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MiniD3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 9, 2013
739
264
Australia
Hi Guys,
When I first switch on the iMac for the day, I always get the loud sonic boom, even if I have the sound muted

Is there a way to stop it or do I just have to live with it?
....Gary
 
i learned in another thread that the volume for the startup chime is set by the volume level last set while no external speakers are plugged into the computer. I too, had a very loud startup chime, and always had external speakers plugged in. Upon disconnecting the speakers and lowering the volume on the keyboard, the startup chime is now set much lower.
 
i learned in another thread that the volume for the startup chime is set by the volume level last set while no external speakers are plugged into the computer. I too, had a very loud startup chime, and always had external speakers plugged in. Upon disconnecting the speakers and lowering the volume on the keyboard, the startup chime is now set much lower.

Well, thank you very much, that did the trick! :)

I had head phones plugged in for a couple of weeks, (been watching a lot of Photoshop training videos)

I'm thinking, they are technically speakers!
Pulled the jack out,
Turned down the volume till it went mute
Restarted, no boom!

Thank you, how simple was that! :)
Regards,
Gary
 
Last edited:
ive tried the start up ninja app and also tried muting my imac before turning it off both methods don't work for me i have a set of external speakers plugged in but they are turned off when i fire my imac up im not to sure about changing lines of program unless its pretty simple
 
ive tried the start up ninja app and also tried muting my imac before turning it off both methods don't work for me i have a set of external speakers plugged in but they are turned off when i fire my imac up im not to sure about changing lines of program unless its pretty simple

from the article I linked to. which offers ONE line of code to silence the startup chime:

Solution #2: Via the Command Line in Terminal

You can completely disable the chime, there is a command line you can enter while in Terminal that will silence the chime until you turn it back on again.

Just open up the Terminal application, you can find it in “Applications” -> “Terminal,” and enter the following on the command line:

Code:
[B]sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume=%80[/B]

You’ll need to enter the Administrator password when you enter this command.

If you decide you’d like to reenable the system chime, simply enter the following on the command line:

sudo nvram -d SystemAudioVolume

Again, you’ll need to enter the Administrator password to execute this command.
 
Hi Guys,
When I first switch on the iMac for the day, I always get the loud sonic boom, even if I have the sound muted

Is there a way to stop it or do I just have to live with it?
....Gary

What iMac is this? I would highly recommend not shutting down you iMac every night though, it would just deteriorate the HDD faster.
 
late 2013,
27"_32GB_750SSD,
How does that deteriorate the HDD?

It is excessive read write cycles. A Hard Drive theoretically has an infinite amount of read writes compared to a HDD, but there is two main things that deteriorate its lifespan, heat and boot up/down cycles.

Now, you told me above that you have an SSD rather than a HDD, so shutting down and booting up is even worse. An SSD has a set number of writes it can perform. This number is usually so high that something else in your computer will go wrong before it. But having excessive read/writes on it is just wasting it. It's like deframenting as SSD.
 
It is excessive read write cycles. A Hard Drive theoretically has an infinite amount of read writes compared to a HDD, but there is two main things that deteriorate its lifespan, heat and boot up/down cycles.

Now, you told me above that you have an SSD rather than a HDD, so shutting down and booting up is even worse. An SSD has a set number of writes it can perform. This number is usually so high that something else in your computer will go wrong before it. But having excessive read/writes on it is just wasting it. It's like deframenting as SSD.

SSDs and HDDs used in modern computers have so many write cycles that you'd have to rewrite tens of gigabytes daily to see any significant degradation within a computer's normal 5 year lifespan.

Shut it down if you want without fear of wearing anything out. However, the iMac's sleep mode uses very little electricity and wakes up nearly instantly versus rebooting.
 
SSDs and HDDs used in modern computers have so many write cycles that you'd have to rewrite tens of gigabytes daily to see any significant degradation within a computer's normal 5 year lifespan.

Shut it down if you want without fear of wearing anything out. However, the iMac's sleep mode uses very little electricity and wakes up nearly instantly versus rebooting.

It is unnecessary read writes.
 
It is unnecessary read writes.

Believe that if you want, but booting your computer daily does not contribute to any significant wear that was not already anticipated during the drive's design process. In fact, I'd even suggest that consumer-grade drives (not enterprise-grade drives) aren't designed to spin 24/7 for years at a time, and that you're shortening your drive's life by letting it run continuously.

And with SSDs, you'll "save" far more "unnecessary" write cycles by turning off Spotlight indexing and disabling any hibernation mode your Mac/PC has (since it'll write the entire contents of RAM to the drive) than you will by not booting your machine. Spotlight continuously reads/writes to your drive to keep an up-to-date index of the contents of all your documents, email, etc. I bet you haven't disabled any of that, have you?

However, I leave my computers - and all their various drives - on continuously, especially since they're all usually doing something in the background (remote file access, iTunes server, etc.). But not for fear of wearing anything out, but for simple convenience.
 
Come on people. Shutting down every night is not a big deal. There is very little evidence out there that it creates a shortened life span on the machine. Something else will break long before anything goes wrong with the hard drives due to excessive shut down/restarts.
 
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