This question seems to be asked few times over last few years but none has answer for that. I am trying to process PCM data from HLS and I have to use AVPlayer.
this po
I recommended to use Novocaine
Really fast audio in iOS and Mac OS X using Audio Units is hard, and will leave you scarred and bloody. What used to take days can now be done with just a few lines of code.
I would suggest you use FFMPEG library to process HLS streams. This is a little harder but gives more flexibility. I did HLS Player for Android a few years ago (used this project) I believe same applies to iOS.