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[Blood-Pigggy]

No, it means there is a tiny metal thingy INSIDE of my ear that supports my ear drum so I can hear better.

[Danny252]

Didnt we have a topic like this about a month back?

Myeh, can still hear it...

[#BlakhOle#]

I could hear it easy, and so could my dad, and hes like 50, even with the volume turned down to minimum

[Quintopotere]

That's really annoying :tai:

[Himmler]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(#BlakhOle# @ Jun 24 2006, 10:24 AM) [snapback]239344[/snapback]</div>

I could hear it easy, and so could my dad, and hes like 50, even with the volume turned down to minimum
[/b]

't means your father has good ears...

quoting someone on these kind of sounds

My name’s Rei, and I’m 20yrs old, female, English-Asian, and absolutely appalled by what I’ve seen here today. At first, I honestly thought you all were joking, because there’s no way that I could imagine people willing subjecting themselves and others to this.

So, in order to educate people a little, I’ll use my knowlege to show you why people should never ever do this, and how some of you here have already permanently damaged your hearing from trying this.

To give weight to my comments, I’ll just clarify that I’m into DSP, mixing, and general sound hardware and software related things, so I’m not just trying to spook you, I’m honestly horrified by this.

Here we go:

When I first played back this the embedded file here, I neglected to turn my fader down, so my tweeters proceeded to blast that high frequency sine at an amazing volume. Luckily for my ears (which I take care of), and my wallet, my reciever/amplifier shut off the sound after 1 second, to prevent damage. I was still rather shaken though.

I knew that the only way that could’ve been been so loud, is if some idiot had gone into an sound editing program, and filled the entire dynamic range with that sound, which in other words, is maximum gain (1db).

Why is that dangerous? Well, lets start with the effects on audio equipment, which you’ve all described quite well so far, in varying states of confusion.

1. High quality audio equipment is NOT designed to extensively playback that kindof frequency at maximum gain, continuously. It can, but its not designed to. Anyone who thinks they can do this without physically damaging their speakers, A-D converter, reciever, amplifier or cell-phone, is clearly out of their mind. It is damaging your hardware, weather you can see it or not.

2. Lower quality audio equipment is not capable of replicating that frequency at that gain. What’ll happen is you’ll encounter aliasing, meaning you’ll get a pretty pattern of other lower frequencies, and not the ear-piercing 19.5 - 20khz that was intended. People will then claim they can ‘hear it clearly’ (yeah, way to go, you heard 14khz, not 20), when they have in fact not heard 20khz, because your hardware CAN’T REPRODUCE THAT SOUND. Doesn’t change that fact that it’s at 1db though, so your hardware is still getting strained and damaged.

3. mp3, even at setting VBRnew V1, lowpasses at…. wait for it…. 17khz. It should be obvious that encoding those sounds with a setting equal to that or lower, without using a flag to disable the lowpass, will mean that your high frequency sound will be excluded from the mp3. As in, not there, at all. Ever. That explains why some of those files just don’t work.

4. Bad windows mixer settings, or cheap-o sound card. This applies to most people, as unfortunate as that is, because kmixer.sys does all kinds of things to a sound before it gets out. So unless you’re kernel streaming past that, or you’re really lucky, you’ll end up with the symptoms I mentioned in #2, but for slightly different reasons.

Now that we have the machines covered, lets get into the damage this causes to actual living things. We can fix or replace hardware (and cost outselves money for no good reason), but we can’t, we absolutely can’t fix our hearing once its damaged. Once it’s gone, it NEVER comes back.

In point form again:

1. The gain on those things to make them audible, is ridiculously high. Just as you wouldn’t want to play regular sounds loud enough to make you feel disgusted or in pain, why would you want to use a high pitched sound loud enough to bring you pain? It’s like the difference between getting hit by a truck, and getting hit by a knife the size of a truck. Don’t they both hurt? The high frequency sound would be the knife in this case.

2. The SPL is just too much. When your ears HURT, it means they are trying to tell you, “This is causing real damage.”. Would you place your hand in an oven and ignore the pain if someone told you it was a good alert system? I think not, because your hands are useful, right? Same with your ears!

3. Your ears DO NOT have the ability to self-repair. They DO NOT HEAL. Once you damage them, it is permanent. When your ears hurt, it’s telling you to stop whatever you’re doing. When you don’t stop, the nerve endings, and/or the sensitive hairs attached to them begin to get destroyed. A symptom of this is ‘tinnings’, which is the horrible ringing sound some of you have been hearing. Welcome to hearing loss, that’s the start of irreperable damage right there.

4. The idiots who invented this neglected to mention that the REAL reason some adults can’t hear the sound even when its produced correctly, is that their ears are already damaged - it’s the high frequency hearing that goes first. And by listening to this destructive sound, you’re just sending yourself to join them.

5. There is no such thing as ‘getting used to it’. If you’re finding it easier to tolerate those sounds, it means one of two things, either you’re:
a. Drunk, and more suceptible to ear damage, (leads to b anyway) or;
b. Your ears are getting damaged. Eventually you’ll be unable to hear anything that high pitched, or, you’ll be stuck with tinnings, where that horrible ringing will always SEEM to be there, and it’ll never go away.

Why the hell are there not laws against this? This is the grossest noise pollution I’ve ever heard of. It is literally robbing people of their hearing. I shudder to think of the effect it’s having on all of these young people.

The adults who came up with this, should, and probably do know better. And if I saw them on the street, I’d hit them in the face with a shovel for even THINKING of doing this. Shame on those store owners who are actually broadcasting this at fellow human beings.

I’m just disgusted by this.

Rei Murasame
~ Flower of Albion ~[/b]

[Japo]

I already refused to try it in the first place when I saw the health warning.

[Himmler]

it a warning for long-term listeling. you can test it..you'll see if you got damaged ears or not.

[guesst]

Strangely enough my 30 year old ears barely heard it at normal volumes, but turn up my volume just a little bit and it became even easier to hear.

Then again, I've always heard out-of-range stuff. The whistle of a TV tube even if there's no volume or picture I can hear the moment I walk into a room.

[chainsoar]

It sounds like a preview track off the next Merzbow album.

[heLL0]

Ouch, that hurt. :tai: