OT - "Teen Ringtone" can other adults hear it?

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:37:21 -0400, "bizby40"
wrote:


"Rosalie B." wrote in message
.. .
I can hear it although it is faint. I am 68 and I know I have a
fairly severe hearing loss in one ear due to using a starting pistol
to start swim meets before I knew any better.

Well, I can't, and neither can my kids. But then again, the puppy was
chewing on the speaker cable....

Bizby

I couldn't hear it either. And our speaker cables work ;-)

Nan

Cathy Weeks wrote:
Ok... evidently someone developed some tech to drive away
mall-loitering teens that hang out near their stores, interrupting
business - it's this high-pitched tone that only teens and young
children can hear. There's a video about it on CNN.com, but I couldn't
paste the link, unfortunately.


Does anyone out there know the reason some adults can hear it and other
can't? I've never been one to play loud music, in my car or anywhere.
I do like my TV set louder than my family does, but certainly not
blasting. And I've only been to one concert that left me
"cotton-candy-eared" (at others, I stuffed my ears with cotton to
prevent it, but I've not been to many of those, either - maybe 3 or 4)

But I've also mowed my share of lawns over the years.

Any docs out there that might know? Or am I just lucky in that I've got
good hearing?

Cathy Weeks

I'm 29 and I can hear it just fine.

Stasya

I haven't tried listening to it as my PC is right next door to the baby's
bedroom and I don't want to wake him from his morening nap!

So far I've seen only women replying to this post - any men out there? From
what I've heard, men tend to lose the ability to hear high pitched noises
earlier than women. I know that my dad definitely has. He's born the same
year as mum and there are (high pitched) noises she can hear and he can't.

"Cathy Weeks" wrote in message
oups.com...
Ok... evidently someone developed some tech to drive away
mall-loitering teens that hang out near their stores, interrupting
business - it's this high-pitched tone that only teens and young
children can hear. There's a video about it on CNN.com, but I couldn't
paste the link, unfortunately.

Evidently as you age, the little hairs inside your cochlea flatten out,
making it hard or impossible for adults to hear certain frequencies.
This process starts happening at around 20 years of age.

So someone decided to turn it into a ringtone for cell phones.
Great... another way to help kids cheat.

However, I was curious and went in search of the tone, to see if I
could hear it, I found it he

http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages...0_RINGTONE.mp3

To my surprise, I could hear it just fine. It was horrible -
high-pitched and throbbing (it's real name is the "mosquitotone" - very
appropos). Very annoying and bordering on painful - and it's not even
loud. Now, I'm ah, not a teenager. I'm nearly double the oldest age
that's supposed to be able to hear it reliably (I'm 37).

Does anyone out there know the reason some adults can hear it and other
can't? I've never been one to play loud music, in my car or anywhere.
I do like my TV set louder than my family does, but certainly not
blasting. And I've only been to one concert that left me
"cotton-candy-eared" (at others, I stuffed my ears with cotton to
prevent it, but I've not been to many of those, either - maybe 3 or 4)

But I've also mowed my share of lawns over the years.

Any docs out there that might know? Or am I just lucky in that I've got
good hearing?

Cathy Weeks

"Cathy Weeks" wrote in message
oups.com...
Ok... evidently someone developed some tech to drive away
mall-loitering teens that hang out near their stores, interrupting
business - it's this high-pitched tone that only teens and young
children can hear. There's a video about it on CNN.com, but I couldn't
paste the link, unfortunately.

Evidently as you age, the little hairs inside your cochlea flatten out,
making it hard or impossible for adults to hear certain frequencies.
This process starts happening at around 20 years of age.

So someone decided to turn it into a ringtone for cell phones.
Great... another way to help kids cheat.

However, I was curious and went in search of the tone, to see if I
could hear it, I found it he

http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages...0_RINGTONE.mp3

To my surprise, I could hear it just fine. It was horrible -
high-pitched and throbbing (it's real name is the "mosquitotone" - very
appropos). Very annoying and bordering on painful - and it's not even
loud. Now, I'm ah, not a teenager. I'm nearly double the oldest age
that's supposed to be able to hear it reliably (I'm 37).

Does anyone out there know the reason some adults can hear it and other
can't? I've never been one to play loud music, in my car or anywhere.
I do like my TV set louder than my family does, but certainly not
blasting. And I've only been to one concert that left me
"cotton-candy-eared" (at others, I stuffed my ears with cotton to
prevent it, but I've not been to many of those, either - maybe 3 or 4)

But I've also mowed my share of lawns over the years.

Any docs out there that might know? Or am I just lucky in that I've got
good hearing?

Cathy Weeks

I definitely heard it! I guess I'm able to hear those kind of sounds,
because I hate the sound that the fluorescent lights in my office make, and
I can hear the tv whine when it's not on (modern tv's have transformers that
allow them to power-up instantly, so in effect, your tv is always "on").

On 13 Jun 2006 14:04:19 -0700, "Cathy Weeks"
wrote:

But your point is taken. I'll have to find someone who has the ringtone
and have them play it for me on their phone, instead.

I'm 60 and I could hear the computer tone.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

I couldn't hear it either. And our speaker cables work ;-)

Neither could I, and so do ours.

Karen

In article .com,
"Cathy Weeks" wrote:

However, I was curious and went in search of the tone, to see if I
could hear it, I found it he

http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages...0_RINGTONE.mp3

To my surprise, I could hear it just fine. It was horrible -
high-pitched and throbbing (it's real name is the "mosquitotone" - very
appropos). Very annoying and bordering on painful - and it's not even
loud. Now, I'm ah, not a teenager. I'm nearly double the oldest age
that's supposed to be able to hear it reliably (I'm 37).

Does anyone out there know the reason some adults can hear it and other
can't?

Um, there are a lot of adults out there with high-frequency deafness? I have
no trouble hearing it either!

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

"Engram" writes:

I haven't tried listening to it as my PC is right next door to the baby's
bedroom and I don't want to wake him from his morening nap!

So far I've seen only women replying to this post - any men out there? From
what I've heard, men tend to lose the ability to hear high pitched noises
earlier than women. I know that my dad definitely has. He's born the same
year as mum and there are (high pitched) noises she can hear and he can't.

I'm a 43-year-old man and I can hear it.

--
Darius S. Naqvi email: dsn at dsn dot incentre dot net
("From:" line email address with "nospam" removed)

(Darius S. Naqvi) wrote:

"Engram" writes:

I haven't tried listening to it as my PC is right next door to the baby's
bedroom and I don't want to wake him from his morening nap!

So far I've seen only women replying to this post - any men out there? From
what I've heard, men tend to lose the ability to hear high pitched noises
earlier than women. I know that my dad definitely has. He's born the same
year as mum and there are (high pitched) noises she can hear and he can't.

I'm a 43-year-old man and I can hear it.

The reason that men have traditionally had an earlier onset of
presbycusis is that men are often in noisier jobs. When women started
to go into factories and be working with machinery (and when we began
to HAVE more machines like lawn mowers and blenders and printers),
then they started to go deaf just like the men.

http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages...0_RINGTONE.mp3

I'm a 51 year old woman and I cannot hear it at all. I have no hearing
loss that I know of and rarely listened to music at high volumes
and went to very few concerts.

Both of my kids can hear it just fine (ages 18 and 16) and they've
probably listened to more loud music than I have.

I'm impressed that so many people over 30 here can still
hear it. All I hear is a 'click' at the beginning.

-- Zip