Available options for playing a stream or a remote mp3 file on iOS 4

Question

I am trying to make an application for listening to podcasts. Each podcast is an mp3 file, around 50MB in size. After reviewing the Using Audio chapter of the Multimedia Programming Guide, I decided to use AVPlayer, as the other options did not seem appropriate. However, the more I work with AVFoundation, the more complicated it seems and I have a feeling that simply streaming an mp3 file should be easier. Plus on the top of this document, there is a note stating:

Important: This document contains information that used to be in iOS Application Programming Guide. The information in this document has not been updated specifically for iOS 4.0

Does that mean that I have some other options, or that AVFoundation is maybe an overkill for what I need to do? I would really appreciate it if someone could clear things out a bit and let me know if I'm making something wrong here.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I just found a pdf with a nice overview of some possible options from this course blog. Together with Julian's suggestion this is all I could find so far.

Answer 2

You should explore Cocos Denshion.

http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/wiki/doku.php/cocosdenshion:cookbook

The audio engine comes with cocos2d, and it is just 5 classes you can include with your project.

It's very simple to use, as you can see from the above link. It's basically just a wrapper for some AVFoundation classes.

The only trick will be to stream your mp3, but it looks like you can simply update the Cocos Denshion CDAudioManager to hand a URL to the AVAudioPlayer, as a start. Whether or not that satisfies your streaming requirement, I don't know.

At the very least, it will give you some AVFoundation code to study.