ding - too often (OS X and in general)

[David Reitter]

Why does Emacs ring the bell upon user-initiated abort actions?
For example, when I press cancel in the file dialog that pops up when  
a user selects find-file on OS X from the menu, it gives me a (ding),  
and as a user I wonder what went wrong, why did an error occur? I  
just canceled a find-file - no error in sight!

Similarly, whenever something like keyboard-escape-quit is executed,  
I get a (ding). But that's totally useless and annoying, because I  
initiated the abort action in the first place, so I don't need to be  
alerted that the operation (often just some interaction in a  
minibuffer) was terminated.

Of course, I can easily turn of the bell completely. But that would  
keep me from getting a (ding) when it's really needed - if there is  
an error situation that is simple enough to signal it this way.

The Emacs manual states: "Be conservative about how often you do  
this; frequent bells can become irritating.".
The manual is right.