title: Pausing a HTML5 Audio element causes the entire file to be downloaded
body: <p>I have the situation where there is a page with many Audio elements on it, some of which are very long (up to ~2 hours). In essence, they are being created and controlled as such:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var a = new Audio();
  a.preload = 'metadata';
  a.src = 'long-track.mp3';
  
  a.play();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When it plays, the browser (Chrome, in this case) correctly makes a range request and the server returns a "206 Partial Content", for what looks like about 2 minutes of data at a time. After the ~2mb of data is loaded, it stops requesting data. So far so good. Then, this is executed:</p>
  
  <pre><code>a.pause();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This causes the browser to download the entire remainder of the file. (!!?!~@!!!?) Obviously, this can be a problem if the user decides to listen to the first couple of seconds of a few tracks: they'd start downloading <em>gigabytes</em> of unwanted data.</p>
  
  <p>I've seen some other questions asking <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4764015/how-can-i-force-an-html5-audio-element-to-buffer-an-entire-song">how to force the full file to be buffered</a>, but I actually want the exact opposite. </p>