Can you hear this now? (Yet another poll)

I listened to it again. All I could hear was 3 clicks by the time the recording finished. :(

Does it matter that when it is completely silent, I have a low ringing in my ears?

Hmmmm... I don't hear the clicks at all -- I can only hear the second tone. I can't explain what you're hearing, Mamagaea. What we need is an expert on audition. Maybe we can get Shelley from Retrospectacle over here.

I heard both and I'm 38. But I can't hear it as that loud. Whereas when in my 20s I could hear those annoying flyback transformers in cheap monitors pretty loudly. (Made going to the library a horrible experience)

oh yeah, I have always been able to hear this stuff. I am 36 now. My husband can hear it too, and his only one day younger than me. It is pretty loud too. wheeeeeee. I used to be a teacher too, oh boy would I have laid into a kid that tried to get away with that!

I heard both and over 50. Yes, cheap transformers in TV sets (being old enough to remember 405 line TV) were pretty painful.

I'm 25 and I heard the 17kHz one, but only barely. I tested it in a room with three other people who were 20, 23, and 25. The 25 year old could hear the 14kHz sound but not the 17kHz sound. The 20 year old could hear neither. The 23 year old could hear both loud and clear. He didn't even know I was doing the test and he said, "what's that sound?"

Yeah, I heard it. Painful tone, actually. I definitely think there's truth to the science behind the ringtones, though - I can be in a room with a high pitch buzzing from a tv that's on a vacant channel or a thermostat and be going nuts, but older folks in the room won't hear it. I'm 28, by the way.

Wow, that 17kHz was right on the border of my range. I played it 4 times and heard it the first and last but not the middle two times. I could place a pitch on it though (I'd need a piano to tell you what), so I gave myself a 'yes.' 22 y/o

25, and I can hear both loud and clear.

Good God, that's painful. Like a dentist's drill.

I have responded to this post here:
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2006/06/a_17khz_pain_in_the_ear…

At 51 I can't hear either bit, just the small clicks as the clip changes. My 15 year-old son can hear only the second bit. Probably rotted out his ears already from all that danged heavy metal music he listens to (Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, oh, and Queen.)

Could hear both, but not loudly. The second one was actually slightly painful. I'm 34.

OK, first test was on my Powermac, but switched to a PC with real speakers and I am vindicated: my ancient ears can hear both! Of course, not only have I screwed up the poll, but I've probably now burned out the last few neurons wired to reach that range. That is one nasty noise!

Hm, something wrong with either the encoding or my sound hardware - I hear both these much clearer than I did the NYTimes one, and both are subjectively lower in frequency. In addition, I feel the first tone is _lower_ than the second one. Either my hearing has improved dramatically the past couple of days, or I'm listening to some lower-frequency ringing or interference pattern, not the actual sounds.

It is worth noting that I get the same sound with the built-in speaker and with headphones; and I get it with two different mp3 player applications, using different decoders. I'd say there was something wrong with the mp3 encoding, but then other people would get this result too. My data point from this test has probably no validity though, no matter what the reason.

1st tone NO (some lower harmonic heard?)
2nd tone: yes
My Age 57
So I dont need expensive tweeters in my hifi.

what's odd is that i heard the first tone the first time; i had put one headphone on my left ear. it was very soft, and i could barely hear it. i tried it again, many times, with both headphones (and alternately on my right ear only), but could not hear a thing from the first tone.

age: 17.

I can hear this, too, and it still hurts my ears. I'd like to point out something that seems to not be getting any thought as well.

I basically have no sense of smell (I think this has to do with an incident in childhood where I sniffed too much black pepper, haha!), and it appears, as is the nature of our amazing senses, that I've received a rather abnormal boost to my hearing ability. So while age might have a majority to do with whether one hears this or not, it should also be noted that those of us who have a heightened sense because we're lacking in another sense may be unfairly able to hear better, no matter age.

Both; the second being quite painful.
32.

Heard both just fine; I'm 38. They were annoying but not uncomfortable.

Interesting - I heard the beginning of the first tone, but after a second it became pretty much inaudible, sort of like how you get used to a smell after a little while and don't smell it anymore. Though I did hear when it stopped. Same thing happened trying it a few more times. No problem hearing the lower tone. (I'm 29.)

I'm 34, and I also have some sort of ringing in my ears when the first tone is played, although I can't actually "hear" the tone. And like Jennifer, I heard the first tone begin and then it disappeared (although it still caused my head some discomfort); when I played the sample a second and then a third time, I could no longer hear the sound start up.

Holly ****. THAT HURT! I can hear both extremely clearly (male, 25 years old, almost 26), and I can't be anywhere near wand-type sonicators in a lab when they're in use. I have to wear protective ear covering (like you'd see at an airport) or be on the other side of a concrete wall.

Ouchy...

I am 62 years old and I can hear both so loudly and clearly that I am wondering if (like Janne at 8:57 pm) my computer/speakers is/are somehow producing a lower frequency sound.

Josh said:
Yeah, I heard it. Painful tone, actually. I definitely think there's truth to the science behind the ringtones, though - I can be in a room with a high pitch buzzing from a tv that's on a vacant channel or a thermostat and be going nuts, but older folks in the room won't hear it. I'm 28, by the way.
-----------------------

I hear those high-pitched sounds everywhere, sometimes it almost drives me out of the room.
I could hear both tones, thought I didn't get the first one every time - the second was especially painful. (I'm 18)

...I feel the first tone is _lower_ than the second one

I get the same impression as Janne. I'm listening with headphones and using common gnu/linux decoders, and a pricey soundcard (so I certainly hope that that's not the cause...).

What are we (Janne and I) hearing?

The 14 sounded like a buzzing or humming sound to me,,, the second and the NYT sound gave me a sick , car sick feeling(what the heck does that mean) and I could hear it very well (I am almost 40)... all three of the sounds were heard by my dogs who were asleep 2 floors away

Is anyone else angry that they couldn't hear the first one? I know it really doesn't matter, but I'm disappointed that there are sounds in the world that I just can't hear. :)

I can, however, hear the squeal of CRT televisions, so I was a bit surprised that I couldn't hear the tone. Maybe it's just my sound card. Yeah, that's it, my sound card. Mmm hmm.

I'm 13 and I hear both really well... The 15 kHz was a little harder to hear than these two. I have a headache. My dad could hear both the second time I played them but all my mom heard were clicks. Presumably the click that sounds when each of the Frequencies stop.

I just wish I could get it to play on my cell phone!
XD

!~RisaChan~!

Oh yeah, those television noises are very annoying. I always know if someone's watching TV when I'm near! :)

I can usually hear them a good amount of feet away.

!~RisaChan~!

OH MY! My head... oh, it hurts... I just noticed that my headphones were STILL plugged in when I've been playing it!
I nearly died when I actually put them on... (over dramatic, here.)
My vision is starting to mess up alittle. I can feel it. Maybe it's just my headache. I'm on the internet too often... (Laugh)

I think that if you were often exposed to high frequency sounds when little you wouldn't hear it as well. So it doesn't matter so much how old you are, but what you've heard... But it's likely you won't hear as well anyways because you've lived longer and you've probably heard more high pitched sounds than little kids.

My smallest miniature Dauchshund perks her ears when she hears it, but my other two Dauchshunds don't seem to care...

Go away headache, go away....

!~RisaChan~!

On my Mac, I don't hear the first sound at all. On my Windows machine, I do hear something but it sounds distorted and mostly lower than the second sound. I'm 37.

The trouble is that 17 kHz is awfully close to the 22 kHz theoretical limit for a 44 kHz sampling rate. It could very well be that the Mac hard/software filters out the 17 kHz sound and/or the PC distorts it by not properly filtering.

It would be great if someone could make a WAV or AIFF file at 88 or 96 kHz to get around this and any potential trouble caused by MP3 compression.

While many people are hearing these noises, I don't think you can conclude anything from running a test like this on so many different computers using so many different sound cards and volume levels.

First Test:
I can hear the first tone in my left ear only, and it's faint. I can hear the second tone in both ears and it's close to deafening. (Male, 24, main system volume at ~5%, WMP's volume at 50%)

I change computers, switch the volume levels...I can hear both fine, then I switch the settings a bit, and I can't hear either.

I ran this test with 10 other employees at my office, and was able to get all 10 to hear both sounds by altering my sound settings. (Age ranges 17-66). The biggest factor was the different levels of volume and how far you go to 'max' the volume for your speakers/card. I never altered the file itself in any way, and I always loaded it via this web page.

With maxed volume on both my system and wmp, everyone heard both sounds using 2 separate computers.

Great test, but it's very inaccurate at testing who can and can't hear this, due to the different equipment used and the volume used.

I am 56 and can hear both sounds.....

Huh? Can you speak up? Oh! You want to know if loud music can hurt your ears. Are you asking because you like to put on your headphones and crank up the volume of your favorite CD? Maybe your mom or dad has told you, "Turn that down before you go deaf!" WBR LeoP

Huh? Can you speak up? Oh! You want to know if loud music can hurt your ears. Are you asking because you like to put on your headphones and crank up the volume of your favorite CD? Maybe your mom or dad has told you, "Turn that down before you go deaf!" WBR LeoP

I believe what most people here are hearing is the underlying 'hiss' that accompanies the samples and not the actual tones themselves.

First, the samples should have been trimmed of any 'clipping', the clicking that you hear at the beginning and end of both samples. Second, there should be an acknowledgment of hardware and software artifacts in the playback.

I'm 34. I can hear both tones separate from the hiss. Though, the first (17kHz) is hard to hear, where the second (14kHz) was very audible, and even nauseating.

Now I don't know if this is just me, but this reminds me of another sound. I am a 24 year old male who is able to hear both noises. The sound that is emmited at the low frequency sounds very similar to a tv warming up. The sound of which I'm speaking follows the inital power up of a tube style tv; after the initial explosion of noise given off by the power up. This pitch one might believe would be even higher or lower, whichever is less audible to the masses. My knowledge is quite limited on the subject of noise wave length. This would be an interesting topic to investigate in a controlled environment!

QUESTION: How do you properly take the test? Do you need to turn the speaker volume all the way down? (as in put it in the lowest setting)and then press play?

OR do you set the speaker volume like how you would normally set it, and then press play?

I just turned 20 and if I turn up my speakers a little bit, I can hear both really well. But if I turn my speakers all the way down, I can only hear the second one.

I really hope I'm not going deaf. Turning 20 sucks. My psych prof also told us when people are about 20, their memory starts declining.

Wow, i heard both loud and clear, am 18, but jeez, the first tone has given me a headache!!! the second tone i can hear perfect anyway but the first tone i can hear dead correct but boy does it hurt

HEy im not sure if its just my computer or not.. but i cannot hear the first tone on my computer. but if i put the sound onto my cell phone and play it i hear both deafeningly clear.. just a thought for some people that your sound card/speakers mite not b able 2 handle that pitch

I basically have no sense of smell (I think this has to do with an incident in childhood where I sniffed too much black pepper, haha!), and it appears, as is the nature of our amazing senses, that I've received a rather abnormal boost to my hearing ability. So while age might have a majority to do with whether one hears this or not, it should also be noted that those of us who
http://www.estetiks.com/ have a heightened sense because we're lacking in another sense may be unfairly able to hear better, no matter age.

I heard both tones clearly and quite painfully i may add. Had the volume over 50%!
age 38.

thank you very much. succesful article