Heh. I clicked, got nothing, turned the speakers right up, still nothing, thought ‘That’s weird. Last time I tried this it was clear as day and that was only a couple of years back.’ Then I read the first post in this thread, downloaded the mp3 and yelled ‘OW!!’
So for anyone who can’t hear it on the linked website, try the mp3. And turn your speakers down first.
In the youtube video, I lose it somewhere right after 16kHz.
I’m 42.
Male, 46. I could plainly hear a faint whine over a staticy background.
Also tried listening to the 20hz-20khz Youtube frequency sweep and like some others I could hear just fine up to 8000hz where it seemed to drop out, then higher tones than that I could hear up until about 13,000hz where it became inaudible all the way up to 20,000hz.
I’m 47. I could hear it plain as day and it felt like someone was sticking a thin needle into my ears.
I heard it clearly and it sounded really annoying. I’m 57.
You and I are the same age. For me it cut in at 45 Hz and cut out at 12.5 kHz (i.e. 12,500 Hz).
If I turn my speakers up as high as they go, I can hear it. I’m 77.
The Youtube test, I can hear from 40 to 8,000.
I’m 69 and I heard it, just barely.
Well, that’s kind of why I was interested in who could and couldn’t hear it. The poll is pretty unscientific, but I understand it as a fair refutation of the proposition that the noise, as described, exists.
I’m not sure what you mean by “device,” unless you mean something dedicated to generating the noise. It certainly is possible to make a device that generates a high whine at a loud volume.
I’m 57, and it wasn’t ear-splitting, but I could hear it clearly - somewhere between “drives me nuts” and “faint whine”. It sounds like an A tone (a multiple of 440 Hz).
I find the test with the full range more useful.
At normal computer volume I can hear from 120-11,500
With volume at maximum I can hear from 40-12,500
I seem to be average for my age or else time to clear out the earwax.
I’m 36 and heard it clearly. My wife is 37 and could barely hear it. It was rather annoying for me, but not painful.
Of course I cranked the speakers. “Ain’t got no headphones.” I was testing the 2 extreme points where perception § cuts in and cuts out. Irrelevant to that is volume (V) settings, because neither delta V nor delta P is being tested, only whether P > 0.
Actually, it’s not pseudoscience. If they had stated on the web page that it can ONLY be heard by people under 25 then that would have been pseudoscience. But they say it can GENERALLY only be heard by people under 25, which is basically true.
Our hearing comes from what are called “hair cells” inside of our ears. Over time, some of those cells tend to die off, either from being damaged or just from aging. Hair cells in mammals (not just humans) don’t regenerate, so when they die, they are gone for good. So overall, your hearing ability tends to decrease as you get older.
FYI - age related hearing loss is called presbycusis if you want to google for more info.
You tend to lose hearing at the top end frequency-wise (and a bit at the bottom end) first, so in general, frequencies above 15 kHz or so can be heard by most people under the age of 20 and can’t be heard by people over 30.
But again, the important thing is we’re talking about IN GENERAL.
Some people are born with exceptional hearing, and can even hear tones above 20 kHz. Some people are born with lousy hearing and never hear anything above 15 kHz. There are some people who can hear up to maybe 23 or 24 kHz when they are young, and their hearing degrades to maybe 20 kHz or so when they are older. They’ll be able to hear the annoying teenager mosquito tones. There are some teenagers who can’t hear the mosquito tones and never will.
So there is no tone that ALL people under the age of 25 can hear and people above 25 can’t, but anything in the 15 to 20 kHz range is going to be out of the hearing range of most people over 30.
These online tests assume that your computer and speakers or headphones are capable of faithfully reproducing these tones. That’s not true in a lot of cases. Some folks who aren’t hearing the tones might not be hearing them because their speakers or headphones aren’t reproducing them properly.
Age 55 and heard every tone as plain as day. I did not find any of the tones irritating, although I would not want to hear any of them for a long time.
On this youtube video, I quit hearing the tone at about 12,800 hz.
I’m 75, and hear an annoying whine with the volume 3 or 4 marks short of max. It sounds a bit like one of my very occasional tinnitus noises (use ear protection, you youngsters!)
My husband has some kind of sound processing problem. He has excellent hearing when he is presented with pure tones, but he has a lot of difficulty following a conversation when there is background noise, or separating two different conversations. He also found foreign language studies very challenging.
He was in an accident when he was a child. He had a concussion, and also one of his outer ears was partly burned off and had to be recreated, so who knows what kind of neurological damage he might have.
Hubby and I are both 31, and it’s an audible, annoying sound.
I’m 44. Ambient noise where I’m sitting now is, according to a little sound level meter on my phone, about 50 dB. I have to get the tone up to around 85-90 dB to hear it. On the continuous spectrum, at the same level, I can get up to about 13.5 kHz.
I could hear it over my headset, but the computer fan easily covered it when I tried over the speaker.
I’m 46.
I couldn’t hear the first three tones, then heard everything clearly up through 10,000Hz. 15k … nothing at all.
50 years old here.