Can you cache sound files in an iOS web app using a manifest or Web Storage?

Question

When I add my beep-23.mp3 file to the cache manifest, the sound effect no longer works on or offline. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

The audio is within

Answer 1

UPDATE for iOS 6:

This is all fixed in iOS 6. You can cache an audio file and play it via javascript without user input.
shaun5 Nov 7 '12 at 0:58

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Even though it should work and there are no specifications (W3C, Apple) which say it shouldn't, I tested some scenarios and it seems like Safari on iOS is just refusing to cache the sound files.

Safari is loading the audio file (but not the index.html) every time I reload the page, so caching is apparently not working correct regardlessly of file size.

After some research: It looks like it's not possible to cache audio files. So you may file a bug at Apples bugtracker.

Here's my code to prove my results:

index.html:

  
  
    
    
    
    
    
  
  
    
Cached audio
    
  

audio.appcache:

CACHE MANIFEST
# 2012-02-23:v1

# explicitly cached
CACHE:
index.html
sample.mp3

.htaccess:

AddType text/cache-manifest .appcache
AddType audio/mpeg .mp3

EDIT

I also tried using data URIs but, that Safari keeps refusing the audio data. So I think it's not possible to cache audio …

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EDIT 2

Great idea, but it looks like it's not working … Safari for OS X -> ok; Safari for iOS -> still the same problem as we had before.

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