Increase the volume of Mail's alert sounds
Sep 01, '06 07:30:04AM
Contributed by: michaelj
I find the volume level of the sounds in Apple Mail to be too low for my tastes. I've tried adjusting the alert sound volume and various other settings to no avail -- there doesn't seem to be any way to control the volume of these sounds. Here's the solution I came up with. (Make sure that Mail is not running before you begin.)
- In the Finder, control-click on the Mail application and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu, then navigate to Contents -> Resources.
- Make copies of the four sound resources you are going to modify. These are Mail Fetch Error.aiff, Mail Sent.aiff, New Mail.aiff and No Mail.aiff
- Using a sound editing program such as Peak, open each sound and increase the gain to a volume that you like and save the file.
- Replace the originals in the Resources folder. (Make a copy of the originals in case you decide to revert to the lower volume!)
That's it -- relaunch Mail, and enjoy being able to actually hear the alert sounds!
[robg adds: I used the freeware app Audacity to bump the gain (I found +15 to be a reasonable volume). To export as AIFF in Audacity, you'll have to visit the File Formats tab in its Preferences and set the Uncompressed Export Format pop-up to one of the AIFF options (I used the 16 bit PCM). Edit the file and then choose File -> Export as AIFF. This seemed to work for me, though I changed the Open With app back to iTunes, as Audacity claimed ownership of the exported file.]
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