That is actually pretty interesting! Are you sure it is the LEDs that you can hear? I would probably lean towards the mains 50Hz buzz being heard by you due to internal transformers
Depends; I’m a lot older now and deaf (but have tinnitus, yay) in one ear, but I could hear the flyback whine of old TVs. I can hear the odd switching regulator still, but most these days are switching waaaaay above even the best human hearing range.
50/60Hz buzz should be fairly rare these days except for some high power cases or some really poorly designed electronics.
It's without a doubt the LED's themselves. Moving closer to the exact location of the LED confirms it.
For some cheap products, I've physically cut one side of the LED pin to shut it up, and the buzzing stops.
Though technically it could be the sound of a capacitor charging/discharging or the resistors, not exactly sure on the exact mechanism, but it's at the very least something on the LED circuit.
Encouragement to do a double blind test on this one; box up some LED's with a power strip, one on and one off, have the person who set them randomize which are on and then you guess which (neither, R, L, both). Repeat a few times.
I know similar experiences aren't predictive, the sound is a kind of synesthesia with the concept of running electronics (which is itself pretty cool/interesting!).
A double blind would mean no results are discovered lol.
A single blind test would be fine.
And yes, I've done this. I've turned away from a device, and my partner either toggled a switch powering thw device, or a switch which wasn't connected to anything.
Perfect accuracy.
Edit: I replied when i first woke up. I didn't read carefully.
Neat experiment idea but I don't have a tools for that lol.
If I ever do, I'll pin this message and reply to it :p
...wow, you just reminded me that i used to hear LEDs, too: i'd totally forgotten about that...anyway, i can vouch that commuting a couple of hours every day in a top-down roadster for twenty years makes the problem go away; heck, the tinnitus even drowns out a lot of electronic-feedback clicks and beeps which are supposed to be audible...
Literally the only good thing about my hearing loss is I don’t have to deal with this sort of thing anymore. I used to be able to hear myself blink if the room was quiet enough. I used to get my hearing tested regularly to make sure my meds weren’t damaging it and I could hear both higher and significantly lower sounds than humans are supposed to hear. Now that one ear is basically shot they don’t care anymore about testing
I’m kinda the opposite—I miss functional LEDs on things. I miss disk activity light the most, but there’s many things that have no indication as to whether they’re even on or connected.
Overly bright LEDs are a problem tho
Blue LEDs are the absolute worst. I have to keep my bedroom door shut to sleep at night because the LED clock display on my stove is so goddamn bright it lights up the whole house.
I hate how I have to put eletrical tape over all my device lights so I can get some peace at night.
This was at its worst when blue LEDs were new. Everybody wanted to show how cool they were and used a blue LED, but they were the brightest lights imaginable.
Like, just a hint, if your indicator light actually casts shadows on my wall at night, it's too bright.
YES, especially when they're overly bright for their intended purpose. Notify bright, ok. Pin hole sized LED bright enough to light up an entire room at night, NOT OK.
I was part of a “focus group” just some random people that my friend and his team asked questions to about some humidifier or something, I genuinely don’t remember and he was shocked when I said I didn’t want ANY
LED lights on the product and he’s like “how will you know it’s on??” On a product that would absolutely make noise while running. We compromised and I told him a completely hidden LED under the product, as long as it had no light leaks would be acceptable.
I have an air purifier and one of the amazing things about it that they haven't actually advertised is that there is a button you can press to make all the LEDs go off. I just bought the best one in my price range, but if they put that feature on the box I'd have gone right for it.
link aggregators ideally do it in the other way around... Upvotes are supposed to reflect how well the content fits the community, acting as democratic curation. i'm well aware how idealistic this is.
(the word aggregator sounds it like should be an animal, like a distant cousin of an alligator)
A couple years ago, we had a downstairs apartment neighbor with a fast and very loud motorcycle, that he would literally park inside his apartment, and he'd make a point to rev it up right when he returned or left from his front door..
I confronted him, from a slight distance from our front balcony (he stayed on ground level). Anyways, I kinda lied to him, but not very rude, but I firmly spoke..
"Sir, we'd appreciate if you wouldn't rev your motorcycle up like that, it's scaring our dog."
That motherfucker had the nerve to threaten me, but I stood behind my words, with witnesses around no less. The lie, for whatever reason, the sound actually didn't scare our dog, but that was my lie, and I was sticking to it.
Well guess what? Within less than a month, apparently one of the other neighbors had that asshole evicted... 👍
I'll never understand this. Motorcycles are fantastic vehicles (fossil fuel issues aside) -- they're agile, fast, and exhilarating. But none of that enjoyment comes from the noise they make; removing your muffler is purely a selfish, "look at me!" exercise.
There's a saying in the motorcycle community: "loud pipes save lives". In other words, cars only notice motorcycles when they can hear them.
Personally, I think that was often used as an excuse for having an obnoxiously loud motorcycle. But, I've also seen first-hand how oblivious drivers are. I think Harleys are stupid. They're a way to get middle-aged dentists to part with their money and to make them feel bad-ass. But, I think that annoying sound does mean that they get noticed, which probably helps keep them alive. I'm convinced that there are riders who have died on electric motorcycles because a car turned into them because the driver never looked to see if there was anything there.
I think you're on the money here, both in that "loud pipes save lives" is a poor excuse for unreasonably loud bikes -- since it's the use of the throttle as a kind of soft horn in traffic that achieves this effect, and that's possible with virtually any ICE motorcycle -- and that this isn't possible with electric bikes, which adds a risk. In either case, it doesn't serve as a defense for increasing the volume of regular motorcycles.
I think the argument is that it acts as a sort of "passive horn". That merely by being near a car you'll be noticed if you have a motorcycle with loud pipes.
It's somewhat true of all ICE motorcycles. They're not silent. But, are they loud enough to wake a driver up out of a daze and cause them to notice the bike?
An electric motorcycle won't be noticed at all through the noise it makes. It might not be that different from a properly silenced ICE bike.
In any case, it's sad that we're in a situation where a driver whose brain isn't engaged with what's going on around him can kill a motorcyclist through inattention.
I hate that microwaves have to beep like R2-D2 everytime you push a fucking button. I was in a crappy hotel room once, and in that room was a microwave from the '90s. That thing had an analog timer and dials and physical buttons and shit. No crappy capacitive touch sensors. It was amazing. Every microwave should be like that. Oh, and when the food was done you heard a ding (LIKE A FUCKING BELL!) and that was the only sound it made aside from the ooooooooooooo sound of the thing. It was amazing. I still long for a microwave like that one.
Any noise that I don’t know is an immediate problem for me. If I don’t know what it is and I can hear it, I absolutely have to stop what I’m doing and find out. I can’t convince myself to stop this because it’s actually led me to detecting leaky pipes in my house twice now, right as they broke.
Also the sound of cotton balls rubbing together. Horrendous. And coil whine of electronics, that’s awful too. As is just the sound of electricity in general, like fluorescent lights make an awful noise. I’m gonna stop here before this becomes a novel.
You sound like me. Recently my girlfriend and I moved. One day while packing, my girlfriend came downstairs and I heard a loud-ish hissing upstairs. She had no idea what I was talking about and didn't notice it at all. I ran upstairs to check on it and it turns out she had packed some things tightly on top of some cleaning supplies. If it were up to her, the entire bottle of Lysol would've sprayed out and destroyed a lot of things in that box. I prevented that. So yeah I'm totally with you, noticing sounds that don't make immediate sense can save you trouble and it could also save your life, so as maddening as it can be it's also very useful and I won't try to stop noticing these sounds.
Umm, the sound of cotton balls rubbing together bothers you?
Do you live in a soundproof chamber? What is the frequency range of your hearing?
I literally just tried exactly that, and I can't hear a damn thing unless the cotton balls are like 2 inches or less from my ear, and even then it's rather quiet and not bothersome...
One of my sensory tortures is the feeling of cotton balls being torn apart. I think my brain registers it as a sound, but as you've said, there doesn't seem to be a sound. thinkymeat is so dumb.
Never had my hearing tested but I can say anecdotally that many times I have been at work listening to music from my computer and had people walk up to me to talk to, which leads to me saying “let me pause my music” and them to respond “what music?” I often have the volume on everything that has controllable volume as low as I can possibly set it.
I very often hear things no one else does, to the point people think I’m insane because I’m absolutely hearing it but no one else can so they don’t believe me.
My wife is the same way with cotton balls and cotton pads. She will not touch them or be near anyone using them. She recently bought reusable makeup remover cotton rounds thinghy things which made makeup removal much easier for her.
She's always been like that, and we only recently discovered she most likely have autism.
My partner got me a GPU a while back (oh my god I looked it up and it was ten years ago aaaaaaaaa) that was an incredible deal for its power, but had a TON of reports of coil whine. I was delighted to hear nothing from it the first few days of playing! Then it promptly died. To death. To shreds, even. ah well, it happens, better now than out of return period. I sent it back for a replacement and got another one, TERRIFIED its replacement would be an auditory nightmare after being lucky the first time.
I got lucky the second time, and it still works to this day!
I feel you on that one. Cotton balls don’t bother me, but I know that’s a nightmare for my mum. That and just the idea of
::: spoiler The Idea that some might not wanna think about
chewing tin foil
:::
(I’m sorry to put that in anyone’s head if that bothers them oh god lemme spoiler that just in case) bothers her a ton but doesn’t really hit for me.
Electronic sounds can be a nightmare. I love CRTs but I can’t be around many of them because they hit my brain in The Bad Spot. One tiny benefit to my tinnitus is I’ve found a few CRTs that seem to have a similar/the same frequency so I can be around them when they’re on!
Babies or toddlers crying is one of the big reasons I won't be a parent. My reaction to the noise is incredibly intense and I pretty much lose all sense of thought past getting away from the noise any way possible. People most of my life be like "nobody likes it get over yourself / you get used to it / it's worth it". No Susan you don't understand how badly I'd neglect a child to get away from that noise, it'll create a feedback loop, and I refuse to do that to a kid. Thankfully in my thirties now and people have for the most part finally stopped trying to convince me otherwise
Its not just the crying for me, its those random shrieks of delight that also get me, especially in supermarkets with all that noise and light reflecting surfaces
There are many reasons I never had children, but the crying would have been a special kind of torture
Yeah, big same. Most noises I can tolerate even though they bother me, but baby cries elicit a similar visceral reaction as what you're describing. Part of why I hate public transport.
Random douchebags roaring through the streets in their modded cars, especially after lights out. Don't even get me started on the folks who do that and crank up their stereos all the way blasting music.
As a random douchebag who cranks their stereo and roars through the street in my modded car, I apologize. I can't help it, I'm 37 but I still love loud music and driving fast.
That said, I'm not an inconsiderate random douchebag; I turn down the subwoofer and stay out of redline in residential areas. I also didn't cheap out on the exhaust. I got me a proper resonated catback, not a $200 fart can that drones on at 95dB even when idling. If you drive normally it purrs softly like a kitty cat. You'll only hear me is I want you to. And once again I apologize for all the random douchebags who do burnouts in cul-de-sacs and crank the shittiest hip hop in existence at 3AM while you try to sleep.
I feel we should be allowed to catch these drivers, strap them to a chair at ear level of their idiotic car and have it run full throttle in their ear until the gas runs out.
One of the kids at my job managed to tune his whine into a fucking siren. Seriously. He'd ramp up the volume and pitch, ramp back down, and repeat, just like an ambulance.
I can see why he did - it's very good at getting someone's attention. Our practice is to ignore it and prompt functional communication instead, and thankfully it's working as I haven't heard the "ambulance whine" in a while. But wow, it was a truly awful sound. I'll take straight screaming over that noise any day.
For the past several months, in my neighborhood, there is a periodic very low frequency thumping sound. Imagine a chopper motorcycle idling, but lower frequency and very distant. It comes, lasts about 20 minutes, and then stops. I've only heard from one other person in the neighborhood who has noticed it.
Closing the windows does nothing because it's such a low frequency. Also, because it's a low frequency, it sounds the same whether inside or outside, and it's impossible to figure out which direction it's coming from. I usually miss it during the day, but at night, if I hear it I can't get to sleep until it stops.
Everything annoys me, notifications, kids making noises, my own kids making noises, the sound of an extractor fan whilst im trying to shit in peace... getting older is mad. Explains all the grumpy old men.
I don't have kids so this might not work for you, but for me getting a nice pair of noise cancelling headphones has been a real godsend. They were a little pricey but being able to just have a silent bubble you can turn on whenever you want is great. They also completely cancel out the background sound of being on a plane.
Reversing trucks. “For safety”!? I don’t need to hear a truck reversing half a block away on the other side of the road! If you could sell a sound laser for trucks, you’d start a new business.
This video was 12 years ago but I've noticed that newer trucks had the new ""beep"" instead of the one you're thinking about
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fa28lIGuxq8
Every time I see someone raking leaves I get the urge to thank them profusely. I wish lawnmowers and leaf blowers would just vanish. What happened to scythes, anyway?
Cars: the loud music, the engine/exhaust sound, the tire-road noise, the air noise, the decrease in natural noises (e.g.: birds) because car-centric infrastructure decimated and divided natural spaces.
I don't understand the loud music. Nobody needs a radio so loud that it booms across the neighborhood even when your vehicle's windows are closed. If you think you do, it might be time to get your hearing checked. Just don't be surprised to learn you've got self-induced damage.
I already commented, but after going through the other comments I realized nobody's brought up one of the worst offenders - the sounds of eating. The squishing, chewing noises, the lips smacking, even the "ahhh" that soda commercials include whenever somebody takes a drink. It makes my skin crawl and can even make me irrationally angry.
A lot of ASMR also triggers me. It's creepy and unsettling to hear a close up recording of someone whispering. I can't explain it, I know it's not rational, but there's something about it that makes me deeply uncomfortable. I simply can't wrap my head around how people can find that sort of sound pleasant.
Yup. I could kill in cold blood the person I love most for this. ASMR is already terrible, but the sound of chewing downright transforms me. I know one person who has it as bad as I do, we are very similarly brained, if that makes any sense. I'd love to make sense of it but when science itself has so few clues...
A phone on vibrate. Getting a text or notification and the thing vibrating. Started pissing me off more and more. Its rewiring our brains like Pavlovs dogs. Every time you hear it, it makes you check your phone and connects you back into the never ending flow of information.
Fucking disconnect, breathe, brrrr..brrrr..
That 'untz untz untz' sound that techno/ravers emit from their mouth, in a pathetic attempt to mimic their techno music.
It sounds like a cat trying to vomit, and literally starts triggering my own reflex to puke as well.. 🤮
For the techno fans out there, I have nothing inherently against the music style, but your bodily organs do NOT lend themselves to the same sound effects as the synthesized instruments in your preferred choice of music!
Nah my dude, back when techno was seemingly more popular, like in the mid 2000s to mid 2010s or so, all the actual techno nerds that enjoyed the music, created their own techno in Fruity Loops, and/or loved playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), would all make this sound when discussing their music interests and works (and game scores).
It wasn't a mockery, the verbal sound literally came from the techno/raver scene. They were often fucked up on MDMA, LSD, and who the hell knows whatever else, for them it's all a fun sensory overload...
Thank goodness I haven't heard the 'untz' sound verbally emitted in over a decade, but I bet there are still some techno fans that still do it.
I can respect it as a rare brief short joke these days, but seriously back around 2008 to 2014 or so, at least 2 other employees plus the boss loved techno and would make that sound verbally at least 4 times a day.
The music is much more evolved now and there isn't really one specific genre (ie techno) any more. The four-to-the-floor beat you describe was (and arguably still is) the core of most electronic/dance style music. And yeah, it's usually the start of most of the stuff I write in Fl Studio (aka Fruity Loops), as a simple and driving core beat is what is the best for the largest possible group of people to dance to. (It's universal, regardless of genre.)*
Example from NTO here: https://youtu.be/xF0Qx9XQCNI (This is technically in the electronic/techno genre, but really can't be classified that way anymore. The FttF beat is still driving that song though...)
Probably the pinnacle of where techno and synthesizer music has evolved to is music by Mr. Bill. It's more of a full sound design thing now, and less legacy Fruity Loops'ish now. (https://youtu.be/WCrgI4ne1Kw) TBH, Mr. Bill isn't, and probably will never be "my style", but I respect the hell out of his music though. Fucking genius stuff.
Alas, I could find a million-and-one examples of modern trash-club music and it's never going to go away. Strongbad summaries that genre the best: https://youtu.be/JwZwkk7q25I
You do you, and making fun of what still is the core rhythm of nearly all electronic music ain't exactly a hard thing to do. ;)
I just thought it kinda sucked that you sounded like you might not have been exposed to, or were even aware of, how that type of music has evolved. "Techno", "90s House" or whatever, is actually dead for the most part though. The modern iterations of the scene are still massive and probably 80% of those people don't realize that the core rhythms have been exactly the same for +30 years or more.
And nah, I ain't butthurt about you making fun of "my" music and not at all trying to be argumentative. The music is so much better now, even if you can still cleanly overlay an untz-tsh. :)
note: The "four to the floor" is the underlying beat, but it usually has the "swing" knob pushed hard in dance or club, hence, the recognizably short pattern of untz-tsh. The disco beats themselves have some super cool history, regardless.
Gas station pumps here in ontario have these shreiking beeps, at every step, I fucking hate it so much
Insert card
BEEP BEEP BEEP
connecting
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Would you like a car wash today?
BEEP BEEP BEEP
pick up nozzle
BEEP BEEP BEEP
select grade
BEEP BEEP BEEP
nozzle replaced
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Have a good day
BEEP BEEP BEEP
BEEP BEEP BEEP
it can stil be heard beeping repeatedly as I fucking drive away
And if you hesitate at any step, it will beep repeatedly as if your a stupid cow taking forever to do the simplest task and need to be cattle pronged in the earballs to get your ass moving
What drives me bonkers are the unnecessarily intensely piercing-bright white LEDs, TWO of them, in the UPC scanners at Goodwill, that somehow need to be on a stupid stand so the LEDs shine EXACTLY into people standing in line. Why the hell do you need such obnoxiously bright LEDs to read a barcode? And why do they need to be always on?
And yet, the stupid "modern look" air conditioner I'm saddled with has stupid 7 segment displays that shine through the white plastic shell, and THOSE stupid LEDs have lost 95% of their brightness (in uneven spots) in less than two years...
Fucking cars. Especially Subarus and Toyotas, which have an unpleasant tone. They beep every button push on the remote, so unlocking all the doors is two pushes BEEP BEEEP BEEEP BEEEEP! Then people push the lock button more than once as they leave BEEP. BEEP… BEEEP!
My car doesn’t need to beep. I’ll turn around and look at it and see the lights flashing.
Also, my fucking dishwasher. If I program it to start in 5 hrs when electricity is cheap, and then add something, I have 3 seconds to add it before it soft cancels the cycle and I have to push a button to make it continue for some inexplicable reason. If I close it while it’s in this mode it beeps constantly for 20 seconds. If it wasn’t bolted down everyone in the family has had a time when they would have taken the opportunity to throw it out the door.
I can also relate to the chewing; if I’m eating it covets other’s noise and I survive, but I can’t stand hearing other’s mastication. Also breathing heavily. A family member has asthma and fucked up sinuses and refuses to see a doctor, so they just mouth-breathe panting all day long (and don’t have their phone silenced either).
Almost any feedback noise. How is it that phone keyboards make noise by default? Fake camera shutter too needs to be turned off immediately on every phone.
I bought a washing machine recently - it beeped four times whenever the setting dial on the front moved even one place. I heard the guy who installed it testing it out and nearly sent it back before finding I could turn it off.
Why do Foley artists do noises whenever a computer does something? If my pc had a sound every time a window opened, a loading bar appeared, or some text appeared on screen, I would not be the perennially online misfit I am today.
I watched an urban exploration video the other day and they walked into a room where there were Christmas lights hanging and on with like 10 alarms all beeping differently.
I had to stop the video. I refuse to be subjected to that criminal abuse.
even small wrist watches ticking in another side of room, eg when i asleep, everything is silent, THEY TICKING A LOT
any fcking car sound
etc I HATE ALL NOISES especially my parents voices and noises what they making
i am basically 24/7 in sensory overloads, i hate so much bright light, when sunsets, parents fcking turning on main room light, I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE ssososoososo much
When I drive a rental car and it starts beeping at me in 2 different pitches.
I don't know what you're trying to tell me!
You're running just fine, I'm buckled up and below the speed limit!
I love custom notification sounds. My ringtone and message sound is made by me. It started back in 2005 and stayed til around 2021. Now my phone is on silent. Most apps have notifications disabled manually. I got a smartwatch and only let it show notifications that I actually care about. Phone stays in DND forever.
I just cant understand how people live with notifs on for everything. Fake notifs from insta, fake notifs from whatsapp, fake notifs from email apps, youtube, any other app. By fake notifs I mean these notifications that are designed to prompt you to open an app. Suggestions, changes, invites, reminders. Fuck all of that. I want them to be useful, not trash stream of crap attention grabbers.
Notifications in general. Every app wants you to have them on and then they have the gawl to use that permission to send ads.
And you never know which one is going to do it or how but inevitably anything you give notification permissions to will send you bullshit.
Can't turn on Door Dash or Amazon Notifications because they'll find a way to leave their lane and send you span Notifications.
And I know, I can adjust settings but I'm tired of doing so. Especially when they will move or change those settings with an update. Hell my phone could update and shift things.
I tried dating apps recently and it was just a constant flow of bs Notifications.
You know what I found helps? Doing a silly impression of the sound while it's going off.
It seems to disarm the discomfort, assuming it's not super loud. Just gotta be careful not to do it around people who don't know you, or they'll think you're really special (as opposed to just your normal level of special)
To clarify, I didn't mean an alarm or siren comes from a fridge. We got a new one that beeps if you have the door open for like 15 seconds or something. It didn't have a screen but did have an ice maker.
I had this very expensive fridge. It was awesome but the “you left the door open, dumbass” alarm was the absolute quietest little beep you could possibly emit with modern electronics. Completely fucking useless, and the fact that this was in such an expensive appliance was the most ironic part of it all.
Dentist drills. I'm not really the "scared of dentists" type, but that noise can really hurt your ears.
Speeding motorcycles. It's really annoying because it's extremely unnecessary, these people are just being as loud as possible for fun. Same goes for anyone driving a Harley. I also hate the noise of motor scooters, but those are utilitarian and thus less insulting.
Now I know why EVERY battery powered toy I was ever given never got fresh batteries. I would memorize the sound effects so that I could make believe they were still functional once they died.
Nothing drives me crazier than a loud bird making the same obnoxious sounds over and over again for attention. Parrots, cockatiels, and mockingbirds are especially infuriating. I love birds but never want to own one ever again.
I got an used airfryer from my mate who didn't have any use for it. It's pretty good and useful. But it beeps at around like fucking 150dB. And it beeps constantly. Give it electricity? BEEP. Start adjusting the heat? BEEP AT EVERY TOUCH. Adjust the time? BEEP AT EVERY TOUCH. It's ready? BEEPS 60 TIMES!
My GOD the way I cannot ignore noises anymore kills me. My husband is legally deaf too so he can’t ever hear anything now and I’m always like WHERE THE FUCK IS IT COMING FROMMMM??? and he’s just like .. eh? I don’t know .. 😭😭😭 absolute hell
When people run their nails over a velvety surface. I have no idea why, but it makes my tongue itch. It's specifically the back of bus seats that bother me for some reason. I haven't ridden on a bus in years, and it still bothers me. I have no idea why.
Also applies to the automated phone trees that make you speak words instead of hitting buttons. It's like you have to be in a perfectly silent room, because the slightest breeze will make the thing stop its spiel and go, "I'm sorry, I didn't get that," and repeat everything from the very start. I usually end up swearing at them, or spamming the buttons until it transfers me to a human, or both.
I have zero patience for ignorant robots.
It: "This call may be recorded for quality purposes."
Me: "Good, I hope somebody hears how shitty this whole design is."
Driving a modern car is like sitting next to a toddler playing on an electric keyboard:
Welcome theme tune, traffic sign detected, over speed limit, look at the road, you look tired, you put the car in reverse... Ding-ding-ding
As someone else said, basically any unknown sound is the worst. I always think it could be something bad or at least troublesome. And it's turned out to be the case many times. And even if harmless, goddamn some sounds are annoying. There's this sound that construction equipment makes, not exactly a backup beep, but a "bleep-bleep-bleep [pause] bleep-bleep-bleep" ad infinitum. It's shrill and horrible, but worse, it feels like it will never stop. At an old job there was that sound happening outside for hours. Literally no one else seemed to even notice it. I was becoming so annoyed I wanted to grab some wire cutters, go outside and find the wire to the damned thing and cut it. Obviously I wouldn't actually do that but it was so annoying I couldn't work. No one else batted an eye. It was like a surrealist movie where the main character is going crazy. So yeah, sounds definitely bother me sometimes. I think the best sound on the other handle, is a babbling brook. Camping near one is so relaxing.
Edit: oh and specifically regarding the post itself, yeah, appliances beeping are awful, unless it's just a single useful beep. My parents' appliances all are constantly beeping and it drives me bananas.
Ambulances and emergency vehicles. I live in a busy place and there's lots of ambulances and emergency vehicles passing on the streets in front of my place. Several times a day. And the most annoying ones are the ambulances just switching the siren on and off every few millisecond.
I understand the need for expediency but those loud sirens are extra loud so that car drivers can hear them while sitting in their insulated bubbles, while the rest of us have to suffer through that noise. If emergency vehicles were so important, they would have emergency lanes in places where they have to go frequently, so they don't get stuck behind traffic and don't have to lay on their insanely loud horns and jerk their sirens.
My fancy oven that thinks it needs to cool and runs the fan at max speed for 2 minutes after I used the microwave for 25 seconds.
And no way to turn it off.
It also keeps beeping/warning me for a long time until I open it.
Never am I buying that again.
OK since nobody has said it yet. How everything has a goddamn LED in it to show its on or off or disconnected or whatever.
I hate how I have to put eletrical tape over all my device lights so I can get some peace at night.
Edit: shit this thread is specifically about noises, not general annoyances. I do not retract my statement however.
Count your lucky stars you cannot hear LED's.
I can. My hearing is extremely sensitive.
I've gone through the effort to set up smart plugs for most of my devices, to turn off automatically, for no other reason than eliminating the buzz.
That is actually pretty interesting! Are you sure it is the LEDs that you can hear? I would probably lean towards the mains 50Hz buzz being heard by you due to internal transformers
Depends; I’m a lot older now and deaf (but have tinnitus, yay) in one ear, but I could hear the flyback whine of old TVs. I can hear the odd switching regulator still, but most these days are switching waaaaay above even the best human hearing range.
50/60Hz buzz should be fairly rare these days except for some high power cases or some really poorly designed electronics.
Man, I hated that sound. A lot of computer monitors had it too before they switched to LED/LCD displays.
It's without a doubt the LED's themselves. Moving closer to the exact location of the LED confirms it.
For some cheap products, I've physically cut one side of the LED pin to shut it up, and the buzzing stops.
Though technically it could be the sound of a capacitor charging/discharging or the resistors, not exactly sure on the exact mechanism, but it's at the very least something on the LED circuit.
Encouragement to do a double blind test on this one; box up some LED's with a power strip, one on and one off, have the person who set them randomize which are on and then you guess which (neither, R, L, both). Repeat a few times.
I know similar experiences aren't predictive, the sound is a kind of synesthesia with the concept of running electronics (which is itself pretty cool/interesting!).
A double blind would mean no results are discovered lol.
A single blind test would be fine.
And yes, I've done this. I've turned away from a device, and my partner either toggled a switch powering thw device, or a switch which wasn't connected to anything.Perfect accuracy.
Edit: I replied when i first woke up. I didn't read carefully.
Neat experiment idea but I don't have a tools for that lol.
If I ever do, I'll pin this message and reply to it :p
Oof. I hear cheap charging blocks, LEDs would suck
Charging is hit or miss for me, my USB-A > USB-C outlets are silent, but I can hear the buzz from USB-C > USB-C
...wow, you just reminded me that i used to hear LEDs, too: i'd totally forgotten about that...anyway, i can vouch that commuting a couple of hours every day in a top-down roadster for twenty years makes the problem go away; heck, the tinnitus even drowns out a lot of electronic-feedback clicks and beeps which are supposed to be audible...
Literally the only good thing about my hearing loss is I don’t have to deal with this sort of thing anymore. I used to be able to hear myself blink if the room was quiet enough. I used to get my hearing tested regularly to make sure my meds weren’t damaging it and I could hear both higher and significantly lower sounds than humans are supposed to hear. Now that one ear is basically shot they don’t care anymore about testing
I’m kinda the opposite—I miss functional LEDs on things. I miss disk activity light the most, but there’s many things that have no indication as to whether they’re even on or connected. Overly bright LEDs are a problem tho
Blue LEDs are the absolute worst. I have to keep my bedroom door shut to sleep at night because the LED clock display on my stove is so goddamn bright it lights up the whole house.
This was at its worst when blue LEDs were new. Everybody wanted to show how cool they were and used a blue LED, but they were the brightest lights imaginable.
Like, just a hint, if your indicator light actually casts shadows on my wall at night, it's too bright.
YES, especially when they're overly bright for their intended purpose. Notify bright, ok. Pin hole sized LED bright enough to light up an entire room at night, NOT OK.
I was part of a “focus group” just some random people that my friend and his team asked questions to about some humidifier or something, I genuinely don’t remember and he was shocked when I said I didn’t want ANY LED lights on the product and he’s like “how will you know it’s on??” On a product that would absolutely make noise while running. We compromised and I told him a completely hidden LED under the product, as long as it had no light leaks would be acceptable.
I have an air purifier and one of the amazing things about it that they haven't actually advertised is that there is a button you can press to make all the LEDs go off. I just bought the best one in my price range, but if they put that feature on the box I'd have gone right for it.
hitting the upvote so hard and then seeing the community
hmmmmm
Welcome
😜
link aggregators ideally do it in the other way around... Upvotes are supposed to reflect how well the content fits the community, acting as democratic curation. i'm well aware how idealistic this is.
(the word aggregator sounds it like should be an animal, like a distant cousin of an alligator)
Easily the assholes on motorbikes who go out of their way to be as noisy as possible and cause a whole row of houses to vibrate tangibly.
At my last place I used to wake up 2-3 times a night from this.
Oof, phuck!
A couple years ago, we had a downstairs apartment neighbor with a fast and very loud motorcycle, that he would literally park inside his apartment, and he'd make a point to rev it up right when he returned or left from his front door..
I confronted him, from a slight distance from our front balcony (he stayed on ground level). Anyways, I kinda lied to him, but not very rude, but I firmly spoke..
"Sir, we'd appreciate if you wouldn't rev your motorcycle up like that, it's scaring our dog."
That motherfucker had the nerve to threaten me, but I stood behind my words, with witnesses around no less. The lie, for whatever reason, the sound actually didn't scare our dog, but that was my lie, and I was sticking to it.
Well guess what? Within less than a month, apparently one of the other neighbors had that asshole evicted... 👍
I'll never understand this. Motorcycles are fantastic vehicles (fossil fuel issues aside) -- they're agile, fast, and exhilarating. But none of that enjoyment comes from the noise they make; removing your muffler is purely a selfish, "look at me!" exercise.
There's a saying in the motorcycle community: "loud pipes save lives". In other words, cars only notice motorcycles when they can hear them.
Personally, I think that was often used as an excuse for having an obnoxiously loud motorcycle. But, I've also seen first-hand how oblivious drivers are. I think Harleys are stupid. They're a way to get middle-aged dentists to part with their money and to make them feel bad-ass. But, I think that annoying sound does mean that they get noticed, which probably helps keep them alive. I'm convinced that there are riders who have died on electric motorcycles because a car turned into them because the driver never looked to see if there was anything there.
I think you're on the money here, both in that "loud pipes save lives" is a poor excuse for unreasonably loud bikes -- since it's the use of the throttle as a kind of soft horn in traffic that achieves this effect, and that's possible with virtually any ICE motorcycle -- and that this isn't possible with electric bikes, which adds a risk. In either case, it doesn't serve as a defense for increasing the volume of regular motorcycles.
I think the argument is that it acts as a sort of "passive horn". That merely by being near a car you'll be noticed if you have a motorcycle with loud pipes.
It's somewhat true of all ICE motorcycles. They're not silent. But, are they loud enough to wake a driver up out of a daze and cause them to notice the bike?
An electric motorcycle won't be noticed at all through the noise it makes. It might not be that different from a properly silenced ICE bike.
In any case, it's sad that we're in a situation where a driver whose brain isn't engaged with what's going on around him can kill a motorcyclist through inattention.
Changing my motorcycle exhaust was purely for performance for me. I hate how loud it is but the stock one was so corked up the engine was choking
I hate that microwaves have to beep like R2-D2 everytime you push a fucking button. I was in a crappy hotel room once, and in that room was a microwave from the '90s. That thing had an analog timer and dials and physical buttons and shit. No crappy capacitive touch sensors. It was amazing. Every microwave should be like that. Oh, and when the food was done you heard a ding (LIKE A FUCKING BELL!) and that was the only sound it made aside from the ooooooooooooo sound of the thing. It was amazing. I still long for a microwave like that one.
I’ve seen a few newer models that have a silence mode. If you have a newer microwave you may want to look into it.
Yeah, but nothing will beat that old fossil. It truly was the perfect microwave.
I’ve silenced my microwave and I’ve never looked back!!
I haven’t had a microwave in a decade and have zero regrets. Every now and then it would be handy, but it’s really not a necessity.
Any noise that I don’t know is an immediate problem for me. If I don’t know what it is and I can hear it, I absolutely have to stop what I’m doing and find out. I can’t convince myself to stop this because it’s actually led me to detecting leaky pipes in my house twice now, right as they broke.
Also the sound of cotton balls rubbing together. Horrendous. And coil whine of electronics, that’s awful too. As is just the sound of electricity in general, like fluorescent lights make an awful noise. I’m gonna stop here before this becomes a novel.
You sound like me. Recently my girlfriend and I moved. One day while packing, my girlfriend came downstairs and I heard a loud-ish hissing upstairs. She had no idea what I was talking about and didn't notice it at all. I ran upstairs to check on it and it turns out she had packed some things tightly on top of some cleaning supplies. If it were up to her, the entire bottle of Lysol would've sprayed out and destroyed a lot of things in that box. I prevented that. So yeah I'm totally with you, noticing sounds that don't make immediate sense can save you trouble and it could also save your life, so as maddening as it can be it's also very useful and I won't try to stop noticing these sounds.
I feel the same way. I'm always "overreacting" no matter how much trouble or risk I avoid by reacting. It's pretty exhausting.
Umm, the sound of cotton balls rubbing together bothers you?
Do you live in a soundproof chamber? What is the frequency range of your hearing?
I literally just tried exactly that, and I can't hear a damn thing unless the cotton balls are like 2 inches or less from my ear, and even then it's rather quiet and not bothersome...
It's almost like people on the autism spectrum have different sensory experiences or something.
One of my sensory tortures is the feeling of cotton balls being torn apart. I think my brain registers it as a sound, but as you've said, there doesn't seem to be a sound. thinkymeat is so dumb.
Never had my hearing tested but I can say anecdotally that many times I have been at work listening to music from my computer and had people walk up to me to talk to, which leads to me saying “let me pause my music” and them to respond “what music?” I often have the volume on everything that has controllable volume as low as I can possibly set it.
I very often hear things no one else does, to the point people think I’m insane because I’m absolutely hearing it but no one else can so they don’t believe me.
My wife is the same way with cotton balls and cotton pads. She will not touch them or be near anyone using them. She recently bought reusable makeup remover cotton rounds thinghy things which made makeup removal much easier for her.
She's always been like that, and we only recently discovered she most likely have autism.
My partner got me a GPU a while back (oh my god I looked it up and it was ten years ago aaaaaaaaa) that was an incredible deal for its power, but had a TON of reports of coil whine. I was delighted to hear nothing from it the first few days of playing! Then it promptly died. To death. To shreds, even. ah well, it happens, better now than out of return period. I sent it back for a replacement and got another one, TERRIFIED its replacement would be an auditory nightmare after being lucky the first time.
I got lucky the second time, and it still works to this day!
I feel you on that one. Cotton balls don’t bother me, but I know that’s a nightmare for my mum. That and just the idea of
::: spoiler The Idea that some might not wanna think about chewing tin foil :::
(I’m sorry to put that in anyone’s head if that bothers them oh god lemme spoiler that just in case) bothers her a ton but doesn’t really hit for me.
Electronic sounds can be a nightmare. I love CRTs but I can’t be around many of them because they hit my brain in The Bad Spot. One tiny benefit to my tinnitus is I’ve found a few CRTs that seem to have a similar/the same frequency so I can be around them when they’re on!
Babies or toddlers crying is one of the big reasons I won't be a parent. My reaction to the noise is incredibly intense and I pretty much lose all sense of thought past getting away from the noise any way possible. People most of my life be like "nobody likes it get over yourself / you get used to it / it's worth it". No Susan you don't understand how badly I'd neglect a child to get away from that noise, it'll create a feedback loop, and I refuse to do that to a kid. Thankfully in my thirties now and people have for the most part finally stopped trying to convince me otherwise
Its not just the crying for me, its those random shrieks of delight that also get me, especially in supermarkets with all that noise and light reflecting surfaces
There are many reasons I never had children, but the crying would have been a special kind of torture
Yeah, big same. Most noises I can tolerate even though they bother me, but baby cries elicit a similar visceral reaction as what you're describing. Part of why I hate public transport.
I don't like kids so I can relate
Random douchebags roaring through the streets in their modded cars, especially after lights out. Don't even get me started on the folks who do that and crank up their stereos all the way blasting music.
As a random douchebag who cranks their stereo and roars through the street in my modded car, I apologize. I can't help it, I'm 37 but I still love loud music and driving fast.
That said, I'm not an inconsiderate random douchebag; I turn down the subwoofer and stay out of redline in residential areas. I also didn't cheap out on the exhaust. I got me a proper resonated catback, not a $200 fart can that drones on at 95dB even when idling. If you drive normally it purrs softly like a kitty cat. You'll only hear me is I want you to. And once again I apologize for all the random douchebags who do burnouts in cul-de-sacs and crank the shittiest hip hop in existence at 3AM while you try to sleep.
I feel we should be allowed to catch these drivers, strap them to a chair at ear level of their idiotic car and have it run full throttle in their ear until the gas runs out.
That along with obnoxiously loud motorcycles tops the list for me.
Should be confiscated on sight (sound?) and tossed into a portable metal crusher.
Most annoying noise is my phone alarm in the morning.
Why did we build a society where we must wake up and drive away from our homes full of love and beauty at the maximum legal speed every day?
One of the kids at my job managed to tune his whine into a fucking siren. Seriously. He'd ramp up the volume and pitch, ramp back down, and repeat, just like an ambulance.
I can see why he did - it's very good at getting someone's attention. Our practice is to ignore it and prompt functional communication instead, and thankfully it's working as I haven't heard the "ambulance whine" in a while. But wow, it was a truly awful sound. I'll take straight screaming over that noise any day.
Man, teaching became a lot harder when they outlawed tasers.
For the past several months, in my neighborhood, there is a periodic very low frequency thumping sound. Imagine a chopper motorcycle idling, but lower frequency and very distant. It comes, lasts about 20 minutes, and then stops. I've only heard from one other person in the neighborhood who has noticed it.
Closing the windows does nothing because it's such a low frequency. Also, because it's a low frequency, it sounds the same whether inside or outside, and it's impossible to figure out which direction it's coming from. I usually miss it during the day, but at night, if I hear it I can't get to sleep until it stops.
The Hum
Everything annoys me, notifications, kids making noises, my own kids making noises, the sound of an extractor fan whilst im trying to shit in peace... getting older is mad. Explains all the grumpy old men.
I don't have kids so this might not work for you, but for me getting a nice pair of noise cancelling headphones has been a real godsend. They were a little pricey but being able to just have a silent bubble you can turn on whenever you want is great. They also completely cancel out the background sound of being on a plane.
I am not autistic, but I have pretty severe misophonia. Sand paper is the worst. Just thinking about it is uncomfortable.
Yeah, sandpaper is rough
Gadamyu.
Reluctantly upvoted.
Polystyrene. Everything about it is terrible, it makes a horrible squeaking noise.
most high pitched squeals
I like it when my cat beeps and makes noises.
Don't put it in reverse then.
Honestly...the discord notification or my phone vibrating.
When you're busy with something but the crew starts a back and forth in the group chat and it just keeps going off.
There should be a setting that only sends a notification once from the same channel over a set period of time.
I find I simultaneously want them to stfu but also know everything they're saying.
Its not the notification sound mind you. Its the sound of the phone vibrating against whatever its resting on.
The key for me is, set notifications for DMs and @s only.
Don't need to be getting pinged for channel messages.
I have a super low tolerance for distracting noises so I deadass turned discord message sound off.
Phone goes brrr
Reversing trucks. “For safety”!? I don’t need to hear a truck reversing half a block away on the other side of the road! If you could sell a sound laser for trucks, you’d start a new business.
This right here. I lived near a narrow road, where a building project was being realized. The trucks al had to reverse the entire road.
The construction noice didn't bother me, but the beeping did.
I know it's for the visually impaired, but it clashed with my impairment.
This video was 12 years ago but I've noticed that newer trucks had the new ""beep"" instead of the one you're thinking about https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fa28lIGuxq8
Leaf blower
Every time I see someone raking leaves I get the urge to thank them profusely. I wish lawnmowers and leaf blowers would just vanish. What happened to scythes, anyway?
Cars: the loud music, the engine/exhaust sound, the tire-road noise, the air noise, the decrease in natural noises (e.g.: birds) because car-centric infrastructure decimated and divided natural spaces.
I don't understand the loud music. Nobody needs a radio so loud that it booms across the neighborhood even when your vehicle's windows are closed. If you think you do, it might be time to get your hearing checked. Just don't be surprised to learn you've got self-induced damage.
I particularly hate the loud ass Harleys with a radio somehow order than the bike.
They do it on purpose because they enjoy bothering other people. Same with loud-ass motorcycles and car engines for the most part.
I already commented, but after going through the other comments I realized nobody's brought up one of the worst offenders - the sounds of eating. The squishing, chewing noises, the lips smacking, even the "ahhh" that soda commercials include whenever somebody takes a drink. It makes my skin crawl and can even make me irrationally angry.
A lot of ASMR also triggers me. It's creepy and unsettling to hear a close up recording of someone whispering. I can't explain it, I know it's not rational, but there's something about it that makes me deeply uncomfortable. I simply can't wrap my head around how people can find that sort of sound pleasant.
Yup. I could kill in cold blood the person I love most for this. ASMR is already terrible, but the sound of chewing downright transforms me. I know one person who has it as bad as I do, we are very similarly brained, if that makes any sense. I'd love to make sense of it but when science itself has so few clues...
A phone on vibrate. Getting a text or notification and the thing vibrating. Started pissing me off more and more. Its rewiring our brains like Pavlovs dogs. Every time you hear it, it makes you check your phone and connects you back into the never ending flow of information.
Fucking disconnect, breathe, brrrr..brrrr..
That 'untz untz untz' sound that techno/ravers emit from their mouth, in a pathetic attempt to mimic their techno music.
It sounds like a cat trying to vomit, and literally starts triggering my own reflex to puke as well.. 🤮
For the techno fans out there, I have nothing inherently against the music style, but your bodily organs do NOT lend themselves to the same sound effects as the synthesized instruments in your preferred choice of music!
I thought people only made that sound jokingly to mock the repetitive nature of that music.
Nah my dude, back when techno was seemingly more popular, like in the mid 2000s to mid 2010s or so, all the actual techno nerds that enjoyed the music, created their own techno in Fruity Loops, and/or loved playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), would all make this sound when discussing their music interests and works (and game scores).
It wasn't a mockery, the verbal sound literally came from the techno/raver scene. They were often fucked up on MDMA, LSD, and who the hell knows whatever else, for them it's all a fun sensory overload...
Thank goodness I haven't heard the 'untz' sound verbally emitted in over a decade, but I bet there are still some techno fans that still do it.
Haha alright. I mean, I make that sound myself sometimes. Always as a joke.
I can respect it as a rare brief short joke these days, but seriously back around 2008 to 2014 or so, at least 2 other employees plus the boss loved techno and would make that sound verbally at least 4 times a day.
The music is much more evolved now and there isn't really one specific genre (ie techno) any more. The four-to-the-floor beat you describe was (and arguably still is) the core of most electronic/dance style music. And yeah, it's usually the start of most of the stuff I write in Fl Studio (aka Fruity Loops), as a simple and driving core beat is what is the best for the largest possible group of people to dance to. (It's universal, regardless of genre.)*
Example from NTO here: https://youtu.be/xF0Qx9XQCNI (This is technically in the electronic/techno genre, but really can't be classified that way anymore. The FttF beat is still driving that song though...)
Probably the pinnacle of where techno and synthesizer music has evolved to is music by Mr. Bill. It's more of a full sound design thing now, and less legacy Fruity Loops'ish now. (https://youtu.be/WCrgI4ne1Kw) TBH, Mr. Bill isn't, and probably will never be "my style", but I respect the hell out of his music though. Fucking genius stuff.
Alas, I could find a million-and-one examples of modern trash-club music and it's never going to go away. Strongbad summaries that genre the best: https://youtu.be/JwZwkk7q25I
You do you, and making fun of what still is the core rhythm of nearly all electronic music ain't exactly a hard thing to do. ;)
I just thought it kinda sucked that you sounded like you might not have been exposed to, or were even aware of, how that type of music has evolved. "Techno", "90s House" or whatever, is actually dead for the most part though. The modern iterations of the scene are still massive and probably 80% of those people don't realize that the core rhythms have been exactly the same for +30 years or more.
And nah, I ain't butthurt about you making fun of "my" music and not at all trying to be argumentative. The music is so much better now, even if you can still cleanly overlay an untz-tsh. :)
Hehe yeah I don't go past 3-4 untzes typically. Would definitely be annoying over a longer timespan
Gas station pumps here in ontario have these shreiking beeps, at every step, I fucking hate it so much
Insert card
BEEP BEEP BEEP
connecting
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Would you like a car wash today?
BEEP BEEP BEEP
pick up nozzle
BEEP BEEP BEEP
select grade
BEEP BEEP BEEP
nozzle replaced
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Have a good day
BEEP BEEP BEEP
BEEP BEEP BEEP
it can stil be heard beeping repeatedly as I fucking drive away
And if you hesitate at any step, it will beep repeatedly as if your a stupid cow taking forever to do the simplest task and need to be cattle pronged in the earballs to get your ass moving
I'm stealing "cattle pronged in the earballs"
I learned how to solder purely to remove unnecessary beepers and LEDs from appliances
What drives me bonkers are the unnecessarily intensely piercing-bright white LEDs, TWO of them, in the UPC scanners at Goodwill, that somehow need to be on a stupid stand so the LEDs shine EXACTLY into people standing in line. Why the hell do you need such obnoxiously bright LEDs to read a barcode? And why do they need to be always on?
And yet, the stupid "modern look" air conditioner I'm saddled with has stupid 7 segment displays that shine through the white plastic shell, and THOSE stupid LEDs have lost 95% of their brightness (in uneven spots) in less than two years...
Anyone else hate that the checkout scan noise is constantly going off in grocery stores?
Or when it's a bulk item and it reads out what you're buying for all the other customers to hear
Fucking cars. Especially Subarus and Toyotas, which have an unpleasant tone. They beep every button push on the remote, so unlocking all the doors is two pushes BEEP BEEEP BEEEP BEEEEP! Then people push the lock button more than once as they leave BEEP. BEEP… BEEEP!
My car doesn’t need to beep. I’ll turn around and look at it and see the lights flashing.
Also, my fucking dishwasher. If I program it to start in 5 hrs when electricity is cheap, and then add something, I have 3 seconds to add it before it soft cancels the cycle and I have to push a button to make it continue for some inexplicable reason. If I close it while it’s in this mode it beeps constantly for 20 seconds. If it wasn’t bolted down everyone in the family has had a time when they would have taken the opportunity to throw it out the door.
I can also relate to the chewing; if I’m eating it covets other’s noise and I survive, but I can’t stand hearing other’s mastication. Also breathing heavily. A family member has asthma and fucked up sinuses and refuses to see a doctor, so they just mouth-breathe panting all day long (and don’t have their phone silenced either).
Almost any feedback noise. How is it that phone keyboards make noise by default? Fake camera shutter too needs to be turned off immediately on every phone.
I bought a washing machine recently - it beeped four times whenever the setting dial on the front moved even one place. I heard the guy who installed it testing it out and nearly sent it back before finding I could turn it off.
Why do Foley artists do noises whenever a computer does something? If my pc had a sound every time a window opened, a loading bar appeared, or some text appeared on screen, I would not be the perennially online misfit I am today.
I watched an urban exploration video the other day and they walked into a room where there were Christmas lights hanging and on with like 10 alarms all beeping differently.
I had to stop the video. I refuse to be subjected to that criminal abuse.
Radio ads with alarm clocks, ringing phones etc. make me want to murder.
I fucking hate breathing sounds. I can't help it.
any
even small wrist watches ticking in another side of room, eg when i asleep, everything is silent, THEY TICKING A LOT
any fcking car sound
etc I HATE ALL NOISES especially my parents voices and noises what they making
i am basically 24/7 in sensory overloads, i hate so much bright light, when sunsets, parents fcking turning on main room light, I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE ssososoososo much
When I drive a rental car and it starts beeping at me in 2 different pitches.
I don't know what you're trying to tell me!
You're running just fine, I'm buckled up and below the speed limit!
I love custom notification sounds. My ringtone and message sound is made by me. It started back in 2005 and stayed til around 2021. Now my phone is on silent. Most apps have notifications disabled manually. I got a smartwatch and only let it show notifications that I actually care about. Phone stays in DND forever.
I just cant understand how people live with notifs on for everything. Fake notifs from insta, fake notifs from whatsapp, fake notifs from email apps, youtube, any other app. By fake notifs I mean these notifications that are designed to prompt you to open an app. Suggestions, changes, invites, reminders. Fuck all of that. I want them to be useful, not trash stream of crap attention grabbers.
Notifications in general. Every app wants you to have them on and then they have the gawl to use that permission to send ads.
And you never know which one is going to do it or how but inevitably anything you give notification permissions to will send you bullshit.
Can't turn on Door Dash or Amazon Notifications because they'll find a way to leave their lane and send you span Notifications.
And I know, I can adjust settings but I'm tired of doing so. Especially when they will move or change those settings with an update. Hell my phone could update and shift things.
I tried dating apps recently and it was just a constant flow of bs Notifications.
You know what I found helps? Doing a silly impression of the sound while it's going off.
It seems to disarm the discomfort, assuming it's not super loud. Just gotta be careful not to do it around people who don't know you, or they'll think you're really special (as opposed to just your normal level of special)
Coil whine. Especially if it ends up triggering an acute tinnitus flare up, which is like coil whine times a million
Repetitive and useless noises at any time.
Loud noises when I’m trying to sleep - like next door playing music loudly or something.
People playing music, videos, or voice/video calls on their phone speaker in public spaces, subways or planes.
People letting their phone ring loudly while just looking at it and not silencing it.
People with loud text send/receive tones while texting.
Any alarm, siren, or beep from a fridge
Wait what? When did this start happening?
Was it somewhere between the inclusion of the ice maker through the inclusion of new 'smart' advertising fridges?
I've never heard those things before, and surely hope to never hear that...
To clarify, I didn't mean an alarm or siren comes from a fridge. We got a new one that beeps if you have the door open for like 15 seconds or something. It didn't have a screen but did have an ice maker.
I wish that stuff could be disabled, even if temporarily. Trying to clean a fridge that won't stop beeping is annoying as hell.
I had this very expensive fridge. It was awesome but the “you left the door open, dumbass” alarm was the absolute quietest little beep you could possibly emit with modern electronics. Completely fucking useless, and the fact that this was in such an expensive appliance was the most ironic part of it all.
Dentist drills. I'm not really the "scared of dentists" type, but that noise can really hurt your ears.
Speeding motorcycles. It's really annoying because it's extremely unnecessary, these people are just being as loud as possible for fun. Same goes for anyone driving a Harley. I also hate the noise of motor scooters, but those are utilitarian and thus less insulting.
Cafeteria style restaurants as a kid. The sounds of all those people eating was gross. This was before there were tvs every 5 ft playing Fox News.
Now I know why EVERY battery powered toy I was ever given never got fresh batteries. I would memorize the sound effects so that I could make believe they were still functional once they died.
I suppose I did the same thing with my father.
Nothing drives me crazier than a loud bird making the same obnoxious sounds over and over again for attention. Parrots, cockatiels, and mockingbirds are especially infuriating. I love birds but never want to own one ever again.
A car horn at the wrong moment can completey ruin my day. And I don't mean when it is aimed at me. Just the sound itself at the wrong time.
Never visit New Jersey, it's pretty much constant there. It's how I always know I'm home when I go to visit.
Guls. I have developed an irrational and visceral anger towards their constant screeching during the summer months.
I got an used airfryer from my mate who didn't have any use for it. It's pretty good and useful. But it beeps at around like fucking 150dB. And it beeps constantly. Give it electricity? BEEP. Start adjusting the heat? BEEP AT EVERY TOUCH. Adjust the time? BEEP AT EVERY TOUCH. It's ready? BEEPS 60 TIMES!
Open it up and cover the beeper in hot glue or putty. Or just rip it out!
That worked with my old XP PC, why not with this heating machine too!
My GOD the way I cannot ignore noises anymore kills me. My husband is legally deaf too so he can’t ever hear anything now and I’m always like WHERE THE FUCK IS IT COMING FROMMMM??? and he’s just like .. eh? I don’t know .. 😭😭😭 absolute hell
When people run their nails over a velvety surface. I have no idea why, but it makes my tongue itch. It's specifically the back of bus seats that bother me for some reason. I haven't ridden on a bus in years, and it still bothers me. I have no idea why.
Idk, maybe nails on a chalkboard, or someone blowing a raspberry.
"I'm sorry, I don't know how to anwe..."
SHUT THE FUCK UP ALEXA, NO ONE'S ASKING YOU, SLUT
Also applies to the automated phone trees that make you speak words instead of hitting buttons. It's like you have to be in a perfectly silent room, because the slightest breeze will make the thing stop its spiel and go, "I'm sorry, I didn't get that," and repeat everything from the very start. I usually end up swearing at them, or spamming the buttons until it transfers me to a human, or both.
I have zero patience for ignorant robots.
It: "This call may be recorded for quality purposes."
Me: "Good, I hope somebody hears how shitty this whole design is."
my neighbors electric garage door opener wakes me up almost ever god damn day i hate the noise with the energy of a million suns
Mosquito devices still pierce right into my brain, I can't spend too long in supermarkets that use it and those sonic cat scarers are a nightmare
Screaming/fights. Makes my want to curl up into a ball.
Humans age on a curve, returning to a state of infancy as they get older.
The older I get the more tolerant I am of most people. I just can't tolerate the intolerant.
A lot of them are small things that stand out in the background, like coil whine as somebody else mentioned
Driving a modern car is like sitting next to a toddler playing on an electric keyboard: Welcome theme tune, traffic sign detected, over speed limit, look at the road, you look tired, you put the car in reverse... Ding-ding-ding
Which noise... Hmm.
How about all of them? I feel like Spiderman needing to dull/focus his senses but without the superpower benefits.
As someone else said, basically any unknown sound is the worst. I always think it could be something bad or at least troublesome. And it's turned out to be the case many times. And even if harmless, goddamn some sounds are annoying. There's this sound that construction equipment makes, not exactly a backup beep, but a "bleep-bleep-bleep [pause] bleep-bleep-bleep" ad infinitum. It's shrill and horrible, but worse, it feels like it will never stop. At an old job there was that sound happening outside for hours. Literally no one else seemed to even notice it. I was becoming so annoyed I wanted to grab some wire cutters, go outside and find the wire to the damned thing and cut it. Obviously I wouldn't actually do that but it was so annoying I couldn't work. No one else batted an eye. It was like a surrealist movie where the main character is going crazy. So yeah, sounds definitely bother me sometimes. I think the best sound on the other handle, is a babbling brook. Camping near one is so relaxing.
Edit: oh and specifically regarding the post itself, yeah, appliances beeping are awful, unless it's just a single useful beep. My parents' appliances all are constantly beeping and it drives me bananas.
Ambulances and emergency vehicles. I live in a busy place and there's lots of ambulances and emergency vehicles passing on the streets in front of my place. Several times a day. And the most annoying ones are the ambulances just switching the siren on and off every few millisecond.
I understand the need for expediency but those loud sirens are extra loud so that car drivers can hear them while sitting in their insulated bubbles, while the rest of us have to suffer through that noise. If emergency vehicles were so important, they would have emergency lanes in places where they have to go frequently, so they don't get stuck behind traffic and don't have to lay on their insanely loud horns and jerk their sirens.
My fancy oven that thinks it needs to cool and runs the fan at max speed for 2 minutes after I used the microwave for 25 seconds.
And no way to turn it off.
It also keeps beeping/warning me for a long time until I open it.
Never am I buying that again.