Tuesday, September 05, 2006

High-Frequency Ringtone. Can You Hear It?

NPR recently reported a story about a British invention called the Mosquito Teen Repeller.

The Mosquito creates a high-pitched sound that is audible to teens, but supposedly not to older adults.

Because it's an irritating noise, the idea was that it would disperse groups of teenagers loitering in public places. The teens, however, figured out how to record the sound and use it as a ringtone for their cellular phones.

Figuring that their "old" teachers couldn't hear the sound, the kids began using the high-pitched ringer to alert them to text messages while in class.

Devious.

Anyhow, this is a fairly dated news story. But I'm interested to find out how many of you can hear this sound.

Click HERE and listen to the ringtone.

Now that you've listened to the sound, I'm betting that you did hear it. Although the high frequency oscillation is difficult for some older ears to detect, I haven't run into many people who fail to hear it.

Now, post a comment and tell me if you heard it or not.

PS - You can download that sound file and use it as a ringtone yourself. You deviant teen, you.

6 Comments:

At 12:47 PM, Blogger John Louis Kerns said...

My ears are bleeding. Thanks for that.

 
At 11:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I could hear it.

(And luckily someone else on my regular message board warned me about the microwave-in-brain effect, so I turned down my speakers in time. Might want to issue a warning, Ech-dawg! Otherwise I'll have to, I dunno, start a fight on the hood of your car or something.

--DW

 
At 7:57 PM, Blogger Leslie said...

I'm old. Can't hear it. Matt tried this on me several months ago - and I never heard a thing. With this one, I could hear something just at the beginning - but then it went away. I have a vet student staying with (she's younger) and she could hear it all the way through. 30 is knocking loudly..... Depressing.

 
At 12:22 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey biggie,

Check out this coolness.

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/3457

 
At 12:30 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

also, that noise makes spartacus crazy.

 
At 9:38 AM, Blogger cechols said...

Interesting (but not sexist) that only the women have had trouble hearing the sound. Hmm...

Thanks for posting your results, everybody!

And by the way, Chief, I'm posting the led cloth as we speak. Awesome.

 

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