I sometimes get the sound of outgoing mail when nothing was sent.

Well, I have to reply to myself. My colleague who does not use a USB sound device today got the sounds when plugging in her iPhone headset into the sound out port of her mid 2012 Macbook Air. It was the first time she heard the sound. She seldomly uses the port this way.

So the sounds are not only USB-oriented.

Johan

An update - now running 10.7.5 - and I've only heard it once since my July 2013 post. Certainly nowhere near the frequency when I was having the issues prior to that, when it would occur almost daily.

Perhaps when people post they can add their system version and any conenctions - maybe we can see a common variable. At the moment, reading through all the posts, it's too difficult to pinpoint any possible leads on this as there's not enought infomration - only "me too".....

I do not nor have not used USB for any sound management. I do use a second screen via Thunderbolt. I have USB external HD's, no USB hub and use WIFI (no ethernet). Nothing is plugged into the headphone jack. I use Mac Mail only - so no outlook or gmail.

I also run several macs and it's only the MacBook Pro that this has ever occured on - even though the other macs are running various OS (some newer, some older) and are all put to sleep daily.

One thing that should be double checked - has anyone actually checked mail server logs to verify no mail is being sent?

Checking mail logs was my first response, since when it first occurred all I imagined was a successful virus using my computer as a spam engine. But I've never seen any evidence of outgoing mail.

This has now happened so often, though without regularity, that I've chalked it up as a benign event not worth worrying about. I've seen it happen plugging in headphones, turning on iSight, plugging in a thunderbolt external monitor, and even simply launching a quicktime video. Each time I've I scrambled to record the event so the naysayers can see what we're talking about. But like witnessing an accident, who's ever ready with a recorder?

MacBook Pro, latest OS, nothing special. External monitor is an Apple Cinema Display.

COMMON DENOMINATOR 😕

Perhaps there is more than one?

I have a new, and fairly basic system (MacBook Air). No hardware installed or attached.

Yesterday morning, I got about a 10 dings and 10 whooshes. My computer was on overnight, but perhps in a semi-sleep mode. The alerts came as I started using my machine (FaceTime in this particular instance).

I'm sure iCal was open, as was Mail. I rarely quit these applications.

iCal: I like the theory that iCal has something to do with it. I share (publish) one of my calendars to another person -- read only. I also read subscribe to another calendar (read only).

Mail Rules: It just struck me today, that perhaps the processing of Mail Rules might be the culprit (of one of them). I have rules that move incoming mail out of my inbox immediately. I have another rule that takes other email out of the inbox after 15 days. Could the Rules be causing the alerts?

I did go to the Genius Bar. Nobody there had heard of the problem. In their defense, this issue does not appear to cause loss of function or loss of data (just annoying). There are bigger problems that rightly deserve more of their focus. I'm sure they prioritze their work, just like you and do at our jobs.

The posts on this thread have convinced me that this is not a virus, so I'll patiently wait for this issue to quietly go away some day.😉

I have to jump back in! Today, as we were prepping for a presentation at my agency, an account person with a MacBook Air, with Mail running, went to broadcast our Keynote on Apple TV (do I sound like a commercial yet?) and when she typed in the authorization code, ding! Swoosh Swoosh! ding!... I laughed and told everyone about this string. BUT what happened next surprised me. It didn't stop. I said, no worries, it will quit in 10 or so swooshes. But we kept on with the presentation and it continued unabated for ten minutes, before I finally told her to quit Mail and that stopped it. No usb, no headphones, no video. Just an authentication code to Apple TV.

Two other people around the table said they'd experienced the same thing but didn't think to search forum for the problem... It's an epidemic!

Replying to my own message! I slapped my PowerBook closed when my wife came home and just now re-opened it.... Ding! Ding! Ding! Swoosh Swoosh Swoosh! and so on for about 15 cycles. Nothing connecting! Nothing plugged in! Suck on that Geniuses!

Happens to me too. In fact, it's happened ever since I upgraded from an old 2006 Powerbook to my rMBP.

I don't have anything new to add, just keeping the thread alive and noting that I experience it too.

Just another me too here:

MacBookAir / Mountain Lion 10.8.4 / using Mail.app with only 1 POP account (not gmail or mac.com)

on waking from sleep, I'll often get the whoosh (sending mail) sounds, no bings though

I add another vote, hoping a large number of posts will get Apple's attention one day. Happened to me few times in the past, and now today with MacBook Air 2011 and 10.8.5. I plugged in the headphones which changed the volume level, and started hearing the whoosh sounds, about one per second, and less frequent incoming message boings. Before that, my volume was at zero whole week, so who knows how long that has been going on. No evidence of sent mail in the mailbox, nothing strange in system.log, and it stopped when I quit Mail and relaunched it. Very disturbing...

For those who are scratching their heads and not heard the sound, I was able to hit record yesterday when the occurrence started. It's here: http://review.truenorthinc.com/public/_dingswoosh/DingSwoosh.mp4

In this latest instance, all I did was wake up my Powerbook.

This just happened to me for the first time today. I opened my 2013 13" MBP running 10.8.4 and plugged in an external display. I've been having problems with Mail taking a while to let me use it (maybe I need to archive or rebuild mailboxes?), but once it was free to let me use it, I started hearing the whooshes and beeps. No evidence in the sent email boxes that any email was actually sent.

Strange.

It is happening to me too. Macbook Pro 2010 running OSX 10.8.5. It seemed to start happening after I got a weird pop up two weeks ago with a lot of arabic characters, but maybe just a coincidence. took to genius bar, they can't find anything wrong with computer.

This did not begin for me until I switched to a MacAir last year. I am running 10.8.5. It seems to happen when I inadvertently open iTunes - and yesterday, my first time in iTunes after I upgraded to Maverick, there were so many rapid swooshes that I desperately tried to record the sounds but failed. All this makes me wonder if it has to do with updates to apps.

So, since I've upgraded to Mavericks, I haven't had this problem occur a single time in the last few weeks. It used to happen intermittently before, so since I don't have a reliable, repeatable way to cause the problem, I can't be completely confident that the problem is gone, but I take it as a good sign since it used to happen pretty frequently, and hasn't happened a single time lately.

I can confirm that it has completely stopped happening for me, and it stopped with Mavericks. I'm on a Macbook Pro Retina (the first version) and this was happening to me incessantly. Since switching to Mavericks I am simply not plagued with this problem anymore.