I’m curious, how many people are aware of these sounds. I have designed, etched, and built my own switching power supplies along with winding my own transformers. I am aware of the source of the noise. So, does anyone else hear these high frequency sounds regularly?
Despite me having tinnitus, I hear those sounds very clearly in quiet environments. They annoy the crap out of me…
I did when I was younger but I don’t hear it since I hit around 30
Yes, often. It doesn’t really bother me that much, plus tinnitus generally overwhelms those sounds.
My favorite is when the ringing from power resonates with the tinnitus and ends up with an oscillating tone. Drives me absolutely insane.
Yes and it drives me bonkers. I’ve had to leave rooms because the noise was just too loud
Not since I developed tinnitus…
I thought I was developing tinnitus. Turned out it was the new modem Comcast sent me.
Mawp
My father used to make fun of me for saying that I could hear the TV on even if it was muted, or that I could hear the furnace ‘scream’ before it came on.
One year, I got as a gift for Christmas, a handheld recorder and a fancy microphone from my stepfather a university music professor And that recorder could actually record the sound which he was able to show me on the computer.
That was like 25 years ago, I’ve been working with computers ever since, and now I am familiar with many many many devices that make high pitch whines.
The TV thing, from what I’ve gathered, is normal in kids and lasts up until your 30s or somewhere around there. After that your ears just can’t pick up that pitch anymore.
CRT TV’s stopped being common at the same time I was aging into the range that would be unable to hear their distinctive whine.
I’m 40s and can pick it up sometimes. Depends on the TV.
This must be a snippet from Anthony Doerr’s latest All the Squeals We Cannot Hear
Not after I stopped buying cheap power supplies.
Cool whine ? Yup. They told me it would go away as I got older and lost range of hearing. Still waiting for that.
the moment I could bearly hear an old CRT when a younger friend winced in pain, I knew I was old
😎 Cool whine bro 😎
I used to hear all these sounds, but I’m 40 now so I don’t hear them anymore.
43 years old here. I can still hear it. I think I put about 10-15 chargers in the bin because of the noise. I also really hate those anti-mosquito ultrasone emittors people put in their yards. I can hear them whenever I walk around the neighborhood.
47 here. Battery chargers for tools in the shop drive me insane. I used to work at a city run arena that had those hi pitched squeaky things to keep young people from gathering. I had to get transferred it was like torture.
Do you remember when you could hear text messages over your speakers before getting the on-phone alert?
Yup, I remember that 😄
Freaking Nokias man… haha
And it was these speakers
They may not look very nice, but at least they didn’t sound very good.
Tinnitus crew checking in
Yeah I don’t even hear the big 40A power supplies at work, usually 3 or 4 of them in a row on din rail.
The variable frequency drives are a different story, sometimes those sound like the worst high frequency you’ve ever heard in your life. But I don’t even hear those all the time anymore, depending on the drive.
I take steps to make sure my tinnitus isn’t getting worse. But about all you can do is try and protect your ears as best as you can. Once it’s there, it’s there to stay
I used to hear this…back when I was in my 20s 😭
Same I used to be able to tell when my boss shorted his board by the sound of the power supply going into overregulation. Now it’s just eeeeee all the time.
Yes. On a side note: do not buy hp printers they are really bad for their power supplies.
I will add this to the list of avoiding HP.
Used to, until the tinnitus kicked in.
Yes. I can hear to about 18kHz, so cheap USB chargers are no longer allowed in my house…
Worse, the EV chargers I used to work with had PEMs switching at 10kHz for the US UL variants. EVERYONE could hear those!!
Test your hearing range with this if you want…
https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
I used the 10kHz tone to annoy the eng dept in the office till they changed the PEM switching freq to 20kHz…
I’m sorry but you’re not generating true 10 Hz tones with speakers that are unable to reproduce such sound
Hell most premium speakers go down to 15-20 Hz at best
They said 10 khz not 10 hz
Only two orders of magnitude, can you really blame them?
Isn’t it 3? 10 -> 100 -> 1.000 -> 10.000
Whoops
I used to hear tv tubes, power supplies and all sorts of high frequency noise. These days I mostly just hear tinnitus. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
