What should i use to load audio in as3 instead of load()? - actionscript-3

Question

I have a setup of 4x4 drum pads which are essentially buttons or movie clips with 3 states to show visual feedback (like the lighting up of the pads when they are pressed). I have tested this setup on an android tablet as well as a windows 7 touch-enabled laptop. Obviously the windows 7 laptop is more powerful and thus more responsive.
But not responsive enough.
I am wondering how I should be approaching the loading of audio files which are short drum-kit sample sounds in mp3 format stored in an assets folder next to the swf file.
Is there a better way, such as a way to cache the sounds so that I don't have to reload them each time the sound event is triggered?
Any help on this is greatly appreciated. (I just am not aware of how else, right now, to approach loading sounds other than calling a new sound each time the pad is pressed, thus not really caching the sound)

Answer 1

var kickc_03:Sound=new kickc_03_mp3(); // not sure whether to use Sound() or kickc_03 here..
// or
var kickc_03:kickc_03_mp3=new kickc_03_mp3();
// they will both work because kickc_03_mp3 subclasses Sound.
if i were you i would do something like:
// execute this once
var drumNum:int = 16;
var soundArray:Array = [null];
var C:Class;
init();
function init():void{
for(var i:int=1;i<=drumNum;i++){
C = Class(getDefinitionByName("kickc_"+formatF(i)+"_mp3");
soundArray.push(new C());
}
function formatF(n:int):String{
var s:String=n.toString();
while(s.length<2){
s="0"+s;
}
return s;
}
//////////////////////////////////////////////
now anytime you want to generate a kickc_somenum_mp3 sound, use:
soundArray[somenum].play();