Startup Player 2.1

Startup Player is a definitely cool control panel that plays a sound over and over during the startup process, until all other extensions and control panels have loaded and the Finder comes out.

Starting from version 2.1, a shutdown sound can also be played when the Mac is restarted or shut down. All startup and shutdown sounds can be either fixed or picked at random.

If a folder named “Shutdown Sounds” is found inside the “Startup Player Items” folder, Startup Player copies a randomly chosen file from that folder to the Shutdown Items folder, calling it “SP Shutdown Sound” and replacing any existing file with that name. The shutdown sound is then played when you restart or shut down your Mac. If you do not wish to have a sound played at shutdown time, just remove all sounds from the “Shutdown Sounds” and “Shutdown Items” folders.

Since you’ll want Startup Player to start playing early in the startup process, you may add a space before the control panel name and move it inside the Extensions folder.

If you’re using some kind of startup manager, put Startup Player among the first extensions to load. Note that on some system configurations the Sound Manager and QuickTime extensions must load before Startup Player.