Play a short sound in iOS

Question

I guess I could use AVAudioPlayer to play a sound, however, what I need is to just play a short sound and I don't need any loops or fine-grained control over the volume etc.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

Every single one of the other answers leaks memory (unless ARC is enabled for one of the answers)... oddly, the answer originally marked as correct has a call to retainCount for no apparent reason.

If you alloc/init something, it needs to be released (unless you are using ARC).

If you call AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID() you have to dispose of the resulting sound.

See the Audio UI Sounds example.

Basically:

@interface MyClass:UI*ViewController // fixed {      SystemSoundID mySound; } @implementation MyClass - (void) viewDidLoad {     [super viewDidLoad];     AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID(.... URL ...., &mySound); }  - (void) playMySoundLikeRightNowReally {     AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(mySound); }  - (void) dealloc {    AudioServicesDisposeSystemSoundID(mySound);    [super dealloc]; // only in manual retain/release, delete for ARC } @end 

For completeness:
add AudioToolbox.framework
#import <AudioToolbox/AudioToolbox.h>

Answer 2

For short sound clips (less than 30 secs), there's a SystemSounds library which is really nice.

Pros: You don't need to manage volume settings separately. The sound is played in a separate thread and loading and playing of audio clip is v fast. In short, you treat this clip as another system sound.

Cons: You can't provide a separate audio control setting. It's tied to the settings of the system sounds. You can't play more than 30 seconds. You probably can't apply any sound filters to enhance audio effect.

There are certainly more pros and cons, but these are some I could think of, off the top of my head.

use this import: <AudioToolbox/AudioToolbox.h> Add the AudioToolbox Framework then call the below method like [self playSound], wherever you want to play the clip.

-(void) playSound {     NSString *soundPath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"changeTrack" ofType:@"aif"];     SystemSoundID soundID;     AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID((CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath: soundPath], &soundID);     AudioServicesPlaySystemSound (soundID);     [soundPath release]; }