[Tfug] Why do they whine?

[sitkaa at email.arizona.edu]

I have a theory. It goes like this:

When you hear a sound all the time, you tend to tune it out. This is an
automatic process, all the more easily instigated when the sounds are the edge
of the hearable. In fact, I believe that most people (and cats and dogs) can
hear these sounds, they have just gotten to where they don't hear them 
anymore.

Perhaps when you spend a few months outdoors, away from the sounds of modern
civilization, you get reaclimated to hearing the sounds - a number of insects
make these sounds, some bird calls get up into the ultrasonic, etc.

Or perhaps this is just nonsense.

Quoting keith smith <klsmith2020 at yahoo.com>:

> So maybe we are driving our dogs crazy?
>
>
> sitkaa at email.arizona.edu wrote: I have noticed those whines in many 
> electronic objects. Through some quirk of
> either genetics or merely attention, it seems that I can hear 
> frequencies that
> most people cannot. Those high pitched whines really drive me nuts.
>
> The chargers I have for my cell phone are always whining. The one in
> the car is
> so loud that I can hardly stand to have it plugged in, yet my wife 
> cannot hear
> it all. And television tubes have been driving me up the walls since I was a
> child. Even my lapton is droning on with its high pitched sound.
>
> If everybody could hear these things, surely they wouldn't be 
> designed thusly.
>
> Typically, as we grow older, we lose some of the capacity to high pitched
> sounds. I keep waiting for this to happen to me so I can be oblivious, like
> everyone else. In fact, there is some gadget that is being marketed in the UK
> that emits a loud high pitched tone that only teenagers can hear (to
> drive away
> the rifraff), kinda like the cell phone rings that are too high for 
> parents to
> hear.
>
>
>
>
> Quoting Ryan Cresawn :
>
>> On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 2:11 PM, erich  wrote:
>>> OK,
>>>         I went to the recent Worldcare outdoor sale, and bought a switch.
>>>  Brought it back home. Connected it to my system, and plugged it in to
>>>  TU Electric and noticed a whine. The whine is rather annoying when you're
>>>  trying to sleep. I've managed to reduce the sound somewhat.
>>>         I noticed no ventilation holes in this thing, so the sound is
>>>  probably
>>>  not comming from a fan. What makes a switch whine?
>>
>> Type "capacitor whine" into Google and you'll find many results.  I'm
>> not sure if it indicates any trouble.  You'll probably want to dig
>> deeper.
>>
>> Ryan
>>
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