How to change the sounds for the Mail application on Mac OS. DIY multi-channel audio for MAC OS or how to combine interfaces

Apple appliances has always been distinguished by its simplicity and ease of working with multimedia. Revolution iPod player not only in its compactness, but also in the quality of the reproduced sound. Ergonomics and minimum thickness iPad or MacBook Air did not stop the company from installing decent speakers and taking care of good sound on mobile devices. Worthy mobile sound- this is an audiophile’s nightmare, but let’s not classify ourselves as music lovers, and in today’s instructions we’ll simply do our best to Get the most out of your MacBook speakers.

There are several options for achieving good sound: paid - less labor-intensive, and free, which requires an understanding of what you are doing. Under " good sound"we will understand one that will be much louder than permissible maximum value limited by Apple, sound that has volume and a balanced frequency image.

Paid option

Boom 2

Genre: Utilities, Sound
Publisher: Global Delight Technologies
Version: 1.0.1
OS X: 899 RUR [Download from Mac App Store]

Developers from the company Global Delight Technologies (GDT) decided to make an application that will turn a MacBook into a full-fledged media player with good quality sound.

Boom 2 Allows you to significantly improve the sound in just a few clicks using simple manipulations:

increasing the volume (Boost);
correct selection of values in the equalizer;
applying “enhancing” effects;

Boom 2 does all this in automatic mode. After launching the application, it will independently configure the sound in three stages. Accompanying the setup process background music with every second it will sound more expressive, louder and richer.

After completing the setup, the user has the opportunity manual adjustment equalizer, effects on/off Accuracy And Environments. Superstructure Accuracy allows you to make the sound more compressed, thus highlighting the vocal line or instrumental solo in the composition. Thanks to the effect Environment You can achieve surround sound. This mode is ideal for watching movies.

As nice addition have Boom apps 2 and own audio amplifier most popular formats. Support implemented mp3, m4a, aiff, caf, wav, mov, mp4, m4v, 3gp, 3g2, dv. In order to make the sound of a track or video louder, just drag the file into Boom 2.

Today, the solution from GDT is the only one that is most convenient and simple. With a minimum of effort you can achieve much better sound MacBook. Among the disadvantages, one can note the considerable cost of Boom 2 – 899 rubles.

Free option

In order to work some magic on the sound of your MacBook, you can use free alternative. The only “but” is that you will need two applications and minimal skills in working with sound plugins. If you are ready, feel free to go into battle!

Attention! The site administration is not responsible for any hardware or software damage to your devices. Excessive use of volume can harm your laptop's speakers.

We will need an application Soundflower, emulating additional sound card in MacBook and virtual audio port distributor - application Apple's AU Lab.

Soundflower

Apple's AU Lap

Settings – Sound

Exit

Soundflower (2ch)

AU Lab

input signal

output signal

Create

7. Now our task is to strengthen the sound. We will use the plugins built into the system (provided Garageband is installed). For experienced users working with audio processing, you can use any of the “most best plugins" On the track Output 1 in the field Effects select a plugin AUNBandEQ.

8. In the plugins window that opens, raise the Global Gain slider to 24 decibels. If the resulting volume is not enough, we attach another plugin to the free effects field that appears and amplify it.

Attention! Don't overdo it! Sound overload, wheezing and splashing indicate that the volume level is too high for the speakers installed in the MacBook.

AUGraphicEQ

Turn on your favorite song, switch the equalizer to 10 bands and move the sliders to adjust sufficient quantity low, mid and high frequencies.

10. After completing the settings in the AULab application, select File – Save and specify the directory to save all your profile settings. In the future, when opening AU Lab, you can use it.

When in last time Apple changed set of sounds for your desktop operating system, anyone remember?.. Quite a long time ago, to put it mildly. So long ago that these short “bzdyki”, “chpoki” and “zilch” could get boring a hundred times over. However, this is not a problem at all, since you can expand the set of standard OS X sounds in almost no time... Well, in three, to be precise.

Let's literally go down the list:

1. Select a suitable short audio file. The easiest way is to find and download some nice “sound” from the Freesound.org website - for example, this “call sign”. Give it a new name, for example, Resonant echo.

2. Convert this file to AIFF format. To do this, you can use the free XLD audio converter. Transfer the finished AIFF file to a folder ~/Library/Sounds.

In the XLD converter parameters, don't forget to specify AIFF as the output format.

3. Keys option+F10 open the module system settings Sound. On the tab Sound Effects, in the list of available sounds with type Built-in, you will see a new “own” item Resonant echo. Select it and you will immediately hear your sound.

Now this particular effect will be used in OS X as a standard system signal, which indicates the impossibility of performing some action. Of course, you can add several files at once, having first converted them to AIFF - otherwise OS X will simply ignore them.

A step-by-step guide on how to twist together 2 different audio interfaces into one under MAC OS X without a soldering iron or additional wires. I think it will be useful for disc jockeys and sympathizers.
**If the introduction is not interesting, you can immediately scroll to the 2nd picture.
A certain amount of time ago I decided to try making music. And as a child of the era of computerization and a Mac nerd in one bottle, the first thing I thought was that this needed to be done in the right software. Ableton was chosen as the subject (although this is not at all important). But it became clear that audio output alone would not be enough. In the correct situation, 2 channels (stereo) go to the master output (the one in the “hall”), two to the headphones (so you can listen to the track or instrument before mixing). Of course, you could not worry about it, wire a regular mini-jack into two mono channels and practice mono. But this idea didn’t catch on, because, firstly, it wasn’t comme il faut, and secondly, I didn’t want to solder at all then. I thought that I could just buy a cheap USB audio card and get all the missing goodies for about 350-600 rubles. Then just configure Ableton so that it outputs the masters through the built-in sound, and then connect the headphones to the external card and drive it, drive it (including the neighbors crazy).
But it was a shame when it turned out that in the settings of all sequencers you can select no more than one device.

Therefore, it turned out that behind the apparent simplicity and obviousness, the idea quickly burned out, and therefore was abandoned. Then several years passed, my job changed, and the opportunity arose to acquire an expensive (professional) interface (which was later sold as unnecessary), without bothering with USB witchcraft. Nevertheless, not everyone has the desire or even the opportunity to part with their hard-earned 3,500+ rubles.
Not long ago I bought myself a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD card. Only so as not to inadvertently break the head of the standard 3.5 mm connector on the beech (you never know what could happen, it would be a pity). She's cute, with good characteristics and it works without firewood (except for the inability to use all sorts of improvers that are available from Windows using the bundled software). Using her example, I’ll tell you how, by spending a little of your time and money, you will be able to use 2 different audio interfaces simultaneously under MAC OS X (using OS X 10.7 as an example).
So, for the trick you will need a poppy, external card, 5 minutes time.
First, let's connect the card to the computer. Next, go to /Applicons/Utilities. There you will need an audio and midi configuration utility.

If the card is connected correctly, then after launching the utility it will appear in the list of available audio devices. In my case it is USB Sound Blaster HD.

At the bottom of the list are menu buttons. You need to click on the plus and create an Aggregate Device (I don’t know how it will be in the Russian localization, but there shouldn’t be any problems).

After which, “Aggregate Device” appears in the list of devices with an icon in the form of a large positive electron. In the menu on the right you need to select the devices that need to be combined. I decided not to waste time on trifles and unite everything line inputs and exits. If desired, Aggregate Device can be renamed. Which is what was done.
Ready! Now you can run the program and see that you can select a newly created interface from the list.

Pros:
- Low cost
- Easy to set up
Cons:
- The only “BUT” with such a combination of devices total frequency sampling and bit depth of the output signal is limited by the smallest device. In case inexpensive cards this is 44,100 Hz, 16 bit.

In this recipe we will look at how you can change the standard sound signals used by the Mail.Mail.app application - it is very convenient and elegant mail client. Thanks to its deep integration with .Mac services, the ability to create professionally and very beautifully designed mail messages, and also very convenient interface, everyone who started working with this client notes that it is a complete pleasure. Of course, it would be even better if you could add a little more personality, such as more control over the sound. At the same time, Mail simply openly invites you to do this (Fig. 5.16).

Why do you need to stop at just one sound? Of course, this is convenient if you want to change the sound notification that signals the arrival of new mail. But what if you're tired of the whistling sound that plays every time you send a long message? What about the jingling sound you hear when you check your inbox and there are no new messages? Maybe it annoys you! Therefore, changing one sound is clearly not enough. Let's change all the sounds associated with the Mail app!

On at this stage It doesn't hurt to plan and preliminary preparation. The sound files associated with Mail are all in AIFF format and have the .aiff extension. Therefore, you will first need to create your own sound files in this format or convert existing ones into it. How this is done was described in the previous article. In this case, you need to follow the following recommendations:

Try to make beeps as short as possible. The longest beeps used in Mail last no more than two seconds. There are good reasons for this. Trust me, even though you might initially want to create an eight-minute drum solo to signal your mail, you'll want to undo your change almost immediately—in record time.
Don’t use any trivial or hackneyed clichés (for example, the “You’ve got mail” signal from AOL), because they will very soon drive you literally into a white heat.

Create short and, if possible, suitable sounds, after which you can start hacking and replace them with the sound masterpieces provided by Apple by default. For this purpose, you will need to delve into the contents of the Mail.app package. You have options: as always, you can use the command line (the most fast way) or prefer an approach using GUI(the simplest and most familiar). By the way, this hack is convenient opportunity demonstrate the difference between both approaches, so we will complete the task in both ways. Before you begin, close the Mail app.

Graphical User Interface Approach

Open your Applications folder and find the Mail.app application in it. Click on it right click mouse (or, if you have a one-button mouse, move the cursor over it and click while holding down Ctrl key). From the appeared context menu select the Show Package Contents command. Go to the Resources folder, where among the many icon files and other things, there are also files with the .aiff extension. These are the sound files you hear when you send a note, check mailboxes, or when at work Mail applications a failure occurs (Fig. 5.17).

Once you find these files, create them backups and move them to a folder where they will remain safe. Subsequently, if desired, you can restore them. Once this is done, rename the files you created to preparatory stage, giving them names that exactly match the names of the AIFF files located in the Resources folder of the Mail.app application:

Mail Fetch Error.aiff
Mail Sent.aiff
New Mail.aiff
No Mail.aiff

After renaming the files, drag them into the Resources folder of the Mail application, where they will be overwritten on top of the already existing files. Mac OS X will display a warning that new file will replace the existing one (Fig. 5.18). If such a message does not appear, it means that you have made a mistake in some way.

Replacing files with other files with the same name is a crude and incorrect method to achieve your intended purpose. However, in in this case it is also the simplest. There are other methods to achieve the same goal that use files with different names. After this, Xcode is launched and the Mail() application properties list is edited.

Command line approach

As I said earlier, the same goal can be achieved using Terminal applications, and the command line allows you to perform all operations much faster. First, you need to change your working directory and go to the Resources folder of Mail.app. To do this from command line enter the following command:

1$ cd /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources

1$ mkdir mailsndbu

Finally, move the files to be replaced to new catalog. This is done using the following command line:

12$ mv Mail Fetch Error.aiff Mail Sent.aiff No Mail.aiff MailSent.aiff mailsndbu

Here, backslashes () are present to indicate spaces that are part of the file name. All you have to do now is move your new audio files into the Resources folder of Mail.app. After making sure that the new audio files are located on your desktop, issue the following command:

Finally, to move Mail.app's Resources folder, enter:

1$ mv Mail*.aiff /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources

This command uses a wildcard character (*), so before you run it, you should make sure that any files on your desktop that contain the string Mail and end with the extension .aiff are actually the files you want to move to Resources folder of the Mail.app application. These commands place all audio files in the folder where they should be - the Resources folder of the Mail application. The next time you want to use the Mail app, you'll hear sounds created by you, not Apple's default ones!

If you have changed your sound files Mail signals, you probably already guessed that you can change many other sounds in the same way. In fact, almost any other audio resource can be modified using this method. This method will not work if you want to add sounds where they are not originally provided. Classic Mac OS users probably remember SoundMaster and the fun you could get by setting soundtrack for a wide variety of system events. No worthy successor to SoundMaster has appeared in Mac OS X yet, but you can add a little more variety using the SystemSound utility.

SystemSound doesn't provide all the features that SoundMaster did, but it does allow you to set a sound to indicate system shutdown. The program is free and well worth downloading. Once you install it, SystemSound will add your preferred system settings to the settings window. new panel, where you can select a sound to indicate system shutdown.