Noise, what noise?

[asterroc]

Go check this out. After the ad finishes playing, turn up your speakers when they say "But now a new genre has emerged," and when there's a girl's knees in torn jeans with a really high-tech cellphone on them. You'll hear (or not) the sound when the cellphone on the table is flashing and before the announcer comments on whether you heard it or not.

[Poll #747684]

I actually did hear it, unlike the one that the_xtina linked to a while ago (anyone remember that link?), but also I was on a laptop then and I have good speakers now (hence wanting the link).

Comments

[rosefox]

Wow, that made my head hurt a lot.

Same laptop, volume turned all the way up, as before.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

I can hear both that one and the other one that's been going around. However, I don't find them more than mildly annoying. I must be missing some of the nastier high-frequency parts of the sound or something.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to break you. It didn't hurt me so it didn't occur to me it might someone else. :-\

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Or else different people just react differently. Why *is* it that some people cringe at chalk on a board and others don't?

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

I don't have a player for whatever format that is. Or I have the source adblocked. But a couple days ago they had the same story in the NYT and I could hear their sample as a high whine.

I am a 41 year old man.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Fingernails on the chalkboard didn't bother me when I was younger, but now it makes me wince, though not to the degree that some people seem to react to it.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

There are two versions of it going around. One is the whine, and the other is sort of a cyclic buzzing, which is the one that was in this sample.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't be surprised if it's adblocked. It's Windows Media Player.

It sounds kinda like a "whoo-whit, whoo-whit" or the noise that many B-movies attribute to alien ray guns or Star Trek transporters.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

I have heard the whine. Is there a good sample of the cyclic buzz that isn't attached to a video file?

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I won't autorun a WMP file. Don't trust MS formats that much. I'd have do download and run.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Do you have a link for the whine again? The last time I tried to listen to it was on my laptop, and this computer's got better speakers so I'm curious whether it's just that.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

It is in This article. Or here is a link directly to the audio file.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Okay, now THAT one is just horrible. I see what rosefox meant when she said it hurt. I have to conclude that my laptop speakers were insufficient to play it when I'd seen it before. (Or else there's a few at a few different frequences and the other one actually was above my range.) Ow, I need some advil now.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Some people aren't hearing in too because MP3 files often cut out high and low tones to save space. Especially MP3s of spoken words, such as podcasts.

[iresprite.livejournal.com]

Mm. I could definitely hear it. I'm surprised, since I thought I did quite a bit of damage to my hearing in my yute.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I'm also surprised that I heard both b/c I keep feeling like I'm losing my hearing - if there's a lot of background noise or the person's facing the other way I sometimes have difficulty hearing them.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Our hearing is sometimes more robust then they think. I should not be able to hear 60Hz having lived with electronic equipment near my head since I was a teen. But I can still hear when an appliance is on.

[rosefox]

It's okay. At least now we know it works. *)

[rosefox]

Interestingly, I didn't hear the whine (the one the_xtina linked to, I think).

[rosefox]

...okay, I could hear it this time, when I turned the speakers up. (I'm at work now, with better speakers and less background noise than my noisy-fan laptop.) It didn't hurt nearly as much as the cyclic one, though.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I certainly hope so. Did the doctors spay fix you?

[rosefox]

Heh. Not yet. Further updates this evening.