Forums Music Sound Engineering Mosquito – Can You Hear This?

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  • #1051951
    cheeseweasel
    Participant

      To follow on from what GL just said about hearing loss and avoid hijacking Chris’ thread… For those that haven’t come across it, the Mosquito is a sonic deterrent designed to stop teenagers from loitering outside shops by emitting a tone that supposedly only they can hear. To me it seems a bit draconian as in reality lots of older people can also hear the tone (and probably lots of today’s teenagers can’t!) – I prefer TFL’s tactic of playing classical music in tube stations to deter chavs as that’s actually quite pleasant to hear in the morning.

      Anyway, supposedly if you can hear this tone and you’re over 25 then your hearing is still pretty good (FYI it’s a 17.4kHz sine wave).

      Btw if you’re using really poor-quality speakers/headphones it might be outside of their frequency range.

      #1247274
      DaftFader
      Participant

        god that’s horrible. can easily hear that.

        #1247270
        General Lighting
        Moderator

          I can hear both mosquito tones and they are most unpleasant upon the ears. I would boycott a place using such a device. I’ve heard that in some countries the use of it is banned as it breaches human rights laws. Another unwanted side effect is that it discourages mums with children from using the shop, as well as those who take pets along with them – usually dogs but I’ve seen people walking with a cat outside my village shop (the cat remained outside, it wasn’t on a lead either but was walking to heel alongside a young woman and a small child who seemed to know its name :laugh_at: )

          #1247277
          Matt
          Participant

            I tested my hearing the other day, and i can just about hear a 19khz sine wave at 20db. It was streching my hearing big time tho.

            #1247275
            DaftFader
            Participant

              yeah i can hear 18khz ok, up to 19 it’s a real push to hear it but it’s just about audible .. at 20 i can’t hear anything .. all though can more sense there’s a noise if that makes sense.

              #1247271
              sinner69
              Participant

                I have been through a MR-scanner today and my hearing is totally messed up, everything is distorted lol

                #1247272
                noname
                Participant

                  Quite surprised (and chuffed) here – I thought my hearing was fecked in one ear and deteriorating in the other (a result of bad in-club rigs 20 years ago – I remember noticing I couldn’t hear as much when mixing a band one time, and put it down to distorted nasty speakers that I had been working with the year before – I started wearing ear defenders whenever playing in a place that I didn’t have control of the rig in)…

                  The surprise is from the fact I could not only hear the 17.4KHz tone clearly (and I agree it is very irritating when heard for a short time – I’d likely be fit to bite something if subjected to it for any length of time), but on the hearing test tone page I can hear the tone coming in at 22KHz in my right ear (the not fecked one), and just over 18KHz in my left ear using a pair of sennheiser headphones and setting the sample rate on my sound card to 48KHz. Interestingly when it was set at 44.1KHz I couldn’t hear the tone in my right ear until it hit 20KHz – I assume this is probably down to the DAC on my sound card not rendering the 22KHz tone properly when it’s the extreme top end of the range as it is with the sample rate at 44.1KHz…

                  Seems the damage did get done to my left ear (which I tended to use to check whether the speakers were working when using in-club systems, so it bore the brunt of the nasty distorted sound), but my hearing is deteriorating nowhere near as badly as I had thought it was raaaraaaraaa…

                  #1247276
                  DaftFader
                  Participant

                    to be fair tho you ear can be dmg’d in a way that effects specific freq’s across the range … not just the high end cut off.

                    When you get proper molded ear plugs with noise filters in them (agent 15 uses them) they gif you an ear test and design it to block harmfull frequencies specific to your ear.

                    #1247273
                    Raj
                    Participant

                      Thats nasty and they would be adding me to the list of people who would stay away from their shop – fs bad mp3 music is bad enough and some shops run their cheap cables for their tannoy along the power lines and they make a similar noise …..ouchies

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                    Forums Music Sound Engineering Mosquito – Can You Hear This?