"New Message" Sound Not Playing In Mail 5

Mail 4 did indeed have such an issue, but Mail 5 has fixed it for me. (Whether it's a "fix" I haven't decided yet... it's nice when I'm waiting for a message, but very distracting when I'm working. My somewhat OCD personality can't just leave the e-mail there un-looked-at.)

Have you tried changing the sound that gets played? Perhaps there's a problem with the one you have selected.

This had been annoying me since I upgraded my iMac to Lion. After scanning the comments about similar problems, the following suggestion from another thread on sound problems with Lion seems to have fixed the problem:

"Success - in the Audio Midi Setup (Applications/Utilities) I changed the output to 2ch - 32bit Float and all the audio works well."

The really weird bit was, as reported in yet another post on sound problems with Lion, all the send/receive sounds for all the messages I had sent/received since installing Lion then played, one after the other, like they had been queued at the time, but not played until I changed this setting...

I wonder why my Audio/MIDI utility does not include "2ch - 32bit Float." I only see 2-ch 16-, 20- and 24-bit integer.

Yeah, I thought that was going to be shown on my response, but it seems to only appear on the original post. I'm using a Core i7 iMac (27", 2.8 GHz, just in case that makes any difference), running OS X 10.7.2, Audio MIDI Setup 3.0.4. I also have a Core i7 MacBook Pro, running OS X 10.6.8, Audio MIDI Setup 3.0.3, and that also includes a 2ch-32bit mode (although it doesn't actually identify the modes as integer or float).

Mine's a 15" unit (May 2011). I note that one difference between the 13" and larger screen models is that the latter include AMD Radeon graphics co-processors (as do the current iMacs). From the specs, I note that these co-processors include "a HD audio controller to transmit HD Audio over HDMI and DisplayPort".

So it's probably as you suggest—the 2ch-32bit mode will only be there as an option is the reelvant hardware supports it.

Just for the heck of it, I just tried changing my (Audio MIDI Setup) setting to 2ch-24bit Integer, and the sound was still OK. The 'bug' may be such that you just need to change this setting to something else... It's probably worth a try.

Mine's just on 44100 Hz, which must be the default, 'cause I've never been near this stuff before.

I just discovered that this stopped working some time in the last 24 hours. Back to Audio MIDI Setup, change the setting back to "2ch - 32bit Float", and I get the stream of sounds from all the email since whatever this problem was occurred again...

Just changing the setting seems all that's required, so, at the moment, it looks like a genuine bug to me—something gets hosed, and a change resets the system, flushing whatever is doing the hosing.

This is becomming a regular occurrence now. The sound was off again this morning. Change the Audio MIDI Setup setting, and out they all come again.

The sounds are all being queued, but for some reason the queue gets stopped periodically. Maybe there's a bug in Mail's [internal, as in Objective-C] notification system.

It'd be nice to have a permanent fix...

I goggled my way overhere, as I'm having the same issue.

Just tried the suggestion halfway this thread: changing the output parameters in the Audio/MIDI window, and the queue gets a shove: all sent/new mail alerts since way back get played one after another. Very funny, actually. 😝

May 2011 13" MBP (Europe), upgrade to Lion from Snow Leopard btw.

Cheers all, hope this helps someone.

This problem started for me a few days ago. I'm on OS X Lion and the Mail.app is 5.1. New mail sound stops working. My only solution is to reboot (ugh!) the iMac. Then the sound works for a while and then quits again.

It doesn't matter whether I'm using a custom sound or one of the standards. Nothing happens when new mail arrives in my mailbox.

I'd be OK if there were a quick reset for the problem (well, not really OK; it should just work...) but reboot is a PITA.

Chaz