I have a class AudioManager with a member of type AudioBufferList *. (This is a struct declared in the CoreAudio framework). Since AudioBufferList is not a NSObject, I cannot retain it, so I have to alloc/free it (correct me if I'm wrong).

My question is, where is the 'right' place to free it? Currently I am doing it in the dealloc method of AudioManager. If I understand correctly, this method is invoked automatically once the release message is sent to the instance of AudioManager --- is that true? Is there any other recommended practice regarding using alloc/free on non-objects members of Objective-C objects?

Edit:

From Apples documentation:

Subclasses must implement their own versions of dealloc to allow the release of any additional memory consumed by the object—such as dynamically allocated storage for data or object instance variables owned by the deallocated object. After performing the class-specific deallocation, the subclass method should incorporate superclass versions of dealloc through a message to super:

Which makes things a little bit clearer - but more insights are appreciated.