I built an iPhone app using AudioServices to play short sounds. The first time a sound is played, there\'s a delay of half a second or so while the sound loads before it pl
This is a well known problem. Everything in AudioServices is initialized lazily.
I think that your best choice is between Core Audio or OpenAL. OpenAL might be overkill, but it has a simple API. The oalTouch example is a good place to start.
Core Audio is a bit more raw, but it's well documented. The iPhone's OpenAL SDK is built on top of it.