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Comment by mateus1 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much of this sound pollution disproportionately affects autistic people. We need to make our soundscapes accessible.

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Or the idea that the humans are just blissfully unaware while their 'hyper' cat/dog is stuck inside a home with some device screaming 24/7, LED lights flashing, etc.

To this day, not one person in the spec reviews in whatever overseas OEM electronics or those split AC units (which are fantastic in one regard) reflects on persistent light in a room where people are sleeping? The worst is encountering AC units when arriving at a hotel that do not have a "display" button to turn off the 20C display in white LED. Are the actual people that make these and make those decisions just tougher or they're just ignorant?

Black sharpie and electrical tape. Never travel without them.

Lately we had both our tenants in our other house (on the same lot) leave, my wife trapped two stray cats inside the house, one escaped, and we are trying to tame the one who stayed.

I moved the TV, XBOX, a $50 PC and almost all of my optical discs (but no books) over there because (1) I won't be so mad if a copy of Disney's Frozen gets pissed on (he's a tom), and (2) if it does the disc will be undamaged and at worst I can discard the package.

That room gets really dark and it doesn't have a switch controlling an overhead light so turning off a floor lamp and then sneaking out the door without creating an opening for the cat to escape (though he's much more inclined to hide than run) leaves me quite happy for the little LEDs and stuff that create just enough light to get from the couch to the door.

My ex got a device to discourage ants. Then forgot where she placed them. Then found out that it was in my daughter's hearing range.

Finding the last one was a nightmare.

Here is the device.

https://www.amazon.com/Ultrasonic-Repeller-Electronic-Repell...

It was

Did it work in its stated goal?

Yes.

I think the dogs can hear our induction stove with ultrasonic whine, but somehow my cat will sleep blissfully in a room with a VGA CRT whining from 30-80 kHz (perhaps quieter than the stove), and used to sit in front of a CRT TV whining at 15.7 kHz so loudly I couldn't stand it without headphones.

When I was a kid I noticed that the adults in my life couldn't hear that CRT sound. My son bought a CRT TV with a built in VCR to use with a Nintendo 64 to get out the last frame of latency. I noticed the other day that I can still hear that sound, but I've always had sensitive hearing and I've always kept amplified sound at a low level and worn ear protection while using machinery, going to motorsports events, etc.

(In the past I have volunteered as a sound man for live music events but I have never been at a venue which I thought wasn't too loud in terms of absolute sound pressure or in terms of there being audible distortion in the amplifiers & speakers, so I haven't made a habit of it. My son won tickets to a 38 Special + Foghat show that we went to last week, I didn't mind the loudness much but it was clear to me they were pushing the sound system just a little too hard.)

I remember in school, we'd often hear the TV whine and know we were watching a tape in class that day without needing to look up at the TV (mounted high in the corner by the ceiling.) The teachers used to wonder how we knew and didn't believe us when we said we could hear powered on TVs.

In these cases, I sometimes wonder if it's my own ears that have distortion at high volume. Would need to try with/without earplugs to verify.

That’s … a horrible thought.

How does one get a 19khz microphone to check I guess?

My phone shows plausible-looking data up until 24 kHz. I don't have a test device to see if it finds the tone, though

Edit: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.intoorbit.... this is the app I use most. Phyphox (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.rwth_aachen.phyphox/) seems to only go until 6 kHz but has a lot of other tools. For those wanting to avoid GPlay, this F-Droid app seems to go slightly above 20 kHz but I don't like the interface as much as spectroid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.woheller69.audio_analyze...

Now if the same could be done for bad LED lighting. I hate being somewhere where the whole room is strobing at 100 hz.

Yeup. Interesting how the older LED bulbs are particularly bad for this (and in the UK, at 50Hz). More modern high quality ones seem significantly better.

GP's comment said 100Hz because that's what you get from full-wave rectification of 50Hz mains, so they were talking about that. It'd be 120Hz in countries that use 60Hz mains (e.g. in North America).

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