I can hear it. My ears rang for a bit after, also.
F, 48 (49 in a few weeks :eek: )
Husband, 37, former heavy metal musician and sufferer of medically serious ear infections as a child could also hear it.
I’m 25 and I heard it quite clearly. Didn’t really find it annoying, but it did make my ears ring a little for a few minutes afterward. Also, I’ve got a nosebleed. And I think I just wet myself.
51, never abused my ears, have great hearing according to my doctor…can’t hear it at all. My 25-year-old son, who has blasted music thru headphones for years…heard it just fine (so I played it a few more times just to annoy him)
Wow, that was unpleasant. In a quiet room, it was very clear, but the second time, with background noise (dishwasher, furnace, and TV) I thought it was more like a vibrating sensation in my cheekbones and jaw than an actual sound.
I’m 44, and not bright enough to click on an annoying link only once.
41 and I can hear it - better in my left ear than my right.
- I can’t really hear it, but I was definitely able to perceive it as a very unpleasant vibration.
It got my cat’s attention very quickly.
One caveat: I did not hear it in the link, but downloaded the file and played it. Is that cheating?
I suspect the link in the OP might not be what its cracked up to be.
I just checkd out the wensite provided by Magiver and I topped out at being able to hear the 16khz one.
Whoa.
That was waaaayyyyy louder than I remember it being last time we did this! Good god. Ow! I could hear it all the way in the kitchen, which is the other side of the apartment… 60 feet or so if you’re going around the walls that are in the way, or about 25 feet in a straight line through the walls.
And yeah, over 30.
Yeah I’m really not buying the idea that there’s a frequency only people under 30 can hear. For the record though I’m 23 and can hear it loud and clear.
Yeah, I can. Some kid in my class had his phone on this the other day. They all looked shocked when I told him to turn it off. “You can hear it?!” Yeah, idiot, I’m 22, my upper-range hearing is fine. Also, even if I didn’t, all the commotion and whispering amongst your friends would have been a good enough tip-off.
51 here. I can only hear a minimal buzz, and only with my speakers turned up to the max.
This is a well-known, well-documented medical finding, hearing loss in this range once one gets older.
Buy it, although the tone linked in the OP is a bad example. There’s another website I was at (possibly the other one linked up-thread) some time ago, and there was definitely a frequency point at which I was no longer able to hear the tones, but Whatsit Jr., age 6, definitely was.
It’s more the crisp and clean “age 30” cutoff that I don’t believe, not that upper-range hearing loss can occur with age. But I find it far more likely that you are going to get data points all over the map, such as a 45-year old who hears it fine and a 25-year old with hearing issues who has trouble hearing it, etc.
I’m hoping it’s because I’m playing it on cheap headphones at work, but I hear 3 different things at once here:
- A light high frequency tone, similar to the ones on the hearing test when I was in the Navy. I gather this is the tone in question, and I barely hear it, and don’t find it annoying at all.
- A “tape hiss” sound, for those of you old enough to remember cassette tapes.
- A “Chirping” sound I usually hear on MP3’s with a low bit rate.
I’m 41, with enough hearing loss to notice slight tinnitus when I’m in a quiet room.
ETA: But it does seem to be making my ears ring a few minutes after listening.
OUCH! That hurt.
Female, 38.
One cat in my office cared, the other kept sleeping.
I’m 52, and I heard it.
24, yes I heard it, it hurt and my ears are ringing as well.