A Channel tracks the current state of a single playing sample or stream of audio. Every playing sound is associated with one Channel. The total number of valid channels is determined by the [AudioConfig][]. Allocating more channels than necessary may result in wasted memory, and if too many channels are played at once the mixing thread might not be able to keep up, resulting in stuttering audio.

A Channel object allows you to stop or change the location of some currently playing audio. Channels that are not playing a looping sound will terminate on their own and require no manual clean up.

Attempting to play a new sound when there are no remaining channels will cause the lowest priority channel to be halted to make room for the new channel.

Here is an example of how a Channel might be used:

Channel music_channel; // Not initialized; does not currently point to any
                       // playing channel.
motor_channel = audio_engine_.PlaySound(motor_sound_handle);
motor_channel.SetLocation(MotorBoatLocation());
// ... Some time later
motor_channel.Stop();

An uninitialized channel is considered invalid, and cannot be used until it has been been initialized. The function Valid() returns true when the Channel object has been successfully initialized.