Anyone else with no sound in Mail?

I agreed with the first bit of what the imore author wrote but I found I just couldn't go along with his notion of deleting the Recovery partition. In my book that would spell disaster for my iMac or any other machine equipped with Recovery, because if anything substantial went wrong with OSX, there'd probably be no way of correcting it and you'd be left with a dead machine. You wouldn't be able to recover even by using TM, since that's only available when OSX Utilities is able to run. In saying that, I'm assuming of course that, amongst other things, the Recovery partition contains and runs 'OSX Utilities', the very thing that enables you to make a recovery from a bad situation (and which would include the ability to download the OS afresh from the Apple server). Who knows, it might be that, for certain types of recovery, user settings are also stored in it; those ubiquitous auto-recovered browser and mail settings of mine, for example, had to come from somewhere. Surely, for a hard disk embedded in a Mac, there shouldn't ever be a need to go to special lengths to remove the Recovery partition, even if you were wanting to sell on the machine, because the next user would most certainly need it?! So, when you erase or partition the Mac's HD, you probably don't wipe literally everything from it. The Recovery partition is, after all, supposed to be in a protected area of the HD. If and when a Mac HD mechanically or electrically fails and has to be replaced, then a new Recovery partition will need to be put on to the replacement drive. For that, OSX Utilities and a Reinstall would have to be invoked for the replacement drive (which kinda suggests that there must be other recovery software somewhere else onboard the Mac).

Maybe if you were able to delete the Recovery partition you'd be able to boot from a prepared external drive (such as we've been discussing) but later you wouldn't be able to use TM to do a dated restore of the Mac's partition that was earlier backed up.

Thinking further on this point I just can't see how it could be happening, I realise it's been your experience but if the Recovery Partition was really able to keep "secretly" certain user data wouldn't it be a security nightmare - imagine the headlines for Apple.

There's been nothing to indicate that my user data was permanently put into the Recovery Partition (if that's what happened). It wouldn't ever become an embarassment for Apple if, once restored on to my machine, that data were then deleted from the RP.

If that data didn't come from the Recovery partition then it must have come from other memory onboard the Mac. I most definitely did not imagine it. During the whole rather complex business my Mac must have automatically restarted about six times. When I started it off, Recovery warned that it would restart many times. At one point, about two thirds of the way through, Recovery in fact put a question on the screen actually asking me if I wanted it to restore my Mail settings and others. Thinking back, it gave the options: Yes; and No, Not Now. Because I had already backed up all my important settings and data myself by separate means, there was absolutely no need for me to ever answer Yes to this. However, as you can see, there wasn't a permanent No option. I thought perhaps I'd be asked again later, once Sierra had fully booted up. So, I think that that was why I was surprised when, as soon as Sierra actually booted to the screen, all my Mail and some of my browser content were instantaneously restored. Again, don't ask me where it got it from; I'd mega-erased the Mac's HD, and actually on principle I don't use iCloud for any backing up and iCloud elements were all disabled, including Mail. If it didn't perhaps temporarily store all that data and settings of mine in the Recovery Partition, then the only conceivable place from which it could have got them was in some other area of memory inside the Mac itself; at the time, all of my external disks were dismounted and physically disconnected from the iMac. I mean go figure. I'm as baffled as you are. And thinking back, why wasn't a straight No given as one of the options?

One other thing I've been wondering about, on the matter of using an external disk for installing a clean Sierra, is whether there's necessarily a need to erase the entire Mac HD. You see, on the Mac itself, my boot drive is one of three partitions; the other two partitions contain large numbers of data files, mostly photofiles. Will the external disk method for a clean install still work if I only erase the actual boot drive, leaving the two others intact? Otherwise, I later have to re-create those two partitions and then laboriously restore all the data into them from a variety of external 'data backup' disks of mine.

One bit of good news that I can report, that for me makes Sierra seem potentially a little less troublesome, is that I've discovered the reason for the X-Rite display profiling program not working. It was because I was using the wrong colorimeter. I own two X-Rite colorimeters of different 'vintages', and because I only need to use the more recent one just now and then, I didn't realise that I'd in fact attached the older one, that older one being totally incompatible with the program. Errh, doh!

Going back to the very original topic of the missing Mail sound(s) in Sierra, I can plainly see that, at the moment, with me back in Mavericks, my configured Mail setting in Notifications is 'None' - but with 'Play sound for notifications' the only other setting there chosen. With that, in Mavericks, I get all the Mail sounds happening properly. It's perhaps also prudent to check in System Preferences > Sound > Output tab that Internal speakers, Built-In is also selected.

I noticed when pursuing this in Sierra that Apple had introduced a Night Shift feature and this was reflected in Notifications as an additional big button. Unless you need Night Shift, which is primarily an automatically applied nightime change in display colour profile, I'd advise that the Night Shift big button be turned off. If you're making use of Do Not Disturb, then obviously also set the big Do Not Disturb button to On.

So, in Sierra, try with these Notification and Sound settings. Also, in Mail, temporarily set the 'New messages' sound in the General tab of Mail Preferences to None, quit Mail, then re-open Mail and set the New Messages sound to one that you prefer. Send yourself a dummy e-mail and see if, by any chance, it now works. Worth a try, I'd say.

I've now completed the preparation of the macOS Sierra external startup disk. It shows as having 5.02GB installed on it (as seen in right-click > Get Info). I'd given the disk the name "SIERRA" but during the background writing of the disk OSX automaticaly renamed the disk 'Install macOS Sierra', as that's what shows now as the disk's name. I'm leaving it as that.

I'd prepared an almost full command line elsewhere, with the intention of doing Copy, Paste but, once in Terminal, I just typed the whole line in by hand. Incidentally, I added " --nointeraction" to the end of the line. Inevitably, though, I made a typo or two, fortunately spotted and corrected before I set the command to run. It then went okay, taking only about 10 mins to complete.

During its writing, I noticed that I'd inadvertently left Safari and Mail running (but not with any open Safari or Mail windows), so I hope that's not affected anything. Normally, I'm careful about ensuring that all other apps are turned off when running critical things of this sort, but unfortunately on this occasion I slipped up.

So, apparently I now have a USB stick with which I can install a clean version of Sierra, if I so desire. But I'm still not 100% sure of how I'd need to get back to my current Mavericks if I were to run the external Sierra installer and found that the Sierra it gave me was unsatisfactory. Would my only option be a TM restore (in itself, carrying some risk)?

Dear me, and there I was, thinking I'd finally understood. It appears that I need to go back to school again.

It seems to me that you can put (in this case where we dealing with Sierra) the Sierra installer file on to an external drive in two different ways. The file you download is, after all, the very same one in both cases. What you do with it in one case is to enable it to put a clean install of Sierra on to the Mac's HD, but in the other case to not permanently install (and therefore boot into) Sierra but to allow you to swap between the previous OS and Sierra. You do this by using Startup Manager.

Depending on exactly what you're wanting to do, I don't think it's a prerequisite to delete the Mac's HD. Indeed, in various different articles on the matter of making bootable OSX install drives, there's no mention at all of ever erasing the Mac's HD, only of erasing the external drive prior to initially transferring the installer on it. Read through two not-so-recent articles on the matter: http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install -drive.html (expect some annoying audio on the webpages), and http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/clean-install-mavericks.

In his article, Dan Frakes points out that if you download and put an edition of OSX on to a bootable external disk and you then install from that, you won't thereafter get the normal updates to OSX. To ensure you get all the updates from thereon you'll need to re-download and reinstall the OSX installer file from time to time. Read the article and you'll see what I mean.

According to what I keep reading on the Web, Apple keep making small refinements to the way in which Recovery works on various different machines (it often depending on the version of firmware that the particular machine currently has). Also, there are various different ways in which an OSX can be put on to an external disk. Therefore, in my book anyone who claims to fully understand it all should be treated with caution. I'm rather moving to the position where I believe that in fact there's no perfect way of achieving a clean install of OSX. Whether instead you use Recovery or whether you try to do it from an external disk you'll still end up with problems.

I particularly liked John Galt's article, though, because it seemed to be saying that it was possible to put the Sierra installer file on to an external disk and then use Startup Manager to swap between Sierra and your existing OSX, in order that you could assess Sierra. Especially, it would leave your existing OSX untouched. So, maybe the only way of me doing that would be to employ a further, separate external disk?

What's the difference, then, between what you and I have prepared (by way of an external disk) and what John Galt has described in his article (apart from his article not involving the permanent installing of Sierra)?

Been driving myself nuts, trying these last few hours to straighten this up in my mind. I certainly understand some of it, that's about all I can say at the moment.

John Galt's article for running either Sierra from an external disk or from the existing OS on the Mac doesn't go into quite enough detail in its links to describe how to install the downloaded Sierra on to the external disk. I'm left with a doubt that, because I'd have to enter OSX Utilities and use 'Reinstall OSX', the wrong thing would happen. What I definitely don't want is for an Internet download/install to take place, as that's then more likely to include my personal settings.

As inferred from your reply, perhaps an alternative way of me ending up with an external disk with a (presumed clean) copy of Sierra on it, with which I could experiment but still go quickly back to my existing Mavericks if necessary, would be, like you say, to use the Bootable USB Installer that I've created but to point it to a further external drive. So basically, how would I do that? What I'm currently seeing on the external disk recently prepared (in Startup Manager) is: Mavericks HD, Recovery 10.12.4, Install macOS Sierra, and EFI Boot. So, with an extra erased external disk in use, would I simply need to choose 'Install macOS Sierra', and then hopefully it'll ask me for the name of the disk on to which to install it?