I downloaded the mp3 and used my Sound Forge software to do an FFT analysis of it. The frequency is 15 kHz (actually 14994 Hz), not 17 kHz. I’m 49 and can hear it, although I doubt I would hear it in less than ideal conditions (e.g. in a classroom while standing more than 20 feet away from the source). The signal is at the upper end of my frequency range.
Quicktime (one of the plug-ins my browser uses) doesn’t play this clip accurately on my system. It produces a sound at about 1800 Hz. None of my other audio apps (such as Winamp and Sound Forge) does this.
45, and I can’t say that I hear it, but I get a VERY slight tinnitis sound in my left ear when it’s played with my speakers turned up. I would never hear it in an environment with any appreciable background noise. Cool.
The little bastards have got one over on us fogies, but I appreciate the way they’ve done it.
Someone asked why not just set it to vibrate, I can hear many phones set on vibrate, it’s not loud, but usually I can pick that up. This sound I can hear too, but it is hard to pinpoint direction.
I just downloaded the original mosquito sound. Sound Forge wasn’t able to open it directly - I used Winamp to convert the mp3 to a 44.1 kHz 16-bit wav file. The FFT analysis in Sound Forge shows three rather broad peaks: one centered at about 12250 Hz, one at about 16125 Hz, and a much smaller one at about 20000 Hz. I can hear the 12 kHz peak quite clearly when I play the clip in Sound Forge. For some reason I can’t hear it when I play either the original mp3 or the wav file in Winamp.
Unless my headphones are not reproducing the sound, I cannot hear it. Which is annoying, because I definitely remember hearing TV horizontal-scanning signals, around the same frequency, when I was in electronics school.
When I was in high school (almost 15 years ago) I always knew before I walked into a classroom if a video was going to be shown. I haven’t noticed that “TV hum” in many years, but happily, I was able to quite clearly hear the ringtone.
53 here. I “felt” the mosquito one, more than actually hearing it. It felt like little tiny needles pricking at the internal side of my eardrums. I heard the straight tone clearly, but I admit that I was focusing on trying to hear it. I doubt I would notice it during normal day to day activities.
I also seem to have developed a slight headache since listneing to the tones.
I could hear both noises, and now that this topic has reminded me of the noise this computer makes, I’ll have to step away from it for a while. But it still might be an effective way to communicate. It’d be even harder to hear the ‘mosquito’ noise over the ambient sound in a classroom, with people writing and moving their desks and things, if you weren’t listening for it.
I could hear the tone by itself, but not the one with the ambient background noise. Then again I’m at work with crappy desktop speakers. The one I did hear I heard quite clearly though – but then I’m irritated by the screen whine on my smartphone, so I presume my hearing’s okay. (Mid-30s here) I don’t know if I’d notice it in a general setting, but I have a tendancy to be instantly drawn to sounds that are out of the ordinary so that sound might just tweak my ear even in a classroom. It’s certainly irritating enough – actually, it reminds me of the sound advertisers associate with the feeling of a migrane when peddling remedies for them.
What a coincidence. Just this morning my parents called me into the living room and asked me if I could hear anything. At this point I was already cringing from the pain in my ears. My dad had found the story, and apparently he didn’t believe it so he’d called me in to see if it was true. Even after I told them I could hear the sound loud and clear, my parents were incredulous - apparently they couldn’t hear a thing.
The BBC one is not as annoying but still very much evident.
I can hear the television thing too from the other side of the house, although it’s more of a feeling than an actual sound.
I’m 47 (and 1/2), and I could hear both sounds clearly, and with both ears, which is strange, because since childhood I was never able to locate a cricket by it’s sound. It was many years later I realized that I could only hear their chirps with my left ear. I just thought that it was neat that I could avoid listening to the noisy bastards at night by rolling over.
I predict the dog-whistle ringtone will have it’s 15 seconds of fame (may have already happened) and fade out. So what if the young can hear it better than us decrepit old geezers. It’s freaking annoying!
Ugh…I’m 42, and that ringtone hurts my ears! It does sound a lot like TV or monitor noise. I can hear high frequency sounds pretty well, especially with my right ear. I could not pick it out of the backgound noise sample nearly as well, but it still made my right ear hurt, and left me with a general sense of unease.
I betcha my husband will not be able to hear it. For example, I notice when our vehicles are making funny noises long before he can. “Don’t you hear that, honey? It’s driving me batshit crazy!” I will try the ringtone on him when he gets home.
If a mosquito is buzzing around in our bedroom at night, I cannot sleep till I have smacked her into oblivion. I can hear a mosquito across the room, and I know she will dine on me, rather than my spouse, nearly every time, if I don’t get her before she gets me. I find them by the sound they make, because I am quite nearsighted without my glasses on.
