Well, it’s only part of the answer. And not that great a part, either.

But, when you’re not listening to sound, noise, it’s only the amplitude of the oscillations that excite your nervous system; but when you are listening it’s the amplitude plus the frequency.

A fuller explanation is here.

A crude and probably imprecise metaphor would be that the total stress of a defined period of sound being listened to would be equal to the total linear length of an oscilloscope tracing of it (A-weighted, C-weighted, or whatever-weighted.) That’s one of the reasons why a 2000 Hz whine of the same perceived loudness as a low frequency tone is much more annoying and why a 10,000 Hz whine can drive you insane.

But then again, how can you not listen? Especially higher frequency whines which remind one of the screams or cries of women and children. And then there’s machine noise which often represents some sort of violence and puts one in a subtle (or not so subtle) state of alarm.

Also, your whole body is affected by sound.

Well, all of us here are in some way doing something to make the situation better, especially by a mile those who actively work on the site.

Some peoples are just sound sensitive. Yes, you can avert attention elsewhere by not listening, but still some peoples will eventually start getting bothered by that noise. Some peoples just do not understand us, the silence freaks. Peoples like they probably have 3000 RPM delta turbines 4x in their case.

But still "If noise bother's you don't listen." is in the same line with: "Secret of eternal life is not dying."

Both are simply, 100% fact and undisputable correct, but somehow in real life it just doesn't really work ^^

Funny that, I was just thinking the other day as I sat at a noisy PC, how it sounded so much like my woman whining for, oh I don't know, new shoes or baskets of kittens or something. I thought about clubbing it to cure the noise, as I sometimes do with the female when she just won't quit with the high pitched screeching, but then I remembered we live in the 21st century where apparently things like that are frowned upon

I know exactly what you mean though. Not wearing ear defenders when working with loud machinery does more than just damage your hearing - it hampers your concentration because the noise puts you mentally on edge, and that has all sort of knock-on physical effects with safety and quality of your work etc. And tuning out background mixed frequency noise is much easier than ignoring an insistent or repetitive tonal noise which, as you note, does have an at least partial evolutionary basis.

Looking at it afterwards, my choice of a title for this thread might not have been the best possible.

I was really trying to publicize an essay that I put in a (non-monetized) blog about how the exercise of a very brief dynamic memory (in humans, about 50 milliseconds) is necessary to even perceive pitch at all, something that might not have been so obvious as to have been written about before.

I thought that the audiophiles and auditoryphiles here might be interested.

This is very interesting. It actually explains something I've noticed personally- When I start concentrating/focusing on a continous noise in my house (say, the sound of the AC going through the vents) and actually tune-in to the individual parts (for example, listening for a wa wa wa component "inside" of the sound), at first I can't hear it. However, slowly I pick up on it and once I notice "how" to listen for it mentally, the individual component (wa wa wa) becomes MUCH more annoying and I can't "un-listen" to the sound of this component until much later (until I've left the room for hours and forgotten about the noise,etc).

(Note: I didn't quite get what I mean across perfectly in the above, but for those that have experienced what I'm talking aobut, I think you'll know what I mean?)

Ted

I have a wall clock in my room. If I concentrate on hearing it tick when I go to bed, there's no chance in hell that I can get some sleep. Impossible. Once I've even removed the battery from it, but could still "hear" it tick.

By the way, the clocks don't really go tic-tac-tic-tac. It's all in our imagination - it's just tic-tic or tac-tac all the time.

Matija and tbadiuk both hit on something I've noticed, and it dows apply to pc components also. Might no tbe bad until listening intently for the noise and then! Rebuild, revamp oh noes!

Also, I've been playing Silent Hunter 4 lately....I can quit playing and still hear the PING from the destroyers and the whistle of gunshots whizzing by afterwards.

Also, people don't live in isolation Some people might be okay with noise, but they live with those who don't. I remember my friend building a loud AMD rig and his grandpa came out and couldn't sleep in his room due to the noise.

That is very interesting. I've found some noises linger inside my head long after the source has been shut down or turned off.

Too much silence is also annoying, especially at night when your trying to sleep and you hear that noise thats like inside your ears.

Unfortunatly, might I add

i hate that ear noise

You're not reffering to tinnitus, are you?

hey reachable..

you live near springfield?

I noticed..that at like 9PM my room will sound really quiet, but the central air is on or something..and I can't hear my computer AT ALL.

Then at like 2 AM everything is off and my computer sounds loud! And when I say loud I mean silentPCenthusiast loud..not normal person loud.

its annoying, and makes me wanna take the next step into heavy modding and really quiet the beast..

I find that its really easy not to listen about 50% of the time.
However, the reason for having a computer inaudible is for those times when I'm in a not the best mood, and have to work on my thesis, and you know how it goes - you can't focus. Those moods where every little thing annoys you. It may not just be sound, but when you have to work on a computer, its sound will be the little thing to get to you.

I'm in my room in a house, the AC is blowing, and my HDD's are loud

Hi RoGuE. I live in the Berkshires. But I have spent time in the Northampton area. It's probably warmer where you are this summer.


Thinking about it more, it would seem that for sounds above a certain frequency (I think it's about 4000 Hz) the listening/not listening distinction becomes indistinct or at least different. That's because above a certain frequency there aren't enough neurons to transmit every single oscillation, so your brain just gets "pinged" with an excitation that can only vaguely be defined in pitch. (The AAC-HE codec exploits that vagueness.) Fortunately, those frequencies are usually faint overtones. Fortunately also, I think that's above any fundamental frequency a computer drive or fan would produce, but some electrical equipment (such as a CRT monitor) is apt to. Maybe there's some other means used to tune CRT whine out. Otherwise every young person would have been driven crazy watching television.

The responses here indicate that the quest for silence is ongoing.