whaaaaaaat?
23, and I can hear it. Moreover, I can’t imagine how anyone could NOT hear it. It’s not at the absolute upper edge of my hearing.
I considered being a teacher at one point. Any kid who played that in my class would have their cell phone crammed down his or her throat. (And, yes, that attitude is why I decided not to be a teacher).
38, and I can hear it clearly. I also hear florescent lights and muted TV’s like some others here, which make a similar sound.
Interestingly, I’m pretty sure that I am starting to lose my hearing – I have trouble with conversations in loud areas, for example. But apparently I haven’t lost this particular range, yet, or else the two computer’s I tried it on are mutating it unto something I can hear. Both sets of headphones together probably didn’t cost $25.
I had no trouble hearing the first sound on my laptop’s crappy speakers. I couldn’t hear anything but background noise on the second one, so I turned the speakers all the way up. I could barely perceive a Vague Disturbance In The Force[sup]TM[/sup] at the upper limit of my hearing (which I suspect has been going for a few years now, though I’m only 27). My wife, also 27, said she didn’t hear anything but the background noise.
However, my 10-year-old daughter clapped her hands over her ears and said “What IS that? Turn it off! It hurts! It’s hurting my ears really bad!” the instant I turned the volume up.
The odd thing was, my 8-year-old said she couldn’t hear it from where she was. I had her walk over to where the 10-year-old stood, and suddenly she clapped her hands over her ears and shrieked and said “OW!” too. So it would appear the sound is highly directional.
Incidentally, I can usually hear the TV noise too.
Check this out… even if you can’t hear it, at least you can see it:
Ringtone image: That bright 15000 Hz line is the steady tone.
Mosquito image: That wavy 15000-17000 Hz line is the pulsing sound. The stuff below that is the ambient background noise.
Is anyone here able to hear one but not the other?
I can hear the clean tone clearly – are we sure that it’s as high as 15kHz it doesn’t sound that high to me* – I can’t hear anything but the street noise in the other clip.
Having spent my ealy twentys in (loud) rock bands and my later twentys running (even louder) sound systems I’d be astonished if I could still hear 15kHz.
FWIW I’m the wrong side of forty.
*guess who used to play the guess the frequency game when EQ-ing stage monitors.
On why not to put the phone on vibrate:
Today covered this story yesterday. Matt Lauer said, and I agree, that you CAN hear a phone vibrate. I would guess that more people can hear a phone vibrate over the mosquito ring.
21, and I hear them both fine. I thought they’d be higher, after reading what other people have said. Reply, what program are you using to do that? The Firestorm and Scope visualisations on WMP fascinate me, and I’d love to see what certain songs look like on there.
Another question- what frequencies are television, moniter and fluorescent lights at? I can hear all of those pretty well.
I would be interested to know what frequencies those are too-- I’m ALWAYS the only one in the room who can hear them (there must be something about Nashville that causes people to lose their hearing. Possibly Moon Pies.)
The ringtone sounds about 15kHz to me. At work I can hear the 18kHz tone the noise generator makes, but not the 20kHz one. 36, for the record. The notion of flooding public areas with high-pitched noise pollution to deter loitering teens just pisses me off.
I could hear the solid tone mp3 just fine. The one with background noise was an oddity. I played it on my laptop with crappy speakers, and could barely hear it when I cranked up the volume. I figured those speakers probably weren’t very good at producing such high-pitched sounds, so I played it on my desktop with THX speakers and couldn’t hear the sound at all! I cranked it up far louder than the laptop would go too. I don’t know if the laptop speakers were altering the sound and playing at a lower pitch or if my high-priced desktop speakers were unable to duplicate it or if it was a software issue. I then used the tone generator with Xmms on my desktop to produce sounds at 12,250, 16,125, and 20,000 Hz seperately. I could hear all three, but the last two didn’t sound like clean tones, as if they weren’t being produced accurately. So I don’t know. I’d want to hear it from some professional level equipment before I say for sure if I can hear it. I did ride some loud dirt bikes in my teenage years though so I know my hearing isn’t perfect. I’m 25 by the way.
Change that. After shutting down my laptop, which was making a lot of noise from the cooling fan, I can hear the sound played from my desktop, but it was still more obvious played on the laptop. It seems to flicker right at the edge of my hearing on the desktop. It does make my head hurt a little too. So do note that it matters which speakers are playing the sound.
Hear it in the steady link, not the link with background noise. 46.
So why don’t they use the vibrate feature, and get off my lawn!
I’m pushin’ 40, and I could just barely hear the first tone (which made my head hurt) and couldn’t hear the second one at all.
My brother (who’s 20) has the mosquito ringtone, and he said that yeah, pretty much all the kids use it these days while in class. (Ha! I love it when something turns out not to be an urban legend.)
I can hear them too!
I honestly thought I was the only person on earth who could hear the noise TVs and monitors make when they’re on… for years, whenever I’ve told people I can hear the TV (even when it’s muted), they all thought I was mad. 
And yes, I can hear that ringtone loud and clear, too (I’m 24). It’s very irritating, and any business that used the Mosquito noisemaker would find themselves without my business as a result…
I already posted this in another thread about getting older. Why don’t you all pay more attention to me???
I showed my HS students, and some of them were downright annoyed by the sound. I could hear it some, and the 45-year old teacher next door couldn’t hear it at all. It might also be because of all the gun firing he did in the service.