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?
It’s especially common among people with Autism/ASD and ADHD to hear noises other people often don’t hear. Like those LED light bars, or coffee pot crackling, or electricity from appliances. For ADHD I’ve seen a few people claim that those sounds are just as audible for everyone else, but everybody just subconsciously filters it out and doesn’t notice it, while people with ADHD are easily caught by it. I assume for ASD it would be somewhat similar – plus Autistic people are a lot more susceptible to sensory issues, although people with ADHD also often have fucked up senses, which can make noises like that a LOT more noticeable (and even problematic/headache-inducing/stressful/painful).
ah…
…shit
ADHD really seems like a superpower
This is an extremely common line that neurotypical people use to minimize the struggles that people with ADHD face on a daily basis. Pretty much every person with ADHD has heard the “well it sounds like you’re great at multitasking so it’s like a superpower” line. In reality, people with ADHD aren’t any better at multitasking; They’re just constantly forced into it because of their inability to focus on a single boring task at a time.
ADHD attention is directed by four main things: Interest, Novelty, Challenge, and Urgency.
If you find a task interesting, it’s all you’ll focus on. The person will struggle to focus on homework, but can focus on video games for hours. Even putting off basic needs like eating, sleeping, or using the restroom. A person with ADHD can literally focus on an interesting task so hard that they forget to feel hungry. This phenomenon is colloquially known as hyperfocus, and leads to a lot of common ADHD complaints (like how they’re always late, because they get hyperfocused on a task and completely lose track of the time.)
But if it’s not interesting, it needs to be novel. It needs to be something new. Pretty much every person with ADHD has a mountain of discarded hobbies, because the new hobby caught their attention while it was novel. But as soon as the novelty wore off, their interest waned. Because they weren’t really interested in the hobby; They were simply enjoying the novelty.
If it’s not interesting or novel, it needs to be challenging. People with ADHD will excel at big difficult projects at work, but struggle to complete the mundane day-to-day tasks. Because with neurotypical people, the brain will release a small amount of dopamine as a reward when they complete small tasks. It’s the brain’s way of saying “hey we did a good thing, so I’ll reward myself and be able to focus on it again next time!” But people with ADHD don’t get those small dopamine rewards. People with ADHD only get dopamine rewards for completing big difficult tasks. So they’re able to focus on those big difficult tasks, because they know it’ll lead to a big dopamine payoff in the end.
Lastly, there’s urgency. If a task isn’t interesting, novel, or challenging, it needs to be urgent. This is basically the “fight or flight” response being focused into a task. People with ADHD are expert procrastinators. Not because they enjoy procrastination or rushing at the end, but because the task isn’t interesting, novel, or challenging. So they need it to be urgent in order to be able to focus on it. This is basically just replacing dopamine with adrenaline.
But if it doesn’t fit any of the above four criteria, it’s basically impossible for a person with ADHD to focus on it. Even when they know they need to, or want to be able to. Instead, they’ll end up getting distracted by the fucking power supply whistling.
I did not have the brain power to reply so thank you for doing it for me and all of those of us who find it too “normal” to try to answer this for the like 20th time.
Ah yes, what a great superpower to have when your brain essentially registers every single noise like it needs your full attention, every time.
Framing extremely debilitating things as a “superpower” feels wildly ignorant and disrespectful.
“Seems” being the key word. Oh sure, we have our moments. I once finished a 20 page paper overnight. I also procrastinated on it for a month. Nah, for the 5% this “superpower” works, we get to deal with the 95% struggle trying to get our brain to listen to our brain.
And don’t get me started on self-help articles and videos. You’ll find very few of those that talk about “Get better sleep!” and also mention adhd. All neurotypical. …which might be a good Youtube channel come to think of it. Taking all the advice and adjusting it to maybe help people with adhd.
A good night’s sleep, exercise, and a good diet make a huge difference to my ability to focus. It’s a shame that having ADHD means that I’m terrible at getting myself to exercise, eat well, and to sleep at a normal time, even when medicated. (Note that I haven’t watched those specific videos)
There’s a pretty great channel for ADHD on Youtube - the creator of all the videos above - https://m.youtube.com/@HowtoADHD - and I think she’s covered that topic.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/@HowtoADHD
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I have tinnitus and it sounds just like power supplies, except it comes from nowhere. So, when I hear the squeal, I turn my head. If the squeal noise follows the movement of my head, tinnitus. If it stays put, power supply!
It’s like skunk and pot! (I’m in Canada, it’s legal and everywhere.) If I smell it, I look around. If I see a burrow, skunk! If I see a dozy looking dude with red eyes…
It’s funny that you mentioned pot. Because people described the reaction of pot sometimes in the way of OPs question: When you smoke weed, you get sensitive for things your brain normally is able to filter out as irrelevant information because your head can only process so much before it gets overwhelmed. Some people described that when they smoke weed, that they can sit in their living room or kitchen and start noticing the humming of the fridge or the buzzing of an electrical object as your synapses are wired “differently” when blocked by THC and you start to notice things, your brain normally suppresses.
Sorry for your tinnitus bro. I hope you find ways to make it bearable at times.
It’s funny, I had a horrible toxic job for way longer than any sane person should ever have to deal with, and one aspect of it was dangerous noise levels. We complained, and the company always sent “independent” inspectors who always found that the noise levels were juuuust inside the legal safe limit. Even when they added enough equipment to double the volume! Funny that… Anyways, I am now over six months gone from that job, and I just realized that my tinnitus is way better than it was! Ditto my mental health… Now I just need a winning lottery ticket or a not-soul-sucking job…
Just checking that you know the tinnitus trick: palm flat on ear blocking sound, fingers drumming lightly on the back of your head.
Makes it go away fairly quickly for most people. Obviously isn’t a permanent fix but helps when it gets annoying.
Yup! It fades it out really quick, but it comes back within minutes. My tinnitus has gotten a lot better lately.
Reading people like you describe their tinnitus makes me think I have mild tinnitus myself… It’s not “loud” enough that I realize it’s there over the background noise of a house. But if things get really quiet, like in a power outage, or in a very nicely isolated room like a sound booth, I do hear a slight ringing that sounds extremely similar to CRT noise. I guess the years of blasting music in my headphones and metal/hardcore shows without earplugs didn’t help my case lol
Sometimes I wonder if my tinnitus is real or if we’re just so heavily surrounded by whines nowadays that it seems like tinnitus. I’ve been in an anechoic chamber and the first thing I noticed was that my ears weren’t ringing, but outside of that I have a near constant tinnitus-like whine in several frequencies that doesn’t go away even when I wear some kind of hearing protection. It’s weird.
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
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
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
Whoops
Only two orders of magnitude, can you really blame them?
Isn’t it 3? 10 -> 100 -> 1.000 -> 10.000
yeah u right
Used to, until the tinnitus kicked in.
Not since I developed tinnitus…
Mawp
I thought I was developing tinnitus. Turned out it was the new modem Comcast sent me.
Exactly what I was thinking hahahahhaha
deleted by creator
I remember when I was little I used to hate my grandma’s old tv because there was always a high pitched noise that came from it when it was turned on or off, my grandma was never able to hear it though and I couldn’t understand why till I learned about how we struggle to hear higher frequencies as we age.
Not anymore.Age.
When I was a kid I hated going to the city art museum because all the humidity and temperature control devices emitted this awful high frequency noise that made me nauseated.
I can’t hear the “mosquito” pitch noise emitters used to deter teenage loitering in some cities anymore. I kept that longer than I thought I would.
I had to throw out my carbon monoxide detectors. The constant beeping was giving me a head ache and making me nauseous.
/🥁
Use a spectroscopic app on your phone
It’ll help you identify the source of high pitch sounds
I once noticed an external HDD was making a high pitch noise intermittently, as the LED turned on and off. It was bizarre
Edit: spalling
I wonder if that spectroscopic phone app could hear the ringing in my ears
If it’s actually tinnitus, no
If it’s something that makes you think you have one, yes
I swear my tinnitus is so loud I’m surprised no one else can hear it 😭
Hope you can recover!
Had suffered sound damage prior, my ENT doctor said I was super lucky to not cross the line after which it would get irreversible.
Currently having no ear sounds above normal.
Objective tinnitus is a thing, though less common than subjective tinnitus. It is possible your ear actually is producing sound others can hear, though I guess only with a stethoscope, not the naked ear. https://nyulangone.org/conditions/tinnitus/types
Coil whine ? Yup. They told me it would go away as I got older and lost range of hearing. Still waiting for that.
Edit: typo
😎 Cool whine bro 😎
the moment I could bearly hear an old CRT when a younger friend winced in pain, I knew I was old
Despite me having tinnitus, I hear those sounds very clearly in quiet environments. They annoy the crap out of me…
please don’t make me aware of more sounds I wasn’t aware of before, I have enough of them already
I play electric guitar a foot from my computer. I hear all kind of noises through my amplifier. Scolling with my wired mouse makes a noise through it. I also know my phone is goimg to ring before it does because the cell,signal makes a noise through mu computer speakers.
Curious. I thought that buzzing from cellphones was TDMA induced, which isn’t really a thing since… LTE, I think? I’m wondering why you still get this. Older phone, older network/infra…?
You’re correct that it’s not the high pitch sound from the old days. Now it’s more like a,low pitch hum. But it’s still there.
Interesting! I haven’t had this happen with any speaker or amp in a good decade. I wonder what it is!
Cell phone incoming signals: dit dit dit…dit dit dit…dit dit dit…buzzzzzzzzzz…dit dit dit…buzzzzzz…ringtone.
