Apple Silicon Mac Startup Chime - Extracted in Original Quality

[MartinNobel]

Hey everyone,

So I was going through the firmware files of a Big Sur OTA update and I discovered the startup chimes for an unknown AS development laptop (Board ID: T485) and the DTK Mac mini (Board ID: J273). They were comprised of IMG4 Payload files and were named j273-boot-chime.im4p and t485-boot-chime.im4p. Using IMG4Tool, I managed to extract raw sound files from these two payloads.

After running the raw sounds through Audacity, I exported them as MP3 files and in the attachments are the final results. The DTK chime in particular sounds very bad quality, but that's because it was specifically tuned for the built-in Mac mini type of speakers. For the T485 chime, there's a good possibility that chime would be used in the final Apple Silicon Macs that are yet to be released.

What do you all think about this?

 

[ChromeCloud]

The T485 chime sounds glorious.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

The T485 is interesting in that it follows on from the system alert sounds; it's actually been reworked. The obvious two changes are the addition of a low-end kick drum (softened) at the very beginning, and an enhanced synthesised bass string that runs throughout with a filter pass. That's what gives the chime its 'fuzz-wah' sound.

It sounds absolutely fantastic!

 

[SecuritySteve]

Alright, this might be one reason to look forward to Apple Silicon alone.

 

[dinobear]

I thought I read somewhere that the startup chim was a feature coming to Big Sur. Wouldn't it apply to all macs?

 

[dmccloud]

I thought I read somewhere that the startup chim was a feature coming to Big Sur. Wouldn't it apply to all macs?

Yes, but a new board ID means that the chime in question is intended for a specific model. That "T485" is probably what we need to look for when Apple submits the board to the EU for verification.

 

[MartinNobel]

I thought I read somewhere that the startup chim was a feature coming to Big Sur. Wouldn't it apply to all macs?

Yes. With the ASi Macs, they have a similar chime to the T2 Chip Macs (same pitch) however if you run both chimes through Audacity, you will find the waveforms are slightly different and the ASi chime is far more 'bass boosted' if that makes sense.