start up music

I do not know if there is a way to customize the startup sound, but I would be wary of muting it since it can be a valuable dignostic tool. Different sounds will play based on what the problem is.

That said, there are tools to mute or eliminate the sound. One is called Psst! and another is Tinkertool System. Be warned, I have not used either of these and cannot vouch for their usefulness or effects on your system.

BTW, versiontracker.com is a great plce to find free/shareware and a lot of demos too. I have it bookmarked and when I need a tool it is the first place I look.

The boot up Chime is part of the start up hardware and is lodged in the firmware of the computer itself I think. If you mute the sound on the computer before shut down in Tiger it will not chime on the next start up, not sure about panther.

I just sleep the computer and never hear it anymore, I sort of miss it from my G3 beige days when I heard it every day.

As Eric Kracinski said there are third party utilities to stop the startup chime, but I have never tried them.

--Spire

As others indicate, startup chime is hardwired into the Apple system.
Actually, there are different sounds that the Mac can (or in the past models could) make to indicate trouble non-start-ing problems.

That said, the choices to moderate it I know of are:

1) Press the sound Mute button before you shut down (or even in the shutdown-in-two-minutes screen). There will be no audible chime on next startup.
This works in Panther and Tiger (I have been using it).
(Or, if you want some sound, but not too loud, set the sound to 'one' box or lowest non-zero level before shutdown)

2) TinkerTool System (shareware, about $9?) does have a Mute startup chime option. This keeps it totally silent until you reset it from TinkerTool System again. (I have registered TinkerTool System, as it has a bunch of good features, and it has been around since 10.2 Jaguar, enhanced for each new OSX release - Panther, Tiger... )

3) Use the Arcana Research prefpane: StartupSound.prefpane v1.03 (or newer, free/donation). At: <http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~arcana/StartupSound/index.en.html>. This has worked for me, I have installed and used for both Panther and Tiger.
What it does is to allow you to set your startup chime volume to whatever level you want, including both mute and a lowest but-not-off level.

One of these should work for you, and they all work in Panther (and Tiger).

Best,