ot: Teen Buzz

"A Mosquito Ringtone - or Teen Buzz - is a cellphone ringtone that

[snip]

many adults (at least people over 30) cannot hear. This is due to
presbycusis, a normal loss of acute hearing that occurs with advancing
age.

15.8 is the last one I could hear.

In settings where cellphone use is forbidden - in class, for example -
it's perfect for signaling the arrival of a text message without being
detected by an elder of the species."

The vibrate mode on a phone would also work.

I couldn't hear the 14.1 despite being much younger than that.

I can hear them all except the 22.4KHz one and I'm 36.

ditto, and I'm as old as Champ tomorrow.

*It's your statement that is absurd.*

Couldn't resist copying your response to my message below as it seemed just

Oh look, I've got a stalker. Hope you're prettier than the last one.

Been here for a few years. Chances are I'm not prettier..........

as appropriate

Unless you're operating time at your own private rate (which suggests a very
fast bike indeed) then I'd say that if you're as old as Champ tomorrow you
must be as old as Champ today.

It seems a youth of attending Blue Oyster Cult, Jethro Tull and Ian Gillan
concerts has not done much physical harm.

Possibly, even made your life /feel/ longer

Heh. Insignificant when compared to the Steve Hillage concert I was dragged
along to in Colston Hall.

Emma (7) confirms that it is making a noise and isn't just there to baffle
oldies like me.

GoldWave doesn't think there's any actual audio at any ranges in the
22.4KHz tone, which is probably why you can't hear it.

Are you calling my bairn a liar, like?

Yes.

I opened the 14.1KHz and 22.4KHz samples in Goldwave and saved them
both as uncompressed WAVE files. I then opened both in EDIT in
'binary' mode and took the following screener:

The top box is the 22KHz tone, the bottom box is the 14KHz tone.

To the right are the same tones opened in EDIT in 'binary' mode.

The 22KHz tone contains nothing but '00' values apart from the small
header and footer, even if I page down to the middle of the file. A
file containing nothing but 00 values is as silent as you can get.

I'm no audio expert but I believe it's either one of two things:

1) This File Was Left Intentionally Blank
2) The file had a 22.4kHz tone in it when it was originally made, but
the MP3 encoder couldn't hear it so didn't encode it.

I don't have a spare uncompressed 22.4kHz tone to play with to see
what happens when thrown at an MPEG encoder.

For the record, with her back turned she can tell me when it's being played,
so there's *something* there.

There's no tone, sorry dear. Perhaps you can get her to select
lottery numbers.

Ooops, bad form and it's too late for me to retract my last post.
Audacity doesn't see any sound wave either.

Maybe she can hear the click of the mouse button pressing play.

Nah, I tried clicking somewhere else on the screen, so that the sound didn't
play and she wasn't fooled.

However, I shall now spend the rest of the evening rigging up a full
double-blind test involving all of the kids I can round up and let you know
the results.

Well, assuming I get to my PC before Operation Ore.

Well Windows Media player does something with it, as I can see the
fancy image vibrate.

I think it's a load of bollox though, because I'm pretty certain my
hearing has been shot to pieces. Riding the bike without ear plugs for
so long and my past activity of shooting, to name two likely causes to
damage my hearing.

I also thing that the type of soundcard used in the PC has to be a
factor too.

I thought that but then realised that the "higher" tones actually
sounded lower. I'll try with the proper stereo later.

Emily [10] confirmed the same.

I am a young god...
18.8 with a bit of trouble, 17.7 easy

I can /just/ hear the 14.9 with the stereo turned right up.

very interestink.

Should volume actually play a part in a test like this? I can hear them
all except the last one if I turn the sound up.

Yes volume plays a significant part.

I'd have to be convinced that there's actually anything there on the
last one: I turned the sound up to max, and nothing; then I made the
mistake of playing the 8khz one again...

btw I am not 15.

Nor am I a mosquito - maybe you have to be a mosquito to hear the last
one.

I can just hear 14.9 and I'm 39

I probably should've mentioned I'm 41, but it depresses me too much.

It could be worse, you could have a pink Tiger.

Never worry about things you can't change.

FWIW I'm 43 next month.

Oddly I can hear 17.7, but not 16.7.

They both sound like tinnitus!

Oddly, I can only just hear 17.7, but after that they sound to me like
they're going down, not up, and get easier to hear as a result. Apart
from the last one, which is completely inaudible.

That's pretty much the effect I got. I could *just* hear the 15.8Khz
[1] (after turning the volume up a bit), but thereafter the higher
ones were easier to hear until I got to 19.8Khz.

I suspect that they were generating some lower frequency harmonics.

[1] pleased about this, being 45.

I can hear a tone the 18.8 and everything below it despite being 57 years
old. However, I think some of the tones are generating harmonics at lower
frequencies. I can hear a tone at 21.1 but not 19.8. Also, 17. 7 sounds
much lower than 16.7, which makes me think that soundcard, speakers etc may
have a big part to play in whether or not any kind of tone is heard at the
higher frequencies.

That's one URL I shan't be sending to my brats ...

21.1 & I'm 48. Apparently, according to SWMBO, also deaf as a post.
Must be selective.

That'll be all that playing loud rock & roll music in seedy dives :)

PS: I couldn't hear it either - 12kHz was as good as I could manage,
although I'm wondering if it's these cheapo PC speakers ...

Should I be worried - the only one I can hear, is 8hz... I'm 24...

Scratch that, amp was on the wrong mode heh. Turned it up a bit too and
could hear up to an including 14.9.

So much for the custom ear plugs, I can only hear 12khz and lower :-( .

Experienced "Third Stone from the Sun" listens intently and slowly lets
out large sigh of relief >

I can hear the 15.8 one. My ear are at least 15 years younger than the
rest of me.

All but the highest. They aren't all the same volume and some of them
seem to be in the wrong place, eg 14.1 sounds higher than 14.9. On
further listening, 14.1 seems higher than 18.8...

19.8 for me & I'm 40 in a few weeks

I'd be quite surprised if a mobile phone was capable of reproducing a

Thanks for clarifying that. Perhaps I was thinking of NXT speakers,
which appear to top out at 20kHz anyway.

22kHz tone

I'd be absolutely amazed, but I am prepared to be astounded.
Go on then someone, find me one with a speaker frequency range greater
than 20kHz.

A cheap transducer won't have a nice flat response from 20 - 20kHz,
but there's no reason to think it can't make an awful lot of audible
sound/noise at 20kHz and above. In fact the transducer will happily
vibrate at resonant frequencies well into the ultrasonic range- have
you ever taken apart an ultrasonic cleaner? The transducer is just
a standard looking ceramic piezo-electric type, similar to what you'd
find in any electronic device with a beeper.

Whether the phone's D->A is capable of producing a 20+ kHz tone without
aliasing is another matter.

of course, if you go clubbing a lot or ride big twins with loud pipes
without earplugs, your high frequency hearing is going to go faster
than it would due to the normal effects of old age.

I think it was Class 37s that did for mine.

Eeew! Dirty smoky old things as well.

56s were better...

It seems I have an auditory age 10 years younger than my biological age.
Perhaps it's the finely honed 'white hat' detection system.
Nuisance from pure tone industrial sources is what I did my MPhil on.
All very much lower than these naturally (usually sub 1KHz).

the process starts at around puberty, so by later adolescence you've
normally already lost quite a bit of your high frequency hearing -
it's more useful for prepubescent children.

HALF PAST FOUR!