Multiple AVAudioPlayers: I can only get the first one initialized to play

Question

I have a bunch of sound clips, named sound1.mp3 through soundN.mp3. I want to randomly play them on touch, so I've set up an AVAudioPlayer for each clip which are all stored in players (AVAudioPlayer**). After I initialize everything, the only sound I can get to play is sound1.mp3. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for the help, init code is below.

players = (AVAudioPlayer**) malloc ( sizeof (AVAudioPlayer*) * NUM_CLIPS);
NSString* path;
NSString* name;
for(uint i = 0; i < NUM_CLIPS; i++){
    name = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"sound%d", i+1];
    path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:name ofType:@"mp3"];
    players[i] = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:path] error:NULL];
    [players[i] setMeteringEnabled:YES];
    [players[i] prepareToPlay];
}

Answer 1

Nevermind, seems like it was a problem with the way prepareToPlay works

Answer 2

The reason for this is that mp3/aac files are hardware decoded and only on at a time can be decoded.

Answer 3

James Brooks (jamesbrooks dot net) says that changing the *.mp3 files into *.caf allowed him to play multiple sounds with the AVAudioPlayer. I personally, however, can not get the *.caf files to play at the same time but I can get *.aiff files to play simultaneously.