No new mail alert sound in Mountain Lion

Me too.

Brand new Mac mini. All updates to Mountain Lion (I call it by its synonym, Cougar, because it's an aging old girl that's prettied up on the outside but with a decaying core).

Killing coreaudiod and restarting Mail is a temporary fix. Breaks after sleep.

Yes, Tom, no matter what you do to fix it, it seems to revert to it's original non-functional state after sleep. It also affects the use of mail "rules". BUT, I discovered a post on another thread about this, and someone had been able to contact a chief engineer at Apple, and he supoposedly said that they are working on a fix that will be included in ML 10.8. 3. If this is true, the question now is WHEN. No data on that yet, but I'll be first in line to download it when it comes out! :-))

Well, I now have a new take on the problem of the miscellaneous malfunctions in mail with Mountain Lion. I made an appointment with a One on One advisor at Apple, who immediatly referred me to the Genius Bar. The Genius said that my problems (intermitten or nonexistent mail sounds and failure of "rules" to create folders) was due to problems with the download of data from my old computer to the new one. She said that when downloads are done, sometimes the old programs do not transfer accurately to the new computer, and that failure to transfer correctly causes the new computer (i.e. Mountnain Lion) to react in strange and unpredictable ways. She did some rather complicated-looking maneuvers "under the hood" in the programs, and now, at least for the time being, everything is working well. Time will tell, but her explanation makes more sense than anything elso so far. The fix does require someone in the Genius Bar who realy knows what they're doing.

NONSENSE!!! I have had same issue with new Macbook Air and new 15 inch Retina with only factory installed Mountain Lion. No downloads were done from previous computers for days. It's a software issue related to Mountain Lion and made worse when power nap is selected. It occurs after sleep. However I also noticed it after the last upgrade of osx 10.7 as well. I have sopken to apple multiple times with the comment that the engineers are working on it. I don't think they are though as it's been present for over 7 months without improvement. No one has found a permanent fix and all these attempted fixes are an exercise in futility. Anyway -- Del and Suzy don't get your hopes up.

Well, Montrose, it appears that you are right, at least about the mail sounds. Mine are intermittent again. :-(

My question now is, how prevalent is this problem? It it in ALL Mountain Lion or Lion OS, or only some of them?

If it's in all of them, why don't the support people, the one-on-one people, and the Genius Bar people have any knowledge of it. The least they could do is to admit that it's a known problem and is being worked on. The ones I've interacted with act like they've never seen it before. Bottom line: My computer is still within the return period, and I wonder if a different one would act differently.

Changing your computer will not solve the problem. I have already done that for other reasons and the problem persists on all of them. I too don't understand why more people don't report the issue. I asked some of the young people who work at the apple store. One person said they don't use apple's mail program. Another said they always keep ther sound volume so low that they never noticied the problem. Whatever the reason it appears that most people don't care. All you have to do is quit the mail program and re-open and the sounds will return for a while until it goes to sleep for a certain period of time. Hopefully the next update to 10.8.3 will solve the issue but I'm not holding my breath.

With an SSD, disabling Power Nap has resolved this for months now. Before doing that I had no mail sounds after wake from sleep until restarting, but the problem would return with every wake from sleep. With Power Nap disabled (unchecked in Energy Saver), it's working normally through wake from sleep. I hope that report that Apple is working on a fix is true.

FYI everyone, its not just Mac mail. I use Outlook 2011 for Mac, and it does the same thing. It's all alert sounds, and as I posted earlier, the only workaround until there is a fix from Apple is to kill the coreaudiod process from Activity Monitor. You will get alerts back, at least for a while until the issue happens again.

Must add my voice to that of Montrose et al: I too am irritated by absence of ‘Mail’ alert sounds after wakeing from sleep / screen saver. Apple care specialists claim not to have heard of this before! Eventually took my Retina MBP back to Apple store - they replaced it, and did a carefull transfer of my files - problem persists. The guys in the Mac store, just as with Apple care people had not come accross this problem before. OH REALLY!!

I guess we will all just have to wait for an eventual update fix, but it bothers me that they don't just come on out and say “ we are working on this”. AND it's about time consumers were able [ useing their computers serial # ] to register with Apple their various problems - how can they [Apple] tell how many of us out there have this ‘Mail’ alert sounds issue? Having built such a glorious machine as the Retina MBP, it's a real shame to spoil the party with such software bugs!

Very well said. I agree completely. An interesting observation. If I turn off power nap on macbook pro retina in both battery and plugged in modes, I haven't lost the sounds in 4-5 days when waking from sleep. However, on my macbook air 2012 if I turned off power nap I still lost sounds within 24-36 hours of being asleep. It was better than when power nap was on. I don't understand difference between two machines. On the retina I lose the sounds within 1 hour after being asleep with power nap connnected. Lastly, restart machine after turning off power nap on retina. Thanks for all the comments.

It seems like this will not be solved until a software fix is released by Apple. I agree that this seems to be caused by Power Nap. My guess is that notifications are being disabled by Power Nap so when it wakes your Mac up to do its thing you won't hear anything. I am guessing that once it disables them the restarting of coreaudiod is clearing that. Its still very strange. Here is hoping it gets fixed sooner rather than later.

I disagree that the ONLY cause is PowerNap. In my case I never hear the new mail notification sound at all. However I always here the outgoing mail sound. And that's regardless if it's before OR after allowing the computoer to go to sleep.

Anyone with the same symptoms as me?

I agree with Qubits. I have MBA mid-2012 with an erase and freah install of 10.8.2 and all updates applied. Have disabled Power Nap in both Battery and Pluged-in mode and still no sound when new mail arrives. But, if I do have Mail open and new mail arrives I do have notification sound. If new mail is waiting on server before I open Mail and then open Mail - no sound. I give up.

Yeas P, Phillips is right. That is exactly what happens to me too. I guess we'll have to wait until apple fixes it... by the way, shouldn't we fill in a bug report? the more of us that do it the bigger the chances they'll look into the problem. And I wouldn't like them to think that is only a powernap/sleep related problem!

I have just sent Apple a bug report on this issue. Will post back if / when I hear back from Apple. I am not holding my breath as this issue has been around since SL. :-(((