What is this annoying "ding" sound on my MacBook Air?

[ramuman]

I have a MacBook Air Rev 1 1.6 running Leopard and it makes this "ding" sound through the speaker. I've attached an mp3 of the sound recorded through the mic. Does anyone have any idea what it is? I seem to hear it more often when doing CPU intensive things like opening a program, using Flash or viewing media files.

 

[flatfoot]

Some people with a "sound coming from somewhere" issue found out that it was some Dashboard Widget. You might want to double-check on that.

 

[Buzz Bumble]

I haven't looked at Mac OS X's clock options, but maybe it's been set to make a hourly chime.

 

[Jisuo]

Do you have an x-box?

 

[Matthew Yohe]

I have a MacBook Air Rev 1 1.6 running Leopard and it makes this "ding" sound through the speaker. I've attached an mp3 of the sound recorded through the mic. Does anyone have any idea what it is? I seem to hear it more often when doing CPU intensive things like opening a program, using Flash or viewing media files.

That sounds like Microsoft Entourage's alert sound.

 

[ramuman]

That sounds like Microsoft Entourage's alert sound.

Bingo! It's the mail error sound. I don't know why it comes up so much though. I turned the alert off.

 

[Ranger473]

I had the same issue (I am new to Mac OS) and was unable to find the answer anywhere I looked. Everyone kept pointing to the Notifications in System Preference but turning off all sound notifications did not stop the occasional ding.
I finally figured out it was MAIL. Even with notifications turned off, I still got the DING. My solution:

Open MAIL;
In the MENU BAR at the top of the screen, select MAIL;
Select PREFERENCES
Select the GENERAL tab;
Select NEW MESSAGES SOUND;
Select NONE
Also uncheck the box on the next line down PLAY SOUNDS FOR OTHER MAIL ACTIONS, unless of course, you want to be audibly notified...

(Mac Air M1 w/Monterey)