Sound effects missing in Lion

I have a similar problem with my 2010 21" iMac. At every boot, the Audio Devices app shows as empty.

The boot chime does work, but the only way to fix the 'missing devices' problem is to shutdown and start again.

Have reset the PRAM and SMC along with verified filesystem and permissions under recovery boot. Still makes no difference.

Sound worked flawlessly under Snow Leopard.

Cheers

Same thing here on my 2008 iMac after a fresh install of Lion...no sound effect for trash. Tried a number of different things but still no love. Odd.

I just had similar problem with mail after Lion upgrade. Sounds worked fine on my login but not on my wife's... As you can imagine, ... Not good.

After some sleuthing, I found that the setting in System Preferences was not set to internal speakers for her account. I changed this and it now seems to work. Swoosh when sending mail. ping when click on bottle, and crinkle when deleting trash!! Hope this fixes it. I tried logoff and login, so far, ok.

Thanks for the information, but that isn't the issue for me. All of sound effects work right after a fresh reboot including the mail "swoosh", trash, empting the trash, etc.

It's only the trash (when something is deleted) and the empty trash sounds that eventually disappear. While all other sound effects work normally, those two specific sounds stop working after a time.

I've never been able to figure out if there's a correlation with another application, etc. but it all began with the Lion upgrade on my 2008 iMac. I have a 2010 11" MacBook Air with Lion OS X and it's never had this issue, so I suspect it's something to do with older iMacs. Resetting the PRAM and/or SMC has no effect (other than a reboot brings the sounds back only to have them go away in a day or two).

I've read similar posts elsewhere but no one has ever posted a resolution. Thanks for the tip though...I'm sure it will help others that follow!

I have a similar issue here since I upgraded to Lion. When I do a fresh reboot, all system sound effects are working fine. But after a while, e.g. after a few rounds of sleep/wake, sounds are missing, such as the swoosh for sending an email, the oing for receiving one, or the crincle for deleting trash.

I found a temporary solution, which is awkward, but it always works: I plug my headphones into the headphone jack of my iMac and unplug it. After this little procedure, all system sounds work again like they should.

I have alreday sent feedback to Apple, and I guess the more do send feedback, the earlier Apple will take care of this issue.

iCoco wrote:

I have a similar issue here since I upgraded to Lion. When I do a fresh reboot, all system sound effects are working fine. But after a while, e.g. after a few rounds of sleep/wake, sounds are missing, such as the swoosh for sending an email, the oing for receiving one, or the crincle for deleting trash.

I found a temporary solution, which is awkward, but it always works: I plug my headphones into the headphone jack of my iMac and unplug it. After this little procedure, all system sounds work again like they should.

I have alreday sent feedback to Apple, and I guess the more do send feedback, the earlier Apple will take care of this issue.

Well that's really interesting. As mentioned above, the only sound effect in Lion that went missing after a period of time for me was the trash...dropping items in the trash and then emptying it. The rest of the SFX always work fine.

I have a 2.1 LG Z4 sound system connected to my iMac via the headphone output. So I just tried disconnecting it and reconnecting it and low and behold the trash sound effects returned!

I've no idea why that would affect the sound output, particularly for the one application in my case, but it does seem to resolve it...not sure for how long, we'll see.

Thanks for posting that. It's certainly not a critical function for me, but finding a "cure" is kind of interesting.

Let us know how it goes for you and I'll post back if/when my trash SFX go away again (and possibly under what circumstances).

Cheers for that!

I just did apply the same "cure" this morning. Interestingly, after the plugging-unplugging ceremony, I immediately heard an outbox swoosh, an inbox mail gong and a few other system sound effects. It felt as if these sounds had been "saved for later". Very strange.

However, the SFXs always do return after the plug-unplug treatment.

So let's send feedback or call Apple Care.

iCoco wrote:

I just did apply the same "cure" this morning. Interestingly, after the plugging-unplugging ceremony, I immediately heard an outbox swoosh, an inbox mail gong and a few other system sound effects. It felt as if these sounds had been "saved for later". Very strange.

However, the SFXs always do return after the plug-unplug treatment.

So let's send feedback or call Apple Care.

That is too weird. FWIW the SFX for my trash app are still working fine.

Here's Apple's feedback form for Lion:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Thanks, I was having the same problem, and this fixed it. Thanks for posting.

Repair your permissions and restart.

Junebug172 wrote:

Repair your permissions and restart.

Well, no...as I and others have pointed out throughout this thread, simply repairing permissions and rebooting does not correct this problem.

Previously iCoco's "fix" (above) - unplug the speaker cable from the Mac's headphone jack and plug it back in always worked.

However FWIW my iMac is now on OS X 10.7.4 and the problem seems to have disappeared. The Trash SFX have been working flawlessly for quite some time.

I've never had this problem until recently, when I switched from shutting down each day to putting my iMac to sleep. (I put it to sleep these days because my Boxee Box seems to disconnect from file sharing with my iMac after a shut down, but not after I wake it from sleep).

I had a problem with getting an alert upon waking that said "you did not eject the disc properly," but I've since discovered which exernal disc was the culprit and now eject that before putting the iMac to sleep (and haven't gotten that alert since).

But now every now and then when I awake the iMac, I'll discover none of the alert sounds are working. They'll work again if I reboot (though that disconnects my Boxee Box). I'll try the headphone trick next time, but I'm running 10.7.4, so I don't think it's something in a recent update that fixed this.

It's funny, this issue seemed to disappear for quite a while...until recently. I updated to Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) and it's reappeared!

It's also very sporadic. It's happened twice since the upgrade though. I almost never shut my Early '08 Aluminum iMac down, always putting it to sleep when I'm done.

Unplugging the speakers from the headphone jack always cures it though. I unplug the cable and then plug it back in and (as mentioned above) it's as if it's saved up all of the SFX and they spill out all at once. Then things are fine...for a while. Weird. Just weird.

FWIW I had the same issue on a brand new MBP retina with a new install of Lion. The plug/unplug headphones cure does seem to work.