title: User-friendly approach for network streaming, playing and seeking of audio files in Mac OS X 10.5
body: <p>Please advise a combination of server and client technologies, tools and frameworks to implement a solution that meets the following requirements?
  <li>File server in the network has a huge library of <i>mp3/aac/aiff/wav</i> music files
  <li>Desktop cocoa application accesses audio files using URLs: <i>rtmp, http, rtsp+rtp, ftp</i> — how to make a choice?
  <li>Audio content should be <b>streamed</b> and played with <b>seeking</b> (it's crucial) without downloading the entire file: <i>QuckTime, AudioQueue, AudioFile, AudioStream, CFHTTP, All of them?</i> — how to develop a client?</p>
  
  <p>After solid research I've ended up with myriads of options and articles. But it looks like a half of them is quite out-of-date (2001—2005), and the other half is about universal code (pure C) for Mac OS X and iPhone OS.  </p>
  
  <p>However the main goal here is to write a Desktop music player for Mac OS 10.5.<br>
  I cannot believe that all this raw C-coding is just required.<br>
  No wrappers? No handy libraries? No components?</p>
  
  <p>P. S. Research has resulted in the following combination: <a href="http://omino.com/sw/qt_tools/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">qt_tools</a> for hinting + <a href="http://dss.macosforge.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">DSS</a> for RTSP streaming + <a href="http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/Reference/QTKitFramework/Classes/QTMovie_Class/Reference/Reference.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">QTMovie</a> for playing back + <a href="http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/Reference/QTKitFramework/Classes/QTMovie_Class/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20002391-DontLinkElementID_3" rel="nofollow noreferrer">setCurrentTime:</a> for seeking. This selection requires double-space for storing hinted .MOV-versions of every music file but works anyway.</p>