Pretty much exactly this response, except that it reminds me of the sound of a TV or monitor with no input, and I’m about 6 months shy of 28. I hate that noise.
Jeez, that’s ***exactly ***what I heard. Except that it sounded more like a security guard than a construction worker.
And I’m 60.
I was born deaf, and currently use a cochlear implant. Thought I would listen to the soundfile in the OP and see what happens. Testing in the soundbooth with the cochlear implant on indicates that I can hear sounds up to 8000 Hz at a threshold level of about 30 to 35 dB. (This kind of testing normally does not go above 8 kHz, so I don’t know how well this device responds to frequencies higher than that.)
The experience of listening to this was…interesting.
With a pair of inexpensive Panasonic stereo headphones, and the volume turned to the maximum, I don’t hear anything except some generic background sounds, like clacking, faint voices, and traffic.
But when I switched the speech processor of the cochlear implant to the “telecoil” setting, a pulsing sound became very audible. Sounds like water being shushed through a plastic tube. Even with the volume set to only half-way, it’s pretty noticeable. But I only hear it with the telecoil, which is designed to pick up electromagnetic emissions coming from the telephone headset (and it works a treat with headphones, too).
But the pulsing sound is the only thing I hear with the telecoil. Bizzarely, the other sounds that I hear when using the speech processor in the standard microphone configuration is absent when I listen to this file with the telecoil setting. Except for a weird double clacking sound that occurs at the 12 second mark.
After about five straight minutes of listening to this pulsing sound, I began experiencing an unpleasant physical sensation. The cochlear implant can sometimes cause facial nerve stimulation if it is not mapped properly, and when I began using it, it indeed have to be reprogrammed in order to resolve painful stimulation of the surrounding nerves and tissue whenever I was in the presence of a moderately intense high frequency sound. It’s like touching your tongue onto the contacts on a 9-volt battery, except it’s under your skin and traveling along the nerves. The sensation I experienced after listening to this soundfile was not exactly like that, but it was no less unpleasant.
Yes - 22
my dog definately heard it- 2 years
Played it at a low volume on decent computer speakers, and holy fuck that’s an annoying sound, and it indeed caused me pain, dammit. That was a mean thing to link to.
I’m 23.
I’m 19, and I couldn’t hear it unless I turned the volume as far up as I could. The other one I didn’t have to turn up quite as loud.
I tried going in and turning on the tv without turning on the cable, and didn’t I heard anything, but I kept trying and I think I may have heard it. It was more like I felt it though; I could barely hear it. I kept thinking maybe it was in my head, but I turned it off and didn’t feel it anymore.
It could be the power of suggestion. Before people starting coming in with more detailed analyses, I thought maybe the original sound file was a test of that.
53 years old here. I didn’t hear it at all the first time I listened with my low end Sennheiser HD 433 headphones, no matter how loud I set the volume. I opened the file in a sound editing program and ran a normalization on it, setting the peak levels to -6db (the high frequency signal waveform was visually obvious). Then it was immediately noticable at about 1/2 volume. Next I tried my good headphones, a pair of Grado SR80’s and I could hear the sound in the original mp3 file at about 1/4 volume. So as others have said, a lot depends on your equipment, and not just what’s inside your ears. I can still hear the whistle that some flourescent lights make, and would find this sound extremely annoying if I was subjected to it for any length of time.
Yes, I heard a high-pitched pulsing. I am 20.
Heard it loud and clear. Frequency analyzer shows a very annoying 16kHz tone oscillating to -20db. I can ignore it if necessary, but if given the choice of hanging out in front of a store that’s broadcasting this and one that’s not, I’d pick the non-broadcasting one.
I’m 23, playback on an E-MU 1820M / Sennheiser HD650s.