Memory from AVAudioPlayer in ivar not reused - ios

Question

I've set up an instance variable to reference an AVAudioPlayer that I'm using to play different audio data at different times. My header file contains:
AVAudioPlayer *player;
and
#property (nonatomic, retain) AVAudioPlayer *player;
And my implementation file contains:
- (void)playAudioData:(NSData *)data {
NSMutableData *trimmedData = [NSMutableData dataWithData:data];
int duration = 2; // seconds
int dataLength = duration * 2 * 44100; // assumes 16-bit mono data
[trimmedData setLength:dataLength];
NSError *playerError;
self.player = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithData:trimmedData error:&playerError];
[self.player autorelease]; // ADDED
if (playerError) {
NSLog(#"player error: %#", playerError);
}
[self.player play];
if (([[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion] compare:#"6.0"] != NSOrderedAscending)&&([[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion] compare:#"6.1"] == NSOrderedAscending)) {
[trimmedData autorelease]; // ADDED
}
}
- (void)dealloc {
[self.player release];
}
When profiling my app for memory usage, I've noticed that calling this method increases the live bytes by 500k, which is about the size of the audio data I'm playing. However, if I call the method again, the live bytes increases by another 500k, and another, each time I call the method.
According to this SO answer, I shouldn't have to do anything differently here because setting the self.player variable reduces the retain count of the existing value. But I also tried releasing and setting self.player to nil before giving it a new value, as shown in this answer, and autoreleasing self.player after setting it, as shown in this answer. (I'm not getting errors initializing the player, as was the issue in that last answer.) In all these cases, my memory usage keeps going up and never comes down again.
Is there something else I need to do to reuse the memory that is allocated each time I initialize the audio player?

Answer 1

I had the same issue with my app before switching to Automatic Reference Counting [ARC], memory usage will increase until the app crashes, right?. The fastest way for you to fix this problem is to use ARC too in your app/project, in fact it will do all the job of managing memory and release AVAudioPlayer when needed [you don't need any -void(dealloc) in your code if you use ARC], so no more leaks :-). If you don't know what ARC is you can check this link too:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/5677/beginning-arc-in-ios-5-part-1
Header:
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import <AVFoundation/AVAudioPlayer.h>
#interface YourViewController : UIViewController <AVAudioPlayerDelegate>
{
AVAudioPlayer *player;
/* Your other code here */
}
/* Your other code here */
#end
Main:
#import "YourViewController.h"
#implementation YourViewController
/* Your other code here */
- (void)playAudioData:(NSData *)data
{
NSError *playerError;
self.player = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithData:data error:&playerError]; error:NULL];
if (playerError)
{
NSLog(#"player error: %#", playerError);
}
[self.player play];
/* No more need to release AVAudioPlayer, ARC will do the job */
}
/* Your other code here */
#end