Nell found the bullets
Monday, November 26th, 2007 by Nestor
Slightly out of character pistol packin’ Nell…
Did you hear about that high pitched sound apparently only teenagers and people under 30 can hear due to age related hearing loss? At first they used to use it in stores to drive away teenage louts from their doorstep, but eventually the kids figured it out and started using it as a ringtone they could use in the classroom without the teacher hearing it. Anyway, apparently this is it: tone only teens can hear
Now I’m pushing 30 and I can hear it just fine, so I’m not sure if it’s not the right tone or my shell-like ears are so well preserved I have a teen’s hearing range. What about youse? Sound off in the comments if you can hear it (Stating your age, of course)
On another topic altogether, I have installed a cool ad management plugin that can serve different ads whether you come from a search engine, are a regular visitor, etc. The reasoning on the guy’s site is all wrong however, he says you should blast newcomers with ads, and not show them to regulars. I think that’s obviously wrong, the ads should be conspicuously absent at first, then ever increasing in a slow crescendo culminating in audio enabled popups with scrolling marquees for the most recalcitrant hangers on.
Joking aside, it can track where you’re coming from so the obvious thing to do is make it show amazon.uk ads to the Brits among you. And it doesn’t have to be ads, so maybe we can get creative.
November 26th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
A human’s hearing range is generally quoted as ranging from 20 hz to 20,000 hz. However, most adults cannot hear anything higher than 17,000 hz and the older you get, the less you can hear up there. It is quite common for a man in his 50s to not be able to hear beyond 14,000 hz.
Of course, this varies a significant amount from person to person. Personally, in my mid-20s, I can’t hear past 17,500 hz, although it’s possible that my playback equipment doesn’t have the bandwidth to reproduce those frequencies properly, either. The “teen tone” is often within my range, depending on how bad the hearing of whoever made that particular one was.
November 26th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
AUGH! Yeah, that one is well within my audible range.
November 26th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
26 and hear it fine.
November 26th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
I can sort of here it, just at the edge, at age 42. But my son was yelling at me, “What is that noise, make it STOP!” He’s 13.
November 26th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
In another forum one 45 year old couldn’t hear it at all. For me it’s clear but at the edge of annoying.
I guess the cutoff is later than I heard, but it seems to work against it’s intended nemesis, the 13 year old.
November 26th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
soon will be 28. Heard it fine. Annoying as hell.
November 26th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
22 and heard it. Although I’ll be 23 in January, so I might not be able to hear it in a couple of months.
also: Haha, you’re all old.
November 26th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
25, clear as a bell, which is funny cause I have some hearing damage from my time in the Army. 58 year old co-worker couldn’t hear shit though, thought I was pranking him.
November 26th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
I’m 45, soon to be 46. Ex-military too. I heard nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. I even turned up the volume on my computer speakers. Tomorrow I’m gonna see if my kids can hear it.
Wah.
Later,
DanG
November 26th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Unfortunately my pristine ears were prized commodities for the Military, and they made steps to ensure I didn’t lose the ability to hear that godless use of sound frequencies.
23.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
I kept wondering why the mp3 of that sound posted around everywhere is just 15000 Hz. It’s a bit too low, teenagers can hear much higher than that, and ringtone speakers are definitely good for up to 18000 at least. But then I noticed that the top frequency that goes into an MP3 by default is somewhere around 15500. :) I’ve just made an MP3 with 16000 in it, which should make it inaudible to quite a bit more people, but some experiments are needed to see which frequency would be best for the ringtone purpose in school…
I’m about to turn 30 and I clearly hear up to 17000 or so at my normal listening volume and can discern (but only at much higher gain levels) all the way up to 20. Beyond that I can’t vouch for my equipment’s linearity… :) Most of people my age around here can’t go above 16kHz at all.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:53 am
I can hear it, and I’m 32. However, I’m a musician so I’m careful to protect my hearing.
My eyesight on the other hand…
November 27th, 2007 at 2:37 am
24, I heard about this magic tone and was worried my hearing was going. Now I know the truth,I HEAR ALL and can continue to blast my eardrums into oblivion.
November 27th, 2007 at 4:25 am
“And it doesn’t have to be ads, so maybe we can get creative.”
You know what would be really creative? Comics.
November 27th, 2007 at 5:48 am
41. Heard it fine. But then I’ve always had good high-frequency hearing, like being able to hear the CRT scan on monitors and televisions, sometimes to the point of distraction.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:07 am
whoa there dude, let’s not go crazy over here.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:42 am
With the revelation that the tone isn’t high enough frequency, I guess it’s too late to mention that I too heard it. Faintly. Maybe that was the tone my brother-inlaw-to-be used to annoy my sister with? She’s pretty far from being a teenager though, so I don’t think the annoyance level is directly related to how well you hear the signal, but rather how uncomfortable you are with high frequency sounds. Personally I’m very uncomfortable with low frequency sounds. I used to ride the bus, and occasionally it would stop with the engine running, and it’d give off a particular frequency that sounded really awful to me. Perhaps it’s that thing where a particular frequency will hit the frequency of a part of ourselves and make it vibrate?
November 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Need vote buttons on front page or I forget to vote (it only shows when I click comments right now)
November 28th, 2007 at 6:53 am
Ouch, that thing hurts… So yes, I heard it. 23 by the way. Also, is this some sneaky way of gathering info on who can be manipulated by annoying noises? To somehow get more ad clicks from people desperately trying to get away?
December 12th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Age 50 (almost) and if I crank the volume up and listen to it on headphones, I can hear it. Mind you, it’s quite close to the “tinitis” tone I have in my left ear all the time anyway, but I can definitely hear the tone.