Hi,
is there a easy and reliable way to turn off the annoying sound when i turn on my mac? Sometimes it plays and sometimes it doesn’t. I would prefer if i would never hear it at all. Any suggestions how this could be turned off?
Thanks,
taumel
It would involve a soldering iron.
or just turning your volume down… 
I guess one of these things would do the trick.
I think some models of Mac don’t respond to the volume control at startup, but they do generally respond to being muted, so another alternative would be to mute it before you shut it down.
Have you considered just not turning it off?
Why do you turn it off?
Macs generally sleep really well.
@NCarter
Thanks i will try these out!
@aaronsullivan
Waste of energy?
It’s not elegant, but: you can plug headphones (or even just a little headphone adapter plug) into the audio-out jack during startup.
The startup sound on a Mac changes to convey troubleshooting info (if you’ve never heard the bad RAM sound, be thankful) so maybe that’s why they make it hard to avoid.
P.S. My solution to the energy-wasting problem: leave it on doing something GOOD 24/7 
http://teammacosx.com/NQS
May i ask why there is this sound at all?
P.S. My solution to the energy-wasting problem: leave it on doing something GOOD 24/7
My seti times are over although helping to defend cancer would be the better reason.
Still this would cost you a) energy, generate air/noise/electromagnetic pollution and increase the temperature which i don’t need in the summertime… :O)
I think you can do that with TinkerTool, a free “The preferences dialog that isn’t there” program.
I know what you mean. I find the small cost acceptable (the display sleeps anyway), given that there’s no other way to achieve the scientific results. (The F@H network is more powerful than all the supercomputers in the world put together :shock: ) Opening up a whole new realm of science to cure diseases like cancer, ALS, alzheimer’s… without a greedy commercial interest controlling the discoveries? Count me in! But I also respect SETI… because not only would that one-in-a-billion shot at proving we’re not alone be really cool, but also the aliens might just GIVE us the cure to cancer :lol:
As for the computer’s heat… I figure it balances out in the winter! Nothing like a roaring PowerBook on a cold night…
As for the reason for the sound… tradition, feedback, “just because”… no really GOOD reason 
The startup sound (it’s actually a chord) is what you get instead of scrolling text – it’s the hardware self test. If it ever sounds different, something very bad has happened.
The original Macs would play four notes in a chord if everything was OK and in different orders if something went wrong (the order was informative).
Note that this means you get useful information even if your display isn’t working (a problem with the standard PC scrolling text diagnostic).
So, that’s why.
Okay thanks…
Soundiagnostics come on a pc already with the motherboard. No Ram this sound, no fan connected to the CPU another sound. They wanted to use voices instead in the future but i don’t own such a board…
If the Mac plays the chord to show that somehting is wrong than why doesn’t it behave like so and only chimes in when there is really something wrong? Kind of redundant always trying to tell me: " Hey i’m okay buddy!"
The tune should be an option in the preferences to turn it off when everything is okay.
Regards,
taumel
It’s like getting a smiley face or a frowney face at startup. God, that frowney face was terrifying.
I believe Silicon Graphics’ workstations also emitted a nice chime on startup.
I think it says “I’m not a PC” and then you know that all is well with the world 
At least we don’t have have jingles playing when we log in
Paul
XP has all of that retarded sound on startup and login…
This little chime is fine, that is stupid…
The Chime has chimed here for the last time now… :O)
o On XP i can choose if a sound is played or not and what the sound should sound like if wanted.
o On silicon graphics you could also configure that.
This topic is a waste of bytes. Oh no! So was this post. Ahh!
Seriously, though:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1955354
Disabling is possible.
Not for me, i got my problem solved! :O)
@aarku
Thanks for the further links…
I still like my soldering iron idea. 