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Comment by tuxracer | Hacker News Reader

Please don't let CRTs come back in style. After a while they tend to develop this headache inducing high pitched tone almost akin to tinnitus that is emitted constantly while they're powered on. It seems to be so high pitched most people cannot hear it at all but if you're one of the lucky few who can it can actually be really disruptive. Unfortunately it's also often loud enough to hear through doors, walls, etc... Please be mindful of this before setting up a CRT if you go down this path. For example a house might be better for this setup vs an apartment or condo.

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For the longest while I used this to tell my friends in high school I had a mini-superpower. Because I knew when there was a television on in the house, and somehow none of them heard it.

There is an old telly in my apartment, I turned it on to test it last week and heard the tone again, must have been like 18+ years since I last turned one of those on.

It never gave me headaches but I definitely heard (and still hear it) all the time.

Yep. I experienced this too. My left ear hears 22kHz to this day and I could hear even even plasma TVs.

My hearing is not even that great in some ways, but I can easily hear the old CRT whine. It blows my mind that not everyone can hear it.

I thought this was my superpower too as a kid. I don't really notice it anymore with all the digital equipment, but analog was noticeable.

Holy shit, I wasn't crazy all those years

When I was a kid I would always hunt down and turn off CRTs left on anywhere in the house since the sound annoyed me so much. Either my hearing has gotten worse or all the CRTs are gone now... probably both.

I read somewhere that you lose high pitch hearing first, which is why the young could hear the CRTs when the elderly could not. I tried to google for this (actually DDG) but all I got was SEO spam.

Something like this?

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/age-related-heari...

https://playback.fm/hearing-test

and

"gradual loss of sensitivity to higher frequencies with age is considered normal" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range)

I wish there was audiophile equipment for older people that took that into account. Headphones and speakers, say, that only go to 14 KHz instead of 20 KHz. By not needing to design for as wide a frequency range, they should be able to either make them less expensive, or more accurate, or both.

I doubt most headphones can reproduce sounds above 14 kHz.

They can

Capping the hertz won't make it cheaper or easier to produce...

"The Mosquito" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito) came to my attention when we were walking out of a multi-story car park with my kids. They complained of an irritating repeating high pitched noise that gave one a lingering headache and sense of nausea that lasted for about 20 minutes after leaving the area. If I concentrate very hard I can hear it myself but age and probably one too many loud concerts has rendered that range basically silent to me.

Teen repellent! My school had one above the entrance.

Probably both. The CRT sound was between 15,625 and 15,734Hz which is high enough that you almost certainly lose it as you get older. It now lives only in our minds.

The responsible component in the CRT is probably the flyback transformer. Supposedly replacing it with one that is more well made or applying some high-voltage silicone putty to it should prevent the sound.

Of course, this DIY solution does not scale well, so it wouldn't necessarily help with a room full of CRTs with bad flyback transformers.

EDIT: the voltages involved are potentially lethal

Oh the flyback transformer noise or whatever it is, that you notice whenever you enter a room where a CRT is powered on. It's very annoying. But I love how old games look on my vintage CRT monitor!

Now that you've reminded me of it I swear I hear some high pitched noises coming from some other electronics. ;-p

At least you can escape the high pitched noise by going into another room. Low frequency rumble – usually from aircraft – is a nearly inescapable torture that cities have somehow decided that their residents must endure.

That was the flyback transformer. I could hear them too, but it never really bothered me much.

It was useful ability if you were responsible for closing up a computer lab at night.

You can often get a CRT to stop whining, at least for a little bit, by either turning it off for a few seconds, then back on; or degaussing it. At least that's my memory of the situation. I haven't owned a CRT monitor in 20 years, and I don't miss that 90-lb monster one bit. That may be because I carried it up stairs a few too many times. :-)

This noise bothers me intensely, has since I was about 4 years old; and still very much does. (31 atm)

It's why I don't keep any iMac G3 units around any more, even though they are gorgeous art pieces. The iMac G4 obviously does not emit such a similar tone, being LCD-based. :)

A horizontal scan rate of 16 kHz is audible. If CRTs were brought back today they very likely would not run NTSC. I wouldn’t worry about coil whine at 30+ kHz.

You might not hear it anymore by now if you are still of a CRT generation since that tone is 16kHz and you quickly lose the ability to hear it.

Besides that (I have the same problem), there's the obvious "electron GUN pointed at your face/eyes" problem.

maybe if you spoke a different language you wouldn't be bothered?

electrons can't travel very far in glass, or atmosphere, which is why the tube has a vacuum inside of it.

What does the language bit have to do with anything? I speak 2 foreign languages and I'm not a native English speaker.

There is still the fact that the CRT display is very eye straining. Due to both the flicker and the way it works. My eyes would constantly be red after using them for a long time.

> What does the language bit have to do with anything? I speak 2 foreign languages and I'm not a native English speaker.

capitalizing "GUN" as though it mattered looked rather like hoplophobia.

> There is still the fact that the CRT display is very eye straining. Due to both the flicker and the way it works. My eyes would constantly be red after using them for a long time.

then say that, don't spew some garbage about electrons, when they're not making it past the glass.

nobody can (reasonably) question how you experience the CRT, but we can prove that the electrons have nothing to do with it.

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