Quake3World

I have a friend who claims he can hear some really weird shit... like the flow of electricity. I don't know if he's just pulling my fuckin' leg or what, but if he is, he's kept it up for months... Anyway, he says that anytime he's anywhere near anything that has electricity flowing in it, he can hear a super-high frequency buzz non-stop. But it goes away if we ever go walking in the woods or something. He says he can tell when a car is coming long before he can even hear the engine or the tires on the road because he can hear the "buzz" of the battery. He says he can hear power-lines as well, and he hears it non-stop in any house since there's always some electricity flowing around.

My question is: is this bullshit or what? I'm thinking yes, but he seems pretty fuckin' adamant that he actually can hear it. Maybe he's a fuckin' loonie?

try running a controlled experiment with him.

get your hands on a device which he claims he can detect, and which you can turn on and off easily.

this should be good.

I've tried. He says he can hear it turn on and off. I even tried recording it with 2 seperate $300 microphones, but they didn't pick anything up. The frequency might be out of their range. They can pick up the sound of a TV turning on (you know that really annoying high pitched shit you can hear)...but none of this electricity crap. He said the TV turning on and the electricity one are different. He said the electricity one is much higher frequency.

+JuggerNaut+ wrote:this should be good.

LOL Yeah... I've already tried calling BS on him tons of times but he won't let up so now I'm sorta curious if this might be possible...

mrd wrote:I've tried. He says he can hear it turn on and off. I even tried recording it with 2 seperate $300 microphones, but they didn't pick anything up. The frequency might be out of their range. They can pick up the sound of a TV turning on (you know that really annoying high pitched shit you can hear)...but none of this electricity crap. He said the TV turning on and the electricity one are different. He said the electricity one is much higher frequency.

how about the specs of the mics and/or the brand/model?

+JuggerNaut+ wrote:

mrd wrote:I've tried. He says he can hear it turn on and off. I even tried recording it with 2 seperate $300 microphones, but they didn't pick anything up. The frequency might be out of their range. They can pick up the sound of a TV turning on (you know that really annoying high pitched shit you can hear)...but none of this electricity crap. He said the TV turning on and the electricity one are different. He said the electricity one is much higher frequency.

how about the specs of the mics and/or the brand/model?

Sennheiser e609 (it's a guitar mic so I doubt it has a super high range) and a Shure SM57 (again... I doubt the range is very high). But they can pick up shit at like ~22-23kHz so I thought I'd try.

mrd wrote:I've tried. He says he can hear it turn on and off. I even tried recording it with 2 seperate $300 microphones, but they didn't pick anything up. The frequency might be out of their range. They can pick up the sound of a TV turning on (you know that really annoying high pitched shit you can hear)...but none of this electricity crap. He said the TV turning on and the electricity one are different. He said the electricity one is much higher frequency.

but did you run a controlled experiment?

i.e. you turn it on and off without him seeing you do it, and then getting him to report when you turn it on and off.

that way he could prove this ability to you.

Nah I never tried that. He might be coming over for a visit later so I'll try some shit. Just for shit's sake, I just recorded my TV turning on and staying on for about 5 seconds. I did a complete bandstop from 20hZ to roughly 12.2kHz, so all you can hear is the really high pitched fuckin' drone.

Click

Here's a pic of the freq...

a good way to do it is to have him sit in a closed room, and then in an adjacent area of the house, turn on and off the device.

When he hears it go on, get him to yell ON, and when he hears it go off get him to yell OFF.

Key is to find a device which he claims he can sense under those conditions, and which you can easily turn on and off.

raw wrote:I see gay people.

A useful skill.

Man, that guy should try at listening for UFO

[xeno]Julios wrote:a good way to do it is to have him sit in a closed room, and then in an adjacent area of the house, turn on and off the device.

When he hears it go on, get him to yell ON, and when he hears it go off get him to yell OFF.

Key is to find a device which he claims he can sense under those conditions, and which you can easily turn on and off.

I'll try it next time he's over.

I have another question. When I slow down that TV.mp3 to 75% or something, or even lower, another, higher frequency band starts coming into view. At 50% speed, this band sits at 16.4kHz, which means at 100% it's almost 33kHz. Is this my sound program acting up or do you think my mic actually picked up the data for the 33Khz waveform?

raw wrote:I see gay people.

I can hear gay people. They make a high pitched sound as well.

i believe him what

mrd wrote:I have a friend who claims he can hear some really weird shit... like the flow of electricity. I don't know if he's just pulling my fuckin' leg or what, but if he is, he's kept it up for months... Anyway, he says that anytime he's anywhere near anything that has electricity flowing in it, he can hear a super-high frequency buzz non-stop. But it goes away if we ever go walking in the woods or something. He says he can tell when a car is coming long before he can even hear the engine or the tires on the road because he can hear the "buzz" of the battery. He says he can hear power-lines as well, and he hears it non-stop in any house since there's always some electricity flowing around.

My question is: is this bullshit or what? I'm thinking yes, but he seems pretty fuckin' adamant that he actually can hear it. Maybe he's a fuckin' loonie?

may be wise to discard the obvious explanations first, like: does he wear a hearing aid? is he confusing his special 'skill' with plain old tinnitus?

Does he understand how hair cells and resonance are involved in hearing?

take a look at the basic physiological processes that allow us to 'hear'. There are physical reasons why we have a range of about 20,000 Hz of hearable frequencies..and the high limit of that range continues to decrease with age...

lol your friends are retards.

I can always tell when TV is on

Yeah me too it's annoying as fuck, especialy at night I can hear it from my bedroom.

Kracus wrote:Yeah me too it's annoying as fuck, especialy at night I can hear it from my bedroom.

I would always walk into a classroom and have to turn off the damn TV because everyone else was too stupid to realize it had been left on.

raw wrote:I see gay people.

You have poor choice in bars.

Well, the AC current in the power lines as well as pretty much everywhere else in a house is 60Hz, so its nothing extrordinary to hear the power lines hum. In PCB's and such (like a radio) the frequencies are much, much higher, so its absolutely impossible for a human being to hear them. And wtf would he hear from a car? Its operating on DC current.