How to force a media to be loaded at run time, without playing it now?

Question

I am making a web app that can be open for a long time. I don't want to load audio at load time (when the HTML gets downloaded and parsed) to make the first load as fast as possible and to spare precious resources for mobile users. Audio is disabled by default. Putting the audio in CSS or using preload is not appropriate here because I don't want to load it at load time with the rest.

I am searching for the ideal method to load audio at run time, (after a checkbox has been checked, this can be after 20 minutes after opening the app) given a list of audio elements.

The list is already in a variable allSounds. I have the following audio in a webpage (there are more):

 <audio preload="none">
  <source src="sound1.mp3">
 </audio>

I want to keep the same HTML because after second visit I can easily change it to (this works fine with my server-side HTML generation)

 <audio preload="auto">
  <source src="sound1.mp3">
 </audio>

and it works.

Once the option is turned on, I want to load the sounds, but not play them immediately. I know that .play() loads the sounds. But I want to avoid the delay between pressing a button and the associated feedback sound. It is better to not play sound than delayed (in my app).

I made this event handler to load sounds (it works) but in the chrome console, it says that download was cancelled, and then restarted I don't know exactly what I am doing wrong. Is this is the correct way to force load sounds? What are the other ways? If possible without changing the HTML.

let loadSounds = function () {
  allSounds.forEach(function (sound) {
    sound.preload = "auto";
    sound.load();
  });
  loadSounds = function () {}; // Execute once
};

here is playSound function, but not very important for the questions

const playSound = function (sound) {
  // PS
  /* only plays ready sound to avoid delays between fetching*/
  if (!soundEnabled)) {
    return;
  }
  if (sound.readyState < sound.HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA) {
    return;
  }
  sound.play();
};

Side question: Should there be a preload="full" in the HTML spec?

See also: Preload mp3 file in queue to avoid any delay in playing the next file in queue

how we can Play Audio with text highlight word by word in angularjs

Answer 1

To cache the audio will need to Base64 encode your MP3 files, and start the Base64 encoded MP3 file with data:audio/mpeg;base64, Then you can pre-load/cache the file with css using something like:

body::after {  
  content:url(myfile.mp3);
  display:none;
}

Answer 2

I think I would just use the preloading functionality without involving audio tag at all...

Example:

var link = document.createElement('link')
link.rel = 'preload'
link.href = 'sound1.mp3'
link.as = 'audio'
link.onload = function() {
  // Done loading the mp3
}
document.head.appendChild(link)

Answer 3

I'm quite sure that I've found a solution for you. As far as I'm concerned, your sounds are additional functionality, and are not required for everybody. In that case I would propose to load the sounds using pure javascript, after user has clicked unmute button.

A simple sketch of solution is:

window.addEventListener('load', function(event) {
  var audioloaded = false;
  var audioobject = null;

  // Load audio on first click
  document.getElementById('unmute').addEventListener('click', function(event) {
    if (!audioloaded) { // Load audio on first click
      audioobject = document.createElement("audio");
      audioobject.preload = "auto"; // Load now!!!
      var source = document.createElement("source");
      source.src = "sound1.mp3"; // Append src
      audioobject.appendChild(source);
      audioobject.load(); // Just for sure, old browsers fallback
      audioloaded = true; // Globally remember that audio is loaded
    }
    // Other mute / unmute stuff here that you already got... ;)
  });

  // Play sound on click
  document.getElementById('playsound').addEventListener('click', function(event) {
    audioobject.play();
  });
});

Of course, button should have id="unmute", and for simplicity, body id="body" and play sound button id="playsound. You can modify that of course to suit your needs. After that, when someone will click unmute, audio object will be generated and dynamically loaded.

I didn't try this solution so there may be some little mistakes (I hope not!). But I hope this will get you an idea (sketch) how this can be acomplished using pure javascript.

Don't be afraid that this is pure javascript, without html. This is additional functionality, and javascript is the best way to implement it.