeline.
Start - When Start is assigned to a frame of a button or the timeline, the sounds will start playing as soon as the playback head enters the designated frame. It behaves the same way as the 'Event' trigger in that fashion. However, the key difference is that if the designated sound is already playing from a previous button or frame action, the sound will not be triggered again.
If a sound is assigned to the down state of a button with the 'Start' trigger selected, and that button is pressed repeatedly, the sound will only be triggered at times when the button is pushed and the sound has already stopped playing from a previous push of the button. If the 'Event' trigger was assigned however, that sound would start playing over itself each time the button was pushed and become a jumbled audio mush.
Stop - When Stop is assigned to a frame of a button or the timeline, the designated sound will stop playing as soon as the playback head enters the designated trigger frame, if that sound is already playing due to a previous 'Event', 'Start', or 'Stream' trigger of the same sound. The Stop trigger will ONLY stop playback of the particular sound which is assigned to that particular frame sound trigger via the sound dialog box in the timeline.
Stream - When Stream is assigned to a frame of a button or the timeline, the designated sound will start playing as soon as the playback head enters the designated trigger frame. The differentiating characteristic of the Stream event is that it will cause the sound to become the critical timing element for playback of the .swf file. That is to say, if a sound is set to stream, frames of the animation will be dropped (skipped/not rendered) in order for the animation of the movie to stay in time with the playback of the designated sound.