Keep getting "Glass" sound with no visual!
 

Lately, I've been hearing the system sound, "Glass" go off, but no visual message accompanies it..

It isn't mail; Hero is the sound attached to new mail and play sounds for other mail actions de-checked.

thank you for any clues how to track down this sound without a purpose!

a

Start by listing all of the apps that are running. Then the next time you hear the sound, think about why one of them might be making sound.

There's probably a purpose for the alert - you just haven't discovered what it is!
There's more possibilities than just mail notifications.
Here's a few other items to consider (there may be others, but that's all I could guess at)
You may have other kinds of notifications set.
Perhaps a dashboard widget of some sort.
Could it be a time beep (is it on the hour, or quarter-hour?)
Note the exact time when you next hear the beep. Check in your logs for something relevant at that exact time.
Even though no error window is generated - is there an already existing window waiting for attention? Clicking somewhere else MAY cause a system beep, because a window needs to be cleared first.
Are you getting a beep when pressing a modifier key? (Option, Command, Control, Shift)
Check the options in your Universal Access pane, under the Keyboard tab. You may have turned Sticky keys on - although you would likely notice other effects, if that's turned on, like the on-screen symbols for those modifier keys when pressed.

those soundlike worthy suggestions Deltamac

apps I had running..this is prbly a pretty close list:

safari
firefox
calendar
notes
textedit
textwrangler
indesign, illustrator, photoshop, dreamweaver cs6
chrome
cyberduck
terminal
mail

when my calendar alarms "go off," they are usually alerts with message only and no sound. Plus, I myself would never select "Glass," as I find it an annoying sound. Not very scientific, but it's something..I can check those other, worthy ideas, too.

a

Now you can start going through the preferences for those apps looking for each app's sound prefs. Try to find one that uses Glass.

If it is a preference setting…

If I had to do this search, I'd use EasyFind to target the Preferences folder and then let EF (toggle: File Contents/Ignore Case/Package Contents/Invisible Files and Folders) reveal all instances of "glass" inside the pref files. Although there are some false positives with this approach--for example, I note that my search hits on a "no-glass" string in the Dock prefs, some "Glassy Pad" items for GarageBand, and a few other things--it's a quick way to narrow down hundreds or thousands of prefs to a handful. Using the more restrictive "glass.aif" would produce a still smaller set, though it could miss something.

is it true that "Glass" is OS X's signal for hardware problems? I've never heard of this, but there are many things I've never heard of before.

thanks for any thoughts.

a

thank you macosnoob;

I've dialed in the search criteria into EF you suggest, but nothing shows up in the area below..I guess the results window? Is there a "Go" button I'm not seeing?

NM; just saw the little magnifying glass... :o

a

EF produces 1 result: plugincache.bin

now, what should I do with this information? Reveal In Finder shows it to be a Mac Binary Archive which I have no clue what to do with.

any thoughts?

thank you!

a

I'm a little surprised to hear of a "plugincache.bin" in the Preferences folder, but I suppose it's possible. What's the full path to plugincache.bin? (Of course, for the sake of privacy, take your username out of the path before posting back.)

Google seems to indicate that plugincache.bin is associated with Illustrator.

I hadn't always been running illustrator when the glass chime sounded..

here is the path to that plugincache.bin:

User>library>Preferences>Adobe Illustrator CS6 Settings>en_US>plugincache.bin

thank you

a

Seems to be associated with Illustrator

sure does..I see nothing in the prefs having anything to do with sound, tho...

maybe that isn't it...the prefs route.


thank you

a

I'm going to guess that a "glass" associated with Illustrator isn't about a sound file but about some sort of visual effect. We were moving under the assumption that the glass alert (glass.aif) is a Preferences setting. If it's not, I'm not sure where to look next.

I've seen applications that directly reference alert sounds but provide no preference settings for you to change the alert--thus, nothing in Preferences. You could use EF to scan other likely places--say, Applications--for instances of "glass.aif". (That search on my first-gen MBP takes about an hour to churn through 12Gb of apps.) I don't know that such a shotgun approach will get to the root of the problem, but it's another thing to try.

Broken glass sounds can be associated with bad memory. Have you recently installed any new RAM?

not a broken glass sound.


the OS X system sound, named "Glass" which can be found in Sys Prefs>Sound Effects.

Installed new RAM about a year ago, done by an authorized service center.

thank you!

a

Twice today, I heard the glass sound and quick checked the console to find same-minute entry below:

4/15/13 10:01:10.794 AM Dock[151]: no information back from LS about running process

Does this provide a clue? what is LS?

thank you!

a

I'd guess that LS is Launch Services.

Trevor

That seems to be a fairly common Console message. I have 19 of them in my Console over the past three days, so it probably doesn't add any info to this discussion. By the way, the [151] identifies the process number of your running Dock application.

As an aside, I found this discussion covering the same topic:

http://forums.macworld.com/index.php...is-this-sound/

There was no solution, but the original poster ended up restoring his system from backup and didn't have the problem any more. If you have a backup, you might consider a clean reinstall of Mac OS. If that alone doesn't fix it you could update your backup, wipe the drive, do a clean install, and then migrate your backup onto the new disk.

can I send the glass sound to the trash?

or, would that cause all manner of system mayhem?

a

It should be okay to remove sounds. You'll need an admin password to do it, but I've deleted many of the built-in sounds from every system I've run for years now. But I'd save that as a last-resort option if you can't track down the source of the chime.

alright..I can do that. I'm now checking console reflexively each time I hear that %@$# glass sound and it seems to be something different each time, and NOT always at the same H:M:S as I hear it.

thank you

a

Just an idea:
If you know (or have a good guess) which audio file is being used, you could make use of the (command-line) facilities of 'dtrace' to get info about which process is accessing that file. Using the 'opensnoop' script might be the easiest way.
For example, if the file you are interested in is "/etc/profile", then run the following command in a Terminal window and leave this window open until the next occurrence of the sound. Then look at the info from the 'opensnoop' command. You can stop the 'opensnoop' command with control-C.

Any chance it could be mail going into a Junk or Spam mailbox?

jordesign;

yes, it is highly possible. basically, I *hate* the glass sound because I find it annoying and painful, especially as an alert that can sound throughout the day, and most especially, while wearing headphones...so...I never select it as my alert.

However...

seems that Calendar LOVES the Glass alert sound and I did not notice that it selects Glass as the Message with Sound alert for new reminders. I've found most instances of that and made them be silent.

Be real nice if Calendar prefs could be set to default to Message with no alert sound, but we play the cards we are dealt.

Thank you to all who helped on this problem.

a

In System/Library/Sounds, replace Glass.aiff with a brief, silent sound file of the same file format. While there's no real risk I've seen with overwriting or removing default sounds like that one, maybe you should back up the original Glass.aiff. I always do that by leaving the original in place and renaming it by appending a 0. But whatever works for you should be fine.

I've been loosely following this thread, but you had to have selected "Message with sound" when you created those events. So why be surprised when it works as it's supposed to?

Ordinarily I would agree with you, with gusto, but I *never* select "Message with sound."

I hate being dinged at. I shut off all system beeps and alerts when installing the OS...been doing that for years.

I can't explain why these reminders some of them have sound.

I could have done it and forgotten, or something squirrelly could be afoot.

Your point is a good one; I simply do not believe that I set "message with sound."

I believe you (and I didn't mean to be snarky, although in hindsight my post looks that way). I use Calendar for reminders, but I like to send emails to myself where I deal with them from my inbox. I wonder if Calendar remembers your last-used alert setting and copies it to new events. If so, you only had to set it once and every event after that got the same alert.

What do you think would happen if you went to the Notifications prefpan and turned off sounds for Calendar alerts?

I don't take it as snark..I appreciated your offering that idea; sometimes when we think our car keys are lost, they turn out to be in our hands all along!

I just turned off sound for Calendar notifications...thank you for that idea!

Interesting idea you have about Calendar remembering..the offending Calendar items, weird, they had TWO Message with Sound Alerts, both with Glass as the sound.

It would take a lot of mighty bad likker to make me do something like that.

It's feeling like something might have gotten hosed up somewhere..

a