Thunderbird elmail alert sound

[billybob12]

I have learned a bunch about Ubuntu in the last few days but I am stuck now. I can't get a wav file I selected for new mail to play in fact the default one either. My sound is fine otherwise. Other files play OK. I have googled and wore my fingers up to the knuckle and still haven't found a clear solution. One poster even said Ubuntu does not allow a file other than the system ones. I can't accept that. If it wasn't possible why is the option there to select your own wav file? Any comments?

[TaZMAniac]

Open Thunderbird
Click on Edit in the tool bar then select preferences.
Select the General tab on that screen.
You will see a section that says Play an Alert when message arrives.
Check the box marked Play Sound.
Then select the option to choose the file you want to play.
Click on Close and restart Thunderbird
You now have a custom email sound.

[billybob12]

Thanks but that is the problem. That is the first thing I did. I selected my wav file and it shows where one is to click play but the play is greyed out. The default sound is not greyed out but it does not play either.

[TaZMAniac]

I don't use custom sounds but I went into Thunderbird and tried it. Any .wav file I tried blasted white noise through my surround speakers.
Couldn't hit the mute button fast enough. LOL!!!!!

Strange...... So I went to Google and investigated.
Seems Thunderbird depended on the esound library to play the wav files. Well esound has depreciated into the depths of the library black hole. In other words it's dead. The developer said he killed it because of the move to pulse audio.

Some looking through bug reports for Thunderbird revealed this bug report;

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=561551

The bug report states that the developers closed the bug and won't fix it. Guess they don't want to spend time on re-writing the sound playing routine code which would require integrating the pulse audio libs.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Maybe they will reopen it in the future and fix it.
Don't hold your breath though.