Alex Altman Posted October 18, 2012 Report Share Posted October 18, 2012 I thought this was an interesting read... http://www.scienceda...21012112424.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Izen Ears Posted October 18, 2012 Report Share Posted October 18, 2012 That is a cool article thanks for sharing Alex! I find it very odd that thunder is listed as a pleasant sound. Those subjects must have meant "thunder in the distance" since I'm in a place with tons of thunder storms I can tell you - it's loud and scary! Giant cracks that sound like the fabric of the universe is fracturing, shaking the house. Cats flee beneath the couch as the lights flicker. In the distance it's really cool though, but I don't know if I'd call it pleasant. Also it's weird that applause rates #1 is pleasant sounds because "the best applause" always has women screaming, which is rated #6 of the least pleasant sounds. I'm sure they mean from a distance too, or maybe even through compressors on their favorite band's live album. In person it's far more exciting than pleasant for me. The article is saying sounds in the range our ears are very sensitive (2k - 5k) are less pleasant because we hear them louder. Hmm. I think most any loud sound is unpleasant, and quiet sounds are usually soothing. Mid bass sounds are the most annoying in recordings. Also, did the people get hearing tests? What's the baseline? How old were they? Dan Izen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevegrider Posted October 19, 2012 Report Share Posted October 19, 2012 For me, dentist drill is most unpleasant. The best: my kid laughing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted October 19, 2012 Report Share Posted October 19, 2012 I think the absolute most unpleasant sounds I hear in life are "we only want to pay you X dollars, not Y dollars!", from cheap-ass producers! The next-worst are super-low frequencies under 40Hz, in non-musical environments. I've heard trucks rumbling by in some areas that are so loud, it makes you think there's a 7.5 earthquake happening... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Rose Posted October 19, 2012 Report Share Posted October 19, 2012 anything in the frequency range of around 2,000 to 5,000 Hz was found to be unpleasant. So that includes any intelligibility in human speech (consonants start around 1.7k). Obviously, this scientist has been listening to politicians. -- More serious: how did they decide that an imaged brain reaction necessarily meant 'unpleasant'. ... And, what about the noise from the MRI machine they used for the testing: did that mask any of their test sounds? Did it cause a threshold shift in the subjects? Did they have to use a special non-magnetic transducer - with whatever effect it had on response or distortion - to even play the test sounds? I downloaded the full scholarly article. A quick scan of the 'procedure' section didn't show anything about how the sounds were gathered, stored, or reproduced, just that they were somehow played during the test. But hey, how could that be important to replicating an experiment involving sounds... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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