adding "read aloud" feature to book app written in Cocos2D - cocos2d-iphone

Question

I created a book app and used Cocos2D and physics engine (Chipmunk) to create it. I would like to add "read aloud" feature to it.
So far I found instructions/books and tutorials how to add read aloud feature when book is created with iBook Author (but I couldn't use iBook Author due to some limitations) using Epub3 and SMIL.
I also found a good tutorial from J. Shapiro how to make narrated book using AVSpeechSynthesizer. This helps, only that I would like to use recorded voice, rather than synthesized sound. I don't know if this approach can be modified to do so?
I also know how it can be done in Sprite Kit framework.
The only info that I couldn't find is how to add "read aloud" feature to the app written using Cocos2D. Could it be done within SimpleAudioEngine, or it can be combined with some other engine (possibly from Sprite Kit framework)?
I would appreciate very much if somebody can give me some references/pointers or tutorial links where to look for some answers how to add this feature.
Thanking you in advance.

Answer 1

I would like to use recorded voice, rather than synthesized sound
Good. Add your voice recording audio files (caf, wav or mp3 format) to the project. Play it back at the appropriate time using:
[[SimpleAudioEngine sharedEngine] playEffect:#"someVoiceRecordingFile.wav"];

Answer 2

Define what read aloud means to you because I find that a lot of terms, especially semi-vague ones like this, are used differently depending on who is using it.
When you say read aloud book do you essentially mean a digital storybook that reads the story to you by simply playing narration audio? I've created dozens of these and what you are asking has multiple steps depending on what features you are going for in your book. If you mean simply playing audio and that is it, then yes you could do that in cocos2d using SimpleAudioEngine (as one option) but I assume you already knew that which is why this question has a tab bit of vagueness to it. Either way you probably wouldn't want to play narration as an effect but rather stream it. To do that along with background music you'd stream background music via the left channel and narration via the right. You can easily add a method to SimpleAudioEngine to make this nice and neat. To get you started something similar to this can be used to access the right channel:
CDLongAudioSource* sound = [[CDAudioManager sharedManager] audioSourceForChannel:kASC_Right];
if ([sound isPlaying])
{
[sound stop];
}
[sound load:fileName];
Also use the proper settings and recommended formats for streaming audio such as aifc (or really all audio in general). Although I believe you can stream mp3 without it being decompressed first, the problem is with timing. If you are using highlighted text or looping audio then aifc is the better option. Personally I've never had a reason to use mp3. Wav with narration is something I'd avoid even if just for the file size increase. If the mp3 is decompressed even for streaming (which I'm not sure if it is off the top of my head) then you'd have a huge spike in memory that will be both highly unwanted and at times down right bad.
There are many other things that can go into it but those are the basic first steps. If you want to do things like highlighted text, per-word animations, etc then that will take more work of course and you'd need to be comfortable with cocos2d, SpriteKit, or whatever you decide to use. I'll be doing a tutorial series on it one day soon so I'll cover all of that stuff.
On the other hand, if you are talking about recording someone's voice and having it playback i.e. a mother recording herself reading the story so her child can hear her voice whenever they are using your app, then you'd simply record the audio like you would any other piece of audio, save it to the device, and play it back when the page is displayed in the proper reading mode (or whatever you personally call it). One place to look is the AVAudioRecorder that is part of the AVFoundation framework. Simply Google "iOS audio recording" for examples if you need them.