I have a bunch of sounds I want to play. Right now I'm using AVAudioPlayer. A new sound should start when the user clicks a button. The url property of AVAudioPlayer is read-only. I'd rather not have to release and re-alloc the object every time I want a new sound played. What would be the best way to do this? Is there a different class I need to use?
The absolute easiest way to play sound is Playing UI Sound Effects or Invoking Vibration Using System Sound Services. Essentially you call AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID() and AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(). Creating a system sound is relatively expensive and playback stops when it's disposed with AudioServicesDisposeSystemSoundID() anyway, so you really want to cache them:
The biggest caveat is that only a few sound formats are supported for "system sounds"; apple seems to recommend IMA4 (
That said, it's pretty much perfect for playing short sounds provided you don't mind one-at-a-time sounds (it restarts playback if you play a sound while it's already playing). I suspect it's also played directly by the kernel (you can set a flag to make it continue playback when your app exits), which probably means it's more efficient CPU-wise. It might mix with sounds played by AVAudioPlayer.