Statement of Problem:
I have a collection of sound effects in my app stored as.m4a files (AAC format, 48 KHz, 16-bit) that I want to play a
.m4a
For iOS 7, you'd want to look at AVPlayerItem's time-pitch algorithm (audioTimePitchAlgorithm) called AVAudioTimePitchAlgorithmVarispeed. Unfortunately this feature is not available on early systems.
audioTimePitchAlgorithm
AVAudioTimePitchAlgorithmVarispeed