Simple way to play a sound file (.aif)

Question

I'm making an app for Mac OS X using Xcode, and I want it to play a alert sound when something happens.

What is the simplest code for playing a sound in Objective-C/Cocoa? Note that my sound file is an .aif.

Also, where do I put the sound file inside my project?

Thank you.

Answer 1

To play audio on the Mac, you can either use NSSound for basic activities, or the more robust CoreAudio framework for more complicated tasks.

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If you were to use NSSound to achieve this goal, your code would look something like this:

NSString *resourcePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"replace-with-file-name" ofType:@"aif"];
NSSound *sound = [[NSSound alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:resourcePath byReference:YES];
// Do something with sound, like [sound play] and release.

OR

NSSound *sound = [NSSound soundNamed:@"replace-with-file-name-without-the-extension"];
// Do something with sound, like [sound play], but don't release (it's autoreleased).

If you were to use the second snippet, you would have to ensure that the sound file's extension is aiff and not just aif, since +soundNamed: looks for very specific file extensions; I don't think aif is on that list.

Using CoreAudio is more complicated, so if you just want to play it and mess around with very simple settings, just use NSSound

Answer 2

Basic playback of sound is quite easy.

You can use the NSSound class to load the file in a few different ways, for example, by name:

NSSound * myAwesomeSound = [NSSound soundNamed:@"AwesomeSound"];

_{This will need to be retained if you want to keep it around.}

in this case the class will search certain particular directories, including your application bundle, for a sound file with that name. One important note is that the file must have the .aiff (with two f's) extension in order to be found by this method.*

You would probably store the sound file in the Resources folder of your project; that's where "media" files are commonly kept.

Then you can play it very simply, perhaps using a button press:

- (IBAction)playTheSound:(id)sender {
    NSSound * myAwesomeSound = [NSSound soundNamed:@"AwesomeSound"];
    [myAwesomeSound play];
}

It's also possible to do some basic transport control: pausing, stopping, checking whether the sound has finished, and so on. Please see the Sound Programming Topics Guide for details.

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*It's possible to use other formats, too, of course.