Overview of the NSSound Class

The NSSound class makes it extremely simple for Cocoa applications to load and play sound files. Instance methods provide standard transport control so that a sound can be programmatically started, stopped and paused.

The class supports the following file and data formats:

• File Formats:

  • AIFF

  • WAV

  • NeXT SND

• Data Formats:

  • 16 bit

  • 44.1 Khz

  • 22.05 KHz

  • Mono

  • Stereo

You can load audio data into an NSSound object from three sources:

1. a disk file—using a pathname or URL

2. network connection—using a URL

3. the pasteboard

The NSSound class can search for named sound resources in the application’s main bundle as well as two standard file system locations: /Library/Sounds and ~/Library/Sounds.