(no subject)

[camwyn]

You are a dog

Or maybe you are a mosquito, you certainly can't be human. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 21.1kHz

Find out which ringtones you can hear!

I had to use bud earphones instead of my speakers, but... yeah.

I reflexively ripped the earphones out about a second and a half into each of the tones. You don't hear those tones with your ears, you hear them WITH THE BACK OF YOUR SKULL.

Comments

[derien.livejournal.com]

The tv we used to have when I was a kid would make a noise like that. My brothers would turn it on, and they'd have the volume so low that you couldn't hear that, but this stupid high pitched hum would wake me up (upstairs and in my loft) with a sick headache.

[camwyn]

yeah, we had a TV that put out a sound like that too. I think it may have been doing the C or D notes from the testing page, although it's been years since I last heard it. All I know is that the TV was in the living room, which had the front door in it- and I could sometimes tell when the TV was on because even standing on the front stoop I could hear those horrible high pitched sounds.

[whisper2ascream.livejournal.com]

Same here. I can tell when the TV is on, or the monitor. I can't even sleep with the computer on in my room. I could hear the 21.1 KHz with ear bud headphones and my volume at max. Usually I'm around 18.8-19.9 range. I can just make out the noise when my dad uses the dog whistle. Had some ear infections over the years, but not too many rock concerts.

Urgggh... head hurt and stomach's just guhh... I'll be over here now.... x_x

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

Argh, horrible noises

I'm just a 20-something. So I guess my hearing is completely average

[camwyn]

The important thing is to hold onto it. When I was ... I dunno, twenty-four, maybe... I went to the Boston Aquarium with a friend of mine. They had a display relating to the senses of various types of aquatic life, including a set of earphones hooked up to a panel that could play sounds ranging from Way Way Low to Way Way High. I think goldfish were capable of hearing the lowest sounds, but I'm not sure... anyway, Dee put on the earphones and tested out pretty normal. Then we did me. We didn't have an exact number for the upper end of my hearing range, but when I dropped my hand to indicate I wasn't hearing anything any more, the indicator was somewhere past 'normal human' and into the lower reaches of 'dolphin'. I think that may have been about 22kHz. I'm still proud of that. Prouder that I've kept that hearing capability, though- for whatever good being able to hear electronica in operation may do me.

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

So, now I've just got to ask: Can you hear dolphins when they aren't trying to be human-pitched? Can most people? Because the one time I saw dolphins, they were just leaping around at first, but then whenever several were above water at once they were making this really high pitched sound, so high pitched that I didn't say anything about it to the people around me because I was sure they wouldn't be able to hear it.

[camwyn]

I haven't had the privilege of being around dolphins often enough to say one way or the other. I do know that I hear bat twittering- not their sonar, but the other calls they make to one another- which I'm led to understand is pretty high pitched in and of itself.

[(Anonymous)]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh EVIL SOUNDS. Yes, back of skull and pit of stomach. Eegads I'll be sick for a while now.

Yeah, I managed to hear the 21.1 too, which may explain why off-pitchness in music drives me so insane and now I go to be sick in the toilet...eeeeevil sounds!

[condotierre.livejournal.com]

Ok right that was me. DUH.

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

The highest I could hear was the 15.8. Which surprises me not in the least...I have tons of scarring on my eardrums from ear infections and tubes being put in, and I've spent a large chunk of my career in air-handled machine rooms with the air handlers droning in the back ground.

[traveller-blues.livejournal.com]

I can still hear dog whistles. *sigh*

-Traveller

[silveraspen]

Weighing in at the 21.1 here as well.

It's oddly comforting. I have heard computer monitors and lights and things making small high-pitched noises for many years, even when some others don't, but I have a bit of worry about damaging my hearing for a few reasons.

Interesting.

[temporal-tech.livejournal.com]

I didn't get out the headphones, cause then it would've felt too much like a hearing quiz. But, at the point where I stopped hearing them at full volume on the speakers (15.8), my cat and dog came running to me and sat at my feet very patiently. It must be genetic training!

[lwood.livejournal.com]

It turns out that if you click on "yeah I can hear that!" for the highest sound, the result says you're a liar, because there's no actual sound in that file.

After flinging their MP3 into the ever-popular Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)--yep, not a thing there. A ringer!

Anyway, without headphones, I make it to 18.8--with headphones or earbuds, I'd probably get "wow you're a dog" too. 8-)

Witness a typical interaction in my house with my husband countgeiger whose hearing is spotty-to-nonexistent just at 15KHz--much work in server rooms, many concerts attended, and I make him run the vacuum cleaner and hide with the cats when he does:

"You didn't turn off the television!"

"Huh?"

"Dude, I can hear the flyback transformer and it's driving me batshit. TURN IT OFF!"

"...oh."

Old CRT monitors are worse, of course: as the flyback transformer begins to fail, it gets louder and the sound slides down. Once, by the time a user flagged me about their monitor because it was annoying to them and their co-workers, I was convinced the damnthing was going to explode.

Or I would...

The Collective Wisdom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_transformer) says that TV flybacks operate at 15KHz, CRTs 30 to as high as 150 in modern ones).

So, uh, now you know! And knowing is half the battle!

-- Lorrie

[whobunkyboo.livejournal.com]

I can't hear some of them but can definitely feel them. Must go barf now.

Think I'll give that one a miss

[(Anonymous)]

I hear every CRT based device around anyway, to the point that in the college computer lab I have trouble getting anything done or paying attention to people talking to me if it's busy from the distraction. Those sonic mouse-scarer things you plug into a socket drive ME up the wall too... so do the white-noise generators they put by the door of meeting rooms. Knowing all this, is enoguh to tell me I don't want to intentionally listen to such high-pitch annoyances.

- ClassicDrogn