AudioServices (Easy), AVAudioPlayer (Medium), OpenAL (Hard & Overkill?)

I need to play sounds (~5 seconds each) throughout my iphone application. When they're triggered, they need to play immediately.

For the moment I'm using AudioServices and (as you probably know) the first time you play a sound it lags, then every time there after it's perfect. Is there some code available that's clever enough to preload an AudioServices sound (by playing it silently maybe?). I've read adjusting the system volume programmatically will get your app rejected, so that's not an option. Seems AudioServices isn't made for volume correction from what I can see.

I've looked into OpenAL and while feasible seems a little over kill. AVAudioPlayer seems like a little bit of a better option, I'm using that for background music at present. Extending my music player to hand开发者_C百科le a 'sound board' might be my last resort.

On the topic of OpenAL, does anyone know of a place with a decent (app store friendly) OpenAL wrapper for the iPhone?

Thanks in advance

Finch could be perfect for you. It’s a tiny wrapper around OpenAL with very low latency and simple API. See also all SO questions tagged ‘Finch’.

If you use an AVAudioPlayer, you can call prepareToPlay when you initialize the object to reduce the delay between calling play and having the audio start.