Once in awhile I will be going along doing whatever, then all of a sudden I will hear what seems to be a very high pitched whine/drone, which will then typically fade after about 10 seconds or so. The question then becomes is it from something external, or some temporary fault of my interior wiring or something? If it is external what causes such a sound, and if it is internal what provides the illusion of a high-pitched whine to just come out of nowhere?
Has anyone else had such experiences or am I the only one?
You might want to get checked for tinnitus. I used to occasionally hear that high-pitched whine, very rarely, but in the last ten years or so I’ve gotten full-blown tinnitus.
A) Some electronic device with big capacitors that are towards the end of their life and are starting to whine sporadically. Can be a TV, CRT monitor, old oscilloscope, something like that.
It could be tinnitus. I’ve had very mild tinnitus my whole life. In a quiet environment, I hear a constant, slight, high-pitched ringing. Most of the time I don’t pay attention to it and forget it’s there. Wikipedia has an extensive article on tinnitus.
On the other hand, power supplies will sometimes put out a high-pitched sound; the one in the computer I’m typing this on does so intermittently. My TV also does this. A repairman who took a look at it said it comes from the winding at the back of the CRT. He was able to make it stop for a brief time, but it comes back every now and then.
I’ve always heard an extremely high pitched tone in my ear from time to time. Now that it has been brought up I can hear it again. It is so high pitched that it is barely perceptible. Yet other times, out of nowhere, I can hear something suddenly start up in the same range. I can never get a location on it so I think it must be internal. I guess it must be tinitus, but I can remember it from when I was very young. It’s so high pitched though that it’s just not noticable unless I think about it.
Analogue CRTs give out a high-pitched whine. On NTSC CRT TVs it’s at 15.734 kHz. I remember hearing it when I was a kid, and even in electronics school, but a couple of years ago I was in the audio booth at LIFT in Toronto and everyone was saying that there was a whine in one specific spot–localisable to mere centimetres–behind the big old CRT monitor, and I couldn’t hear it.
Does this only happen when you are in one location, such as your home, or a certain room in your home? This would be of the greatest important in figuring it out.
I was under the impression that tinnitus is ever-present.
What the OP is describing is what I also experience; maybe once every 3 months or so; it’s as if someone suddenly turned up the volume on a very high frequency tone and then slowly reduced it until it was no longer audible.
Precisely BwanaBob, and like Christopher I’ve heard this off and on my whole life, ever since I was a kid. It happened last week during work, but really there’s no specific location where it regularly pops up.
A lot of tinnitus, like my own, is continuous and probably permanent. However, some tinnitus is temporary. Some drugs cause it. A period of loud noise, like a concert, will cause a day or two of tinnitus.
Since everytime I read this thread I can hear it, I can only assume that it is always there, but easily blocked out for me. Sometimes though a tone starts thats a little lower in pitch (but still very high) and much louder. I also suspect this is internal. I suspect the little hairs in the ear that measure high pitched sound are very easily damaged. Sometimes for one reason or another one of them gets an “itch” and causes the louder slightly lower pitch for me.
I also wonder if that, with this wonderful electronic world we live in, we aren’t unknowingly being exposed to loud high-pitched noises that might cause an increase in tinitus cases. Of course blasting the rock music doesn’t help, but I like my music loud.
