Multi-beep work-round for Snow Leopard (AS 2.1.1)

I’ve noticed with AS 2.1.1 (in Mac OS 10.6.2) on my new MacBook Pro that when the ‘beep’ command has a number parameter ” say ‘beep 5’ ” the first three beeps all sound together. I hear a splurged first beep and two fewer beeps than I’m expecting. But if I run the script again after not too long an interval, I hear the correct number of distinct beeps. I don’t know if this is a bug in ‘beep’ or something peculiar to my system.

My work-round is to have the script beep once with the sound muted and then perform the required multiple beeps with the sound level restored:

on multibeep(n) -- Hack to get round a 'beep n' bug in Snow Leopard.
	set outVol to output volume of (get volume settings)
	-- Mute the output volume and beep once to "wake" the 'beep' command.
	set volume with output muted
	beep
	-- Restore the output volume and do the required multibeep.
	set volume output volume outVol
	beep n
end multibeep

multibeep(5)

It would be great to use a beep handler to intercept the normal ‘beep’ call:

on beep n -- Hack to get round a 'beep n' bug in Snow Leopard.
	set outVol to output volume of (get volume settings)
	-- Mute the output volume and beep once to "wake" the 'beep' command.
	set volume with output muted
	continue beep
	-- Restore the output volume and do the required multibeep.
	set volume output volume outVol
	continue beep n
end beep

beep 5

. but while this works well in AppleScript Editor, it causes a “privilege violation” error when used in a stand-alone applet.

It’s not peculiar to your setup, Nigel. My Early 2008 MBP running 10.6.2 does precisely the same thing on the first invocation of beep num.

beep hasn’t been beeping at all for me since 10.6 was installed.