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There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

nytimes.com

121–130 of 304 posts

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#122
post #59

Garbage, sensationalist title with mentions of "unknown origin". Even the article says the likely source is Zug island, but of course this wouldn't get as many clicks. According to the mentioned University of Windsor report ( http://www.international.gc.ca/department-ministere/windsor_... ) "A previous study confirmed the existence of the low frequency excitation and estimated the source to be in the vicinity of Zug…

So, Canada should tell the US, please stop doing all your noise... or else?

Yes, that's my point. This would be an interesting article if it explored the possibilities and difficulties in solving the problem due to the national border instead of just throwing up its hands and saying "It’s possible that no matter what is done to relieve or attenuate the noise, it might never be enough".

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#123
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder if you can train yourself to ignore it. The same way some fucked up people train themselves to ignore smoke detector chirps. I've known a couple of these people in my life. They managed to live with a chirping detector for weeks on end and when you bring it up they think you're making mountains out of molehills.

My experience is that it’s pretty damn hard. SOMETHING is generating a low frequency hum that I can hear in my bedroom in Seattle; in fact I’m in there’s hearing it right now. It’s been going since somewhere last summer. I hear it every night and it’s still maddening.

The West Seattle Hum is what I heard it called, but it seems to reach all around Seattle[0]. I can't hear it, but many people do.

0. http://knkx.org/post/mysterious-hum-keeping-west-seattle-nig...

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#124

Common causes of such hums: sewage pumps, large transformer stations, roof mounted AC heat rejectors, hydropower plants, refrigeration installations. It's surprising how far contact sound will carry.

As well as very large lasers. Maybe those of the xkcd-what-if size.

Are those common?

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#125
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a not unpleasant brown noise-like sound. At least that's how it comes out of my hifi. Over bluetooth and after YouTube compression so perhaps high fidelity isn't the right term.

I'm not sure... for me the unfiltered version was annoying but bearable for a bit... but I could see getting driven mad by it after a while. The filtered version was so bad that it almost made me wonder if I'm going to damage my ears, so I stopped listening to it halfway. I was using decent BT headphones so I'm not sure if that makes any difference... it may depend on how decent your speakers are at playing 30-40 Hz.…

Exactly, BT audio uses lossy compression. There are several codecs available but I'm on Linux and the receiver is pretty old so it's probably the weakest of them: SBC.

The filtered sound is pretty bad, yes, dread inducing.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#126
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a not unpleasant brown noise-like sound. At least that's how it comes out of my hifi. Over bluetooth and after YouTube compression so perhaps high fidelity isn't the right term.

I'm not sure... for me the unfiltered version was annoying but bearable for a bit... but I could see getting driven mad by it after a while. The filtered version was so bad that it almost made me wonder if I'm going to damage my ears, so I stopped listening to it halfway. I was using decent BT headphones so I'm not sure if that makes any difference... it may depend on how decent your speakers are at playing 30-40 Hz.…

“Does BT audio do some kind of lossy compression?”

Yes. Bluetooth audio is never lossless. Proprietary Bluetooth codecs like Sony LPAC or Qualcomm AptX come close to being lossless, but they’re still lossy.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#127

A few years ago they drilled for gas a few kilometers outside the city (about 3 km from my house) — this caused a faint humming noise that seemed to come from everywhere but nowhere in particular. Stand still in a room, hear the noise. Lie down, cover your ears, hear the noise. Put earplugs in, hear the noise. Hugely annoying if you're the kind of person that doesn't sleep well with such nuisances. Boy was I happy wh…

On the YouTube video it definitely does sound like something strong going on underground... but that's probably a very poor method of assessment.

The audio on the video was probably added in post...

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#128
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your implicit assumption is that the hum is caused by something electrical; i.e. not a diesel engine or some natural cause.

Then we can turn off the electricity for the whole town and see if it stops! :D

"The University of Windsor report said the hum’s likely source was blast furnace operations on Zug Island" ... which is over the border in the United States.

Cutting off the power to that island would be a good thing to try, but apparently the US is uncooperative.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#129

Sigh. I've coded too much this week. My brain just immediately went to: comment out half the city at a time and binary search the source. Guess you can't really do that. I wonder if the hum persists during a power outage.

Just install the debugging microphones all over, collect the data, find the source (if it's real).

Why install anything? Fly a drone around to take 5s recordings at points on a grid.

Re: There's a Persistent Hum in Windsor, Ontario, and No One Knows Why

#130
Out of interest, how do we know it's not a common but undocumented form of tinnitus? Perhaps one that is more likely to present in certain weather conditions, so people's complaints will correlate?

I live near Bristol, which also has a hum, and I may have heard it but my own presumption would be hearing damage, as I don't think I've looked after my ears as well as I should have. And that would go for a lot of Bristol residents too... good music scene there!

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