I have a page with a hidden <audio> object which is being started and stopped using a custom button via javascript. (The reason being I want to customise the button, and that drawing an audio player seems to destroy rendering performance on iPad anyway). A simplified example (in coffeescript):

// Works fine on all browsers

constructor: (@_button, @_audio) ->
  @_button.on 'click', @_play          // Bind button's click event with jQuery

_play: (e) =>
  @_audio[0].play()                    // Call play() on audio element

The audio plays fine when triggered from a function bound to a click event, but I actually want an animation to complete before the file plays so I put .play() inside a setTimeout. However I just can't get this to work:

// Will not play on iPad

constructor: (@_button, @_audio) ->
  @_button.on 'click', @_play          // Bind button's click event with jQuery

_play: (e) =>
  setTimeout (=>                       // Declare a 300ms timeout
    @_audio[0].play()                  // Call play() on audio element
  ), 300

I've checked that @_audio (this._audio) is in scope and that its play() method exists. Why doesn't this work on iPad?