Loading Sounds By Name

The simplest way to create an NSSound instance is using the soundNamed: class method. Named sounds are instances of NSSound that have been given a name using the setName: method. The NSSound class keeps a list of the named instances created by your application, as well as the named system sounds provided by the Application Kit. The system sounds (located in /System/Library/Sounds) have been named by the Application Kit using their filenames without the file extension. The following code listing shows you how to load a system sound by name:

NSSound *mySound = [NSSound soundNamed:@"Temple"];

The soundNamed: method first searches for an existing sound file with the name you’ve specified, and if one is found, it is returned to you. Since this example refers to a standard system sound, there is no need to search further.

The following code listing shows you how to load a sound file from disk using soundNamed:.

NSSound *airplaneSound = [NSSound soundNamed:@"Airplane_44KStereo"];

If there is no known sound with the name you’ve specified, soundNamed: searches your application’s main bundle, and then the /Library/Sounds and ~/Library/Sounds directories for sound files with the specified name. If no data can be found for name, no object is created and nil is returned.

Note that once again the file extension is not used when loading sound files using the soundNamed: method. Also note that AIFF files must use the .aiff file extension (not .aif) in order to be located by soundNamed:.

Loading Sounds By Pathname

If you want to load sound files from someplace in the file system other than your application’s bundle, you can use the method initWithContentsOfFile:byReference:. As you would expect, this method attempts to initialize a newly allocated NSSound instance with the audio data in the specified file. If the byReference: parameter is YES, only the name of the sound is stored with the NSSound instance when archived using encodeWithCoder:, otherwise the audio data is archived along with the instance. The following code listing shows you how to create an NSSound instance and initialize it with a sound file given a pathname to the file.

sound = [[NSSound alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:@"/Volumes/Audio/Truck.aiff"

                                    byReference:YES];

Loading Sounds By URL

Loading a sound from a URL is very similar to using a pathname as demonstrated in the section Loading Sounds By Pathname. The code listing below shows how to use a URL instead of a pathname. Note that only file system URLs are currently supported.

NSURL *soundfileURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:@"/Volumes/Audio/Truck.aiff"];

NSSound *sound = [[NSSound alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:soundfileURL

                                            byReference:NO];

Loading Sounds Using an Open Dialog

Listing 1 shows how to load a sound file using an NSOpenPanel object.

Listing 1  Loading a sound file using an open dialog

- (IBAction)loadSoundOpenPanel:(id)sender

{

    int result;

    NSOpenPanel *oPanel = [NSOpenPanel openPanel];

    NSArray *filesToOpen;

    NSString *theFileName;

    NSMutableArray *fileTypes = [NSSound soundUnfilteredTypes];

        // All file types NSSound understands

    [oPanel setAllowsMultipleSelection:NO];

    result = [oPanel runModalForDirectory:NSHomeDirectory() file:nil

             types:fileTypes];

    if (result == NSOKButton) {

        filesToOpen = [oPanel filenames];

        theFileName = [filesToOpen objectAtIndex:0];

        NSLog(@"Open Panel Returned: %@.\n", theFileName);

        [self _loadSoundFromPath:theFileName];

    } else

        [infoTextField setStringValue:@"Sound failed to load..."];

}