soundObject issues . . . . help!

hey guys,

well i seem to be getting a little unstuck with one of my latest projects, basically the problems evolve around getting the sound object to do what i want in flash 5. it's for a projector i've been working on as part of my tafe submissions . . anyway.

so my issues are two (probably basic) things, as read below:

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issue 1 - sound pause button
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1. i have a toggle sound button, which works fine, though i would like to enhance it to be able to pause the current sound and replay from where it originally paused from. i have experimented with this and have produced some code (altered from a tutorial on flashkit.com). my code remembers where the sound stopped and can replay from this point, the issue comes when i try and tell the sound to loop again, for some reason i can only specify a second offset point and no looping parameter, this produces a result i am not after.

eg:

mySound.start (_root.newTime); // works fine, plays from point of stoppage but cannot reloop. this isn't what i want.

mySound.start (_root.newTime, 9999); // flash sees 9999 as a second offset, not the loops! where do i put the loop count?

so you can see from the code snippet above, my variable newTime is taking up the space where my second offset is meant to go, any work arounds???? i'm stumped on this one. yeah flash mx is probably my way to go, with all the new sound object functions, but there has to be a trick for flash 5, surely.

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issue 2 - checking for sound object playing when button clicked
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2. i have three buttons that all evoke a different sound object. my goal is to make it so when you click any of the buttons, after evoking their own sound, they will not play the sound again if their sound is currently playing. the tricky part for me here is that each sound has the variable name of currentSound; they are controlled from an array which is what makes my toggle sound button work globally. maybe the answer is staring me right in the face but this close to end of year school submissions and i'm failing to see it. yeah a workaround would be to use key frames and target the movie clips with dot syntax, but this is not option and i'd much rather control these buttons using more advanced methods.

if you have read this far i thank you, i just want to make mention that this post isn't one of those rush posts either. i have researched a fair bit about both issues and am really posting as a last resort. as a somewhat new user of flash (2 months) i'm trying to learn what is a very steep learning curve. would be very interesting to hear anyone's feedback on my above problems, besides the crew on this board is always full of great advice.