Audio in IE - Guidelines?

[jim716]

Hi,

 

I'm wondering if there are general guidelines for getting the best audio experience in IE 9/10/11 (HTML Audio vs. Web Audio).

 

I have a game that uses several short sound FX that in Chrome/Firefox work as expected.  In IE, often the FX don't even play.  This is especially true if the same effect is used several times in a row - think gun shots.

 

I wondering what people do to handle this situation.  Here's some basic questions:

• What is the best option for file format - I'm using 44100kHz, 32-bit, 96Kbps CBR MP3.
• Is it possible to play the same sound repeatedly and have it overlap?  For example, a gunshot that resonates - can I have multiple gunshots overlap.  SoundJS seems to do this in IE..., but I'm hoping to not have to implement a special audio API.
• Is there a good way to initialize the SFX for best performance?  In other words, is it better to call game.add.audio and store the sound in the game object, or is it OK to create them each time a state is created? Does any decoding, initialization happen when calling game.add.audio?
• Would using Audio Sprites make this better?  Why?

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  I've looked at several of the games posted recently in the News Section and I've found some games in IE handle audio very well (Cut it), while some don't have sound in IE (Odyssey).  Just trying to figure out the best approach to handle sounds in IE. If someone has an example that would be even better.

 

If necessary, I don't mind loading special assets just for IE.  I'm using load.pack for all my resources, so having a special pack file is not a problem.

 

Thanks in advance!