How do I turn down the volume on a system beep ?

[Charlie Brej]

On 03/22/2010 08:20 PM, Linuxguy123 wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-03-22 at 19:16 +0000, Charlie Brej wrote:
>> On 03/22/2010 05:36 PM, Linuxguy123 wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2010-03-22 at 18:30 +0100, Henrik Frisk wrote:
>>>>>> System beeps, ie Evolution receiving a new email are very loud.  How do
>>>>>> I turn them down ?
>>>>>
>>>>> I want to keep the volume I have for media listening, I want to keep the
>>>>> system warnings but just at a lower volume.
>>>>>
>>>> $ xset -b 50
>>>
>>> Its actually xset b 50, not xset -b 50.
>>>
>>> Thanks !
>>
>> Actually, neither of those work on x86 PCs. There is an option in X but
>> it doesn't do anything. You can change the pitch but not the volume. I
>> tried a while back to offer a patch to the kernel to enable this, but no
>> one was that interested because the system bell was essentially dead.
>
> If its not used, why is it beeping on my machine ?

Dont get me wrong, it is used, it's just that it is not something that 
is actively developed for as it is an arcane element. It was originally 
driven by a horrid old timer chip (8253) and attaching the system 
speaker to one of the pins was rather abusive. So you could change the 
frequency of the tone, but not the volume. You can turn the pitch down 
which will make it seem quieter.

> Do I have something set up wrong in my sound configuration ?

Do you want to just turn it off? If you have speakers then gnome (and I 
assume kde too) offers a sound based alert under sound effects in the 
sound preferences.