iMessage Notifictions: No sound, no banner

Initially I believe the sound did work on my MBP for at least some buddies. But most do not work. No sound at all, and if I do converse with them, no sound of messages going in and out.

In frustration I have gone into the "Buddies/show info" menu and set the alerts for that particular chat buddy rather than having the app just assign the settings that apply to all buddies through preferences alerts. While there is still no sound for incoming and outgoing messages, on I do now get a voice announcement for when this particular buddy becomes available.

But still no sound for messages coming in and going out, despite setting it even down to the buddy level. Any ideas?

(Late 2008 Macbook Pro unibody, Mountain Lion)

Looking around Google I see people are experiencing similar problems with Mail sound alerts and calendar sound alerts as well since upgrading to Mountain Lion. Presumably the problems are related. (As it happens, I think Mountain Lions are largely silent, unlike the roaring African Lions)

Ok, found an answer online that supposedly solves many lost alert sounds. It fixed it for me (though its only a temporary fix, the problem will return)

http://applehelpwriter.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/no-sound-or-volume-after-upgradi ng/

I didn't bother deleting the sound preferences file they recommend deleting in the article, I just killed the process "CoreAudio" with a force quit in ActivityMonitor. It then restarts itself and sound alerts work again!

According to the comments in that article, this is only a temporary fix, sound will drop out again. Its obviously a bug in Mountain Lion. I hope Apple fixes it soon.

Full instructions are found in the link above.

I've had Mountain Lion installed for some time now and just experienced the same problem this morning. Initially I had my usual sound output from my mid 2010 iMac, went away, came back and no sound. Nothing touched nor changed. Killed core audio and did a restart and sound is back. This is obviously a bug Apple needs to look at, many others appear to be reporting the same problem.

So your issue is not related to iMessage per se but to the CoreAudio system process, is it?

Because I'm also experiencing issues with iMessage notifications: I get no banners/sounds, but only when using iMessage, while it works ok with GTalk and other chat services.

My system audio is working flawlessly so it's something related to Messages.app.

I posted about it on another thread here, you may want to check it out:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4235970?tstart=0

Alas, today's 10.8.1 system update did not fix the issue for me.

I see.

So you also don't get neither banner nor sound every time you receive a new iMessage in one of the open conversations, i.e. those which are already in the left panel?

And what happens if you manually close the conversation (CMD-SHIFT-W)? Do you then get the sound and the banner back?

As for me, I only manage to get visual/audio notifications on receiving a new iMessage _if_ the incoming message starts a new conversation. After I activate the Messages app in order to reply, then from that moment on I don't receive any more notifications, except for the dock badge. Only when I close the chat, if another message arrives, the notifications come back.

But the weirdest thing ever is that if I receive messages through the other IM services (Gtalk, AIM, etc.) in the same Messages.app, the notifications (both sound and banner) do work as they should, and as they have always had!

Let me know if you also have the same problem of mine -- at least we can make our voice heard. 😉