7 ms·

I (31m) can hear high frequencies - Last night, an ecigarette's capacitor/resistor (from 20 feet off) - Home Depot has high frequency bird detractors - A fri

I (31m) can hear high frequencies - Last night, an ecigarette's capacitor/resistor (from 20 feet off) - Home Depot has high frequency bird detractors - A friend has a heart condition and a phone addon to help manage it. - TVs w/ bad speakers/signals/lighting - Some fluorescent lights. The worst part is that it hurts, it's like nails on chalkboard you feel it inside when it happens, almost debilitating, and definitely hurts the balance.

lightedman 9y ago
35 here. I can still pick up the flyback transformer whine of a CRT, electronic fluorescent ballasts (really horrid in the induction ones) and inverters in laptops/LCDs using CCFL backlighting. It used to not be so bad, but then people stopped potting their coils in the name of saving money...
- clueless123 9y ago
  Wow! that comment takes me way back to when I could tell a CRT was about to go bad because of the sound of the flyback transformer leaking ! :)
freehunter 9y ago
A few years back I had a monitor at work where I complained to my boss that it was emitting a high pitched whine. I was about 10 years younger than anyone else on the team, and no one else could hear it. The PC technician I called to look at it couldn't hear it. Needless to say it didn't get replaced, that is until we got a summer intern. The first time the intern walked past my desk she asked "how can you stand that sound?" and I had her go to my boss to say the same thing. My boss got another intern from another team to listen and confirm, and I got a replacement the next week. It's one of those sounds you can never drown out, it's such a unique frequency.
- SilasX 9y ago
  Advice for next time: you don't have to depend on a human's word. You can use a real-time analyzer [1], now available in smartphone apps. They display the frequency spectrum of ambient noise. We had a similar situation at our office, were the smoke detector was emitting a steady whine that only a few employees (including me) could hear. One skeptic was finally convinced by getting out an RTA app and seeing the big spike at 12 kHz. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_analyzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_analyzer
  - aoeusnth1 9y ago
    Wow, 12 kHz is not audible to most adults? That's pretty surprising.
    - SilasX 9y ago
      I don't know the percentiles by age (it's hard to find from googling). Just saying that that one fortysomething adult couldn't hear it.
    - tripzilch 9y ago
      When I checked this, as a fun experiment to do with kids (they love "winning" this game, after all), is that yes while I'm technically able to hear 15-16 kHz, there's a very steep drop-off in sensitivity already quite a bit below that. I needed to turn up the volume on a pure sine-wave quite high (which the kids hated immediately) to be able to hear it somewhat clearly. So if you add in ambient noise (in lower frequencies), that could plausibly drown out a 12 kHz noise very well, for older adults (I'm mid 30s myself). Interesting side-note: Turns out that the low end drop-off (at about 20-25 Hz or so) is not very age-dependent at all (at least when I tested these "against" a 13-year old's hearing). You need quality headphones for this, most speakers will distort/resonate some higher frequency harmonics, which you can always clearly hear. It was very interesting to hear something that was clearly a very very low frequency tone turn into a sort of rapidly fluttering/beating sensation at the cross-over frequency, you can feel it beating slightly on your eardrums, but it doesn't translate into a "tone-like" sensation any more. And yes we made sure to not do it for more than a few seconds, to not accidentally cause hearing damage--though with good closed headphones we didn't need to turn it that high, as the effect wasn't so much that the perception of the tone "disappeared", rather change into a different type of sensation.
- ogn3rd 9y ago
  Should have tried changing the refresh rate.
throwaway7645 9y ago
I'm the same way...cheap phone chargers, etc
kfriede 9y ago
- CRT tvs/monitors - This battery charger for a drill I have
- tomsthumb 9y ago
  Some TI-83 calculators are audible, mostly for special keys like "programs", "apps", and maybe "clear" if memory serves.
curun1r 9y ago
I'm the same way. In middle school, I was sent to the principal's office because I complained to the teacher about a painful noise and the teacher thought I was just being disruptive. There it was determined that the "silent" alarm had gone off. I also get it when touching some glass surfaces as there's a high-pitched squeak. My parents just accused me of trying to get out of doing the dishes. Watching the movie 'Baby Driver' was torture. In his attempt to convey to the audience what it was like to live with tinnitus, the director made the film nearly unbearable to people like us. There's just so many instances where people who can't hear these frequencies ignore the consequences for those that can. And then they disbelieve that anyone's hearing is substantively different than their own.
- taway_1212 9y ago
  Interestingly, my tinnitus IS that sound. I can hear up to about 17 kHz and it is still higher than that. Which sucks, since all the available retraining and masking techniques assume you must be able to hear within the range of your T.
VectorLock 9y ago
Your friend had something like an AliveCor Kardia and you could hear it?
mschuster91 9y ago
Male, 25, can hear cheap phone chargers and on my crappy old Windows laptop I don't need the CPU monitor to see if it is loaded - just gotta listen and I hear the whine of the CPU voltage regulators. Even worse are old-ish laptop chargers in quiet environments.

lightedman 9y ago

35 here. I can still pick up the flyback transformer whine of a CRT, electronic fluorescent ballasts (really horrid in the induction ones) and inverters in laptops/LCDs using CCFL backlighting. It used to not be so bad, but then people stopped potting their coils in the name of saving money...

clueless123 9y ago
Wow! that comment takes me way back to when I could tell a CRT was about to go bad because of the sound of the flyback transformer leaking ! :)

freehunter 9y ago

A few years back I had a monitor at work where I complained to my boss that it was emitting a high pitched whine. I was about 10 years younger than anyone else on the team, and no one else could hear it. The PC technician I called to look at it couldn't hear it. Needless to say it didn't get replaced, that is until we got a summer intern. The first time the intern walked past my desk she asked "how can you stand that sound?" and I had her go to my boss to say the same thing. My boss got another intern from another team to listen and confirm, and I got a replacement the next week. It's one of those sounds you can never drown out, it's such a unique frequency.

SilasX 9y ago
Advice for next time: you don't have to depend on a human's word. You can use a real-time analyzer [1], now available in smartphone apps. They display the frequency spectrum of ambient noise. We had a similar situation at our office, were the smoke detector was emitting a steady whine that only a few employees (including me) could hear. One skeptic was finally convinced by getting out an RTA app and seeing the big spike at 12 kHz. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_analyzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_analyzer
- aoeusnth1 9y ago
  Wow, 12 kHz is not audible to most adults? That's pretty surprising.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    I don't know the percentiles by age (it's hard to find from googling). Just saying that that one fortysomething adult couldn't hear it.
  - tripzilch 9y ago
    When I checked this, as a fun experiment to do with kids (they love "winning" this game, after all), is that yes while I'm technically able to hear 15-16 kHz, there's a very steep drop-off in sensitivity already quite a bit below that. I needed to turn up the volume on a pure sine-wave quite high (which the kids hated immediately) to be able to hear it somewhat clearly. So if you add in ambient noise (in lower frequencies), that could plausibly drown out a 12 kHz noise very well, for older adults (I'm mid 30s myself). Interesting side-note: Turns out that the low end drop-off (at about 20-25 Hz or so) is not very age-dependent at all (at least when I tested these "against" a 13-year old's hearing). You need quality headphones for this, most speakers will distort/resonate some higher frequency harmonics, which you can always clearly hear. It was very interesting to hear something that was clearly a very very low frequency tone turn into a sort of rapidly fluttering/beating sensation at the cross-over frequency, you can feel it beating slightly on your eardrums, but it doesn't translate into a "tone-like" sensation any more. And yes we made sure to not do it for more than a few seconds, to not accidentally cause hearing damage--though with good closed headphones we didn't need to turn it that high, as the effect wasn't so much that the perception of the tone "disappeared", rather change into a different type of sensation.
ogn3rd 9y ago
Should have tried changing the refresh rate.

throwaway7645 9y ago

I'm the same way...cheap phone chargers, etc

kfriede 9y ago

- CRT tvs/monitors - This battery charger for a drill I have

tomsthumb 9y ago
Some TI-83 calculators are audible, mostly for special keys like "programs", "apps", and maybe "clear" if memory serves.

curun1r 9y ago

I'm the same way. In middle school, I was sent to the principal's office because I complained to the teacher about a painful noise and the teacher thought I was just being disruptive. There it was determined that the "silent" alarm had gone off. I also get it when touching some glass surfaces as there's a high-pitched squeak. My parents just accused me of trying to get out of doing the dishes. Watching the movie 'Baby Driver' was torture. In his attempt to convey to the audience what it was like to live with tinnitus, the director made the film nearly unbearable to people like us. There's just so many instances where people who can't hear these frequencies ignore the consequences for those that can. And then they disbelieve that anyone's hearing is substantively different than their own.

taway_1212 9y ago
Interestingly, my tinnitus IS that sound. I can hear up to about 17 kHz and it is still higher than that. Which sucks, since all the available retraining and masking techniques assume you must be able to hear within the range of your T.

VectorLock 9y ago

Your friend had something like an AliveCor Kardia and you could hear it?

mschuster91 9y ago

Male, 25, can hear cheap phone chargers and on my crappy old Windows laptop I don't need the CPU monitor to see if it is loaded - just gotta listen and I hear the whine of the CPU voltage regulators. Even worse are old-ish laptop chargers in quiet environments.