Audio Notify VAE

Audio Notify VAE is the passthrough node in ComfyUI-Audio-Notifier that takes a VAE, plays a sound, and returns it unchanged. It's the third leg of the load-milestone family alongside Audio Notify Model and Audio Notify Clip - except for the VAE, the loading milestone barely matters.

Let's be honest about where this node sits in the pack's value ranking. The VAE is small compared to a diffusion model, loads fast, and the only thing that really needs it is VAE Decode at the end of the pipeline. A "VAE is ready" chime is a very early, very quiet event in most workflows - on a cold start it tells you the decoder finished loading, and after that it fires near-instantly at the top of every prompt. If you're assembling a full suite of load-milestone chimes, this completes the set; if you're choosing a single node, pick something downstream instead.

Where it's not useless: VAE Decode is where latent corruption becomes visible, and a mismatch between latent and VAE can cause a decode to churn or error. Putting this node on the VAE wire means you'll hear the moment the VAE object is present and the decode is about to run - a decent "here comes the dangerous part" signal, and because the VAE flows through the node, the decode is guaranteed not to start until the VAE is genuinely loaded. It's also a fine choice for SDXL-style workflows where the VAE lives in a separate checkpoint entirely and you want proof it loaded.

Inputs and output

• vae - the VAE to pass through.
• notification_enabled - mute the node.
• delay_seconds - hold the chime.
• repeat - 1–100 plays.
• blocking_playback - off by default (background thread); on to wait for the sound before forwarding.
• enable_sound_path / sound_path and enable_sound_name / sound_name - sound source: absolute path, or a file in the pack's sounds/ folder.
• fallback_to_system_beep - beep if nothing resolves, on by default.

One output: the unchanged VAE.

Install and gotchas

No dependencies, no models to download. Clone and restart:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/uni-miao/ComfyUI-Audio-Notifier.git

Restart the ComfyUI backend process, not just the browser tab. Pack-wide gotchas apply: the sounds/ folder ships empty, so add files (or use an absolute sound_path) and restart before the dropdown has choices; and audio always plays on the machine running the backend - if ComfyUI runs on a server, that's where the sound comes out. .wav files are the most reliably supported if a sound plays silently.