Strange sound playing at random intervals

Question

I was able to record this random sound.

It started playing few weeks before. I have tried many things to find out which application is playing it, but nothing has worked.

I have already tried answers from this question. Also I have tried disabling all sound notifications in system settings.

Any idea, where this sound is coming from?

Do you have Apple Mail running? Could be the Sound of a Rule being applied to a Mail, f.e. Spam-Mail or regular Rules — J.C., May 4, 2017 at 10:55
@J.C. Not really. I dont use Apple Mail at all. But I do have following programs running almost all the time. - Google Chrome - Firefox - iTerm2 — Tahir, May 5, 2017 at 16:37
It could perhaps be a Google+ Notification (in Chrome) or Facebook Messaging Notification (in Chrome or FF) grom the browsers - if you use these services. You should definitly start the console.app and let it run in the Background. Next time you hear the sound, look in the Console and look for notification events or something similar. Post the results here. — J.C., May 5, 2017 at 23:09
You should also watch the Tabs in your Browsers - the show a litte Speaker symbol if there is sound running on a Webpage, f.e. from some annoying Ad-Banner (with sound). — J.C., May 5, 2017 at 23:11

kenorb · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-19 14:49:20Z

While it's not possible to check that directly, here are some workarounds:

There are some apps like SoundBunny or SoundFlower which can provide extra kernel extension for pass-through audio, then they can check which processes are accessing sound device.
If you're using Google Chrome (or similar web-browser), look for speaker icon next to tab or window (e.g. check in Window menu).
Check Notifications in System Preferences, and either set Do Not Disturb or disable Play sound for notifications for the recent or all apps. See this post.
Check for log entries, e.g. by the following command:
```
log stream --level=debug
```
Check for any file activity by fs_usage command, e.g.
```
sudo fs_usage
```

Using trial and error, pause and resume processes to find out about the process, e.g.

ps d
kill -STOP 1234 5678 # Stop processes via PID(s).
kill -CONT 1234 5678 # Resume selected processes.

1 Answer 1