Weird UI sound delay in Leopard

[Koyder]

I have a very weird issue with Leopard. There's an approximately 1/2 second delay for all UI actions that are accompanied by a sound (deleting a file, emptying the Trash, removing an item from the Dock, etc.). The delay appears only once in a row, meaning if I delete 2 items from the Dock one after another, there's no delay the second time.

I trashed all the system and user sound-related preference files, but it didn't help.

If any of you knows a solution to this annoying problem, I'd be most grateful if you could help me. I'm using a 2.4 GHz C2D iMac, running OS X 10.5.2.

EDIT: I've just noticed I posted in the wrong forum. Could any of the moderators move the topic to Mac Software Discussion & Help? Sorry about that.

Edited February 24, 2008 by Koyder

[CPressland]

In my opinion it's because the first time you empty the trash/do something sound related the sound files are not in RAM they're on the hard drive. If it makes you feel better I've got the same issue, the only way I could think of fixing it would be to upgrade to the Max ram your system supports so that the sound files are more likely to still be stored in memory. However, that seams a little overkill.

Long story short, deal with it :(

[Koyder]

But I've got 4 gigs of RAM! This can't be right, it's annoying as hell.

[MasterC]

But I've got 4 gigs of RAM! This can't be right, it's annoying as hell.

You can never have enough :p

[CPressland]

You can never have enough :p

+1 to that!

Basically, would you rather have your system ram dedicated to keeping sounds ready for instant play or dedicated for useful stuff like the applications you're using at the moment??

If you leave your Mac on for a long period of time you'll notice it gets faster and faster, my MacBook has been on for about eight days now and it's noticeably faster then if I'd just turned it on

[5Horizons]

The reason there's a delay is because the sounds play *after* the action completes. So for the trash, the sound won't play until it's done being emptied. If you have quite a few files in the trash or your harddrive is being accessed a lot by some other program, there may be a delay. It's the same when you CMD+Delete -- the sound doesn't play until all the files get moved to the trash (noticeable when deleting, say, 1000 files).

For other sound effects it probably does have to do with caching like Vege and MasterC said. No use caching rarely used sounds in memory.

[russellc]

The reason it delays just the first time is because the sound needs to be loaded from your hard drive into RAM first. The subsequent times that you do it will result in a much snappier response because it is loaded into RAM which is much faster than loading from your hard drive. More RAM just means more can be stored and does not mean your hard drive will be faster.

More being stored in RAM, however may simply mean the sound might be stored for a longer period of time meaning if for many hours of not emptying your trash bin you decide to do so later, the sound will play instantly. With less RAM, earlier on that piece of memory in which the sound resided in might have been replaced by something else or cleared, meaning in that same situation above, the sound will have to be loaded from the hard drive again, which is the cause of the slowness.

In this case, the hard drive is the bottleneck.

EDIT: No operating system is flawless or perfect.

EDIT #2: One solution that I can think of that may "fix" this is to upgrade your system drive to a solid state drive which has significantly higher read speeds than hard disk drives.

[LTD]

:blink: :blink: :blink: But ... but ... but.... I thought Mac OS X was perfect... flawless. What gives??? :blink:

It gets close, really close. But OS X is not 100% bug-free.

I'm sure there are some things we'd all like to see improved, changed, adjusted, etc.

That being said, it's still held in extremely high regard.

[Koyder]

I'll give you an example of how the delay affects my work. I press Command+Shift+4 to make a screenshot of a selection of the screen (say, a website). I select an area with my mouse and release the button. I switch to Fireworks to paste the screenshot. What I get is a screenshot of Fireworks instead of the website because it took the OS more time to make the screenshot (and produce the accompanying sound) than for me to switch to another app after releasing the mouse button.

If I had a G3 with 512 MB of RAM, it might be understandable. But not with a friggin 2.4 GHz C2D iMac with 4 gigs of memory!

[Wannes]

The sound delay was understandable but the screenshot isn't. Are you using the build in screenshot function? I never had problems taking screenshots before and I'm using a Macbook 2.0Ghz with 2Gb ram.

[Koyder]

That's the problem. The sound delay also delays the action it accompanies. Another example is removing an item from the Dock. When I drag an icon off the Dock, the icon hovers above the Dock where I released the mouse button for about 1 second until the "poof" sound appears.

I'm not using any haxies or anything, just a clean Leopard install.

[Wannes]

My Google search gave me the topic I'm replying at right now so that won't help a lot.

What program(s) are you running, maybe your system is still loading previous actions and therefore you encounter some delays.

[Koyder]

I don't think it's due to any programs' interference. The delay also appears when I'm logged into a new user account.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

Would be handy if you could somehow do a video screencap of the problem and stick it on YouTube or something. I always accepted that UI related sound effects happened 1/2 a second or so after the action (empty trash, etc) - it never bothered me before TBH!

[mlilley]

I have noticed the same thing, and it's intensely frustrating. In my particular case, I do a lot of work in Terminal, and through that, Vim.

In both circumstances, the system beep sound is generated regularly (tab-completing a command in terminal, backspacing to the start of a line, etc. etc. etc.). If the time between the last time the system beep was played, and now is sufficiently long enough (a minute maybe), the ~1 second delay kicks in and everything pauses for that time period. Sure, a 1/2 or 1 second delay doesn't sound like much, but it's long enough to interrupt what I'm doing and it quickly becomes intensely annoying.

I'm running 10.5.2 on an iMac dual core 2.3GHz, with 2 GB ram. I'm unsure whether this issue is peculiar to 10.5.2, or existed in 10.5 or tiger... (I can't recall having the problem before 10.5.2 though).

Caching does sound like a possible cause, though with just terminal and vim running, I don't come anywhere near maxing out my available ram. Once loaded, the sound should stay loaded. It's a pretty basic issue for an OS, so then again, maybe it's not caching. Maybe an updated sound driver issue instead?

Edited March 3, 2008 by mlilley

[mrwhere]

I also have the same problem, 4GB RAM, leopard, Macbook (dec '07 model). I can replicate this behavior two ways, currently. The first is to open Terminal and type ctrl-G (the unix beep character). I get a one-second pause before the sound plays. If I wait 30 seconds and hit the same key sequence again, I get the same pause. If I type ctrl-g twice, three, four, or any number of times in a row, no problem (aside from the initial delay), as long as I don't wait 30 seconds or more between each keypress.

Second, in Ircle, if I privmsg myself, I get the delay. All UI elements (of Ircle) freeze until the incoming notification beep has dispatched. Wait 30 seconds, if I get another privmsg, the UI locks up yet again while the system is trying to figure out what to do.

Looking at activity monitor: Wired: 550MB; Active: 469MB; Inactive: 48MB; Free: 2.95GB. I have plenty of memory free that has not been pulled in as cache.

[Koyder]

Thank God I'm not alone! I was about to perform "Erase & Install", but if that's a common problem, there's no point.

Here's a video I've made illustrating the delay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FecNJb1h_QE

[OperationBrian]

You are not the only person dealing with this. This issue is definately related to 10.5.2. As soon as I upgraded, there is a good 1/2 to 1 sec. delay from when I send an IM in iChat until it shows up in the conversation window. This is due to the system having to play the iChat send sound. I just tried the Command-G in Terminal like mentioned above.... same delay if I wait like 30 sec. I also notice this when I try to change the volume using the keyboard. I cant change the volume any more/less (pressing the button) until the first "click" sound is registered. Last, when I drag any item(s) to the Trash there is a delay from when I drag it in until the sound and paper in the trash show up. All of these behaviors were a result of 10.5.2. This is a shame because I noticed the system is a lot faster since 10.5.2 and the graphics animation are smoother from the graphics update.

I'm using a November '07 MacBook - 2.2 GHz C2D 2GB RAM, 120GB 5400 RPM HD (stock).

Maybe Apple will have to release "Leopard Sound Update 1.0" along with 10.5.3.

[mattrobs]

It's always had that initial delay, even with Tiger. It's just how Mac OS X does sound.

I connected an external keyboard that had LED-based volume controls to my Tiger install a while ago. As sound events idled, the mute LED would automatically turn on. Then when a sound played, Mac would first unmute the sound, then play it, hence the initial delay.

[CPressland]

Thank God I'm not alone! I was about to perform "Erase & Install", but if that's a common problem, there's no point.

Here's a video I've made illustrating the delay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FecNJb1h_QE

Holy crap, you'd Erase and Install just because of that??? Dude, I do it when my system becomes unusable (yet to happen on OS X)

[Koyder]

Holy crap, you'd Erase and Install just because of that??? Dude, I do it when my system becomes unusable (yet to happen on OS X)

I'm using the best OS in the world, I want it to be perfect ;)