Audio Out Turns On/Off Automatically?

[iThinkergoiMac]

I have my MacBook hooked up to a pair of external speakers (M-Audio AV40, for those interested) and I can hear a slight click when the computer hasn't played any sounds for a certain amount time (about 30s to a minute). My PowerBook G4 never did this, so it's not the speakers.

It really gets annoying, is there any way to change this, other than turning the speakers down whenever I'm not using them?

[Intell]

It's the sound hardware going into sleep mode.

Use Antipop to prevent it.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Cool, thanks! I figured it was something like that!

[rkaneknight]

I just created a launchd application to fix it.

In command prompt create a file with pico...

pico ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.my.sound.plist

Put the following text in it. Make sure to replace <your username> with your user's directory.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>com.my.sound</string>

  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/Users/<your username>/sound_fix.sh</string>
  </array>

  <key>Nice</key>
  <integer>1</integer>

  <key>StartInterval</key>
  <integer>30</integer>

  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>

  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/tmp/Sound.err</string>

  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/tmp/Sound.out</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Ctrl-x will close it, and hit Yes to save.

Then run
pico ~/sound_fix.sh

Put this in the file.

#!/bin/sh

say " "

Ctrl-x will close it again hit Yes.

chmod 755 ~/sound_fix.sh

This command allows it to execute.

finally run
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.my.sound.plist

Good Luck...

[Intell]

Originally Posted by rkaneknight

I just created a launchd application to fix it.

This is all Antipop is, but Antipop makes it a whole lot simpler.