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I run Mountain Lion on my macbook pro, and experience an unusual effect: sometimes system sounds happen, without any visible reason.
Does anybody know, why it could be?
Or, if it is possible, how to monitor the audiu subsystem to find out what application and when plays sounds.

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3 Answers

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There are a couple of things you can do figure out what's going on. First, see if it happens within other users. When it happens, see what Applications you're running, through Terminal or Activity Monitor, and check the Console, which logs all system's messages, and see if any of the running Application is sending any warning or having any issue.

All of these Apps can be found under Applications / Utilities.

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Thanks, I'll try Console monitoring. I'm quite sure that this behaviour won't happen with other users, because my software configuration is quite specific because of my programming job and geek propensity :-) – TPMi Sep 7 '12 at 8:36
Just heard a sound which happens when an application is removed from dock. No mentions in console. – TPMi Sep 7 '12 at 12:26
@TPMi What does it sounds like? – Thecafremo Sep 7 '12 at 13:22
There are different sounds. I can remember the sound of a blown air, and something like a robotic "wheewee". – TPMi Sep 7 '12 at 14:07
Do you mean this? – Thecafremo Sep 7 '12 at 14:15
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I found this question while searching Google for finding apps playing sound osx - I had the same sounds playing. I found out that when logged into Messages if a someone logs in or out it plays a couple of different but similar swooshing sounds.

I found it in Messages, Preferences, Alerts and the two alerts are called Buddy Becomes Available and Buddy Becomes Unavailable.

This doesn't answer your exact question but it might cover the swooshing sound.

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up vote -1 down vote

Mysterious! Did you know that with Mountain Lion, it is possible to connect to your Computer via a Virtual Screen?

Virtual Screen Screenshot

Someone may be logged in into another account, (via Finder ➝ ⌘+K ➝ vnc://...) and removing items from his/her dock, or triggering system sounds.

Or… have you considered that you are being pranked by your colleagues?

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My computer is not sharing the screen to the network, and there are no other accounts, but the "Guest". And sounds from other account hardly would be translated to my headphones... And so often changing items in dock doesn't make sense ;-) But the idea is quite out of the box, nice, thank you :-) – TPMi Sep 7 '12 at 13:43
Just crossed my mind :) – myhd Sep 7 '12 at 13:47

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