Ask Lemmy

I used to be able to tell what refresh rate they were set to because everything below a certain point flickered. I'd ask people why their screens were flickering and they couldn't see it.

Try that with cheap mobile phone charges. They have an annoying coil whine.

I too have significantly more sensitive hearing than seemingly just most people, and can hear and often get annoyed by high pitched but low decibel sounds, very often caused by electronics, off balance high speed fans, etc.

Got gaslit about it by my family as well.

You may wanna look into an autism diagnosis, autists often have this kind of thing going on.

You'd think it would be called super hearing, but instead its often everyone without heigtened senses calling you delusional.

Same thing happened to me when I described seeing the entoptic blue field phenomenon to my family, but not knowing the fancy name for it because I was 11. Family got very concerned I was hallucinating, the reality is I am just more attentive to reality than they are.

I had this before my hearing was damaged in my mid-thirties. I could hear if any electrical device with large filter capasitors was turned on, even from another room. I discovered by accident that the high pitch noise was emitted by the capasitors when I was fixing old audio gear, I guess they vibrate while doing their job or something like that.

I talked about this with my friend who was specializing to be an ear/hearing doctor, his theory was that my upper hearing range was a bit higher than average. He also talked about how brains filter sensory data and it could just be that my filters weren't blocking these frequencies.

It was also impossible for me to sleep in a room if there were any mosquitoes. The whining of their wings even in the far side of a room was maddening, so I had to kill them all every night before hitting the bed. The one good thing that came out of the damage to my hearing was that the mosquitoes bother me no more, unless they fly right in front of my ears.

I used to hear it too, now I'm old and I can't hear anything above 16KHz, maybe less now.

Welcome to the world's most useless club.

Used to be able to walk down the street and know who's home watching TV by the whine (sort of like an extremely high pitched white noise).

Now CRTs are gone I've since realised I also have tinnitus and am constantly hearing that same sound in my left ear.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Bet you can hear ‘ultrasonic’ pet repellant as well.

Diagnosed autistic?

It's very common for us 'spergs to have a very high frequency cut off on our hearing, all the way to old age.

I'm 43 and can still hear the bats chirping when they're hunting insects in the twilight round the gardens. People think I'm making it up, until I point the bats out, tracking them by sound until they flutter high enough to see their silhouette against the sky.

CRT TVs and monitors used to annoy the hell out of me. The high pitched whine of the flyback transformer that runs the motion of the electron beam makes a very distinctive hiss. Like someone else on here, I could tell what refresh rate your monitor was running in by the noise it made.

That, plus an abnormally high flicker fusion frequency meant I had migraines every other day when I was working. :-/

think I was crazy or had tinnitus

When you have tinnitus, then you will know it. And then you probably can't hear that CRT screen anymore.

About "crazy" I don't know ;)

Should be an age thing. I remember at school that some teachers would leave the TV on when they were done showing something and the CRT noise would make us students crazy and we had to remind the teacher to turn it off.

So you will probably lose it at some point.

I can hear it too. Its a fuzzy buzzing noise.

Approximately 15.5KHz. Not out of range for healthy human hearing. Most of us are damaged by noise pollution and blood pressure issues by the time we’re adults and high frequency sensitivities drop off first.

If a CRT is on in a large space with volume off, I can still hear it a bit, but mild tinnitus masks most of it.

It might happen with non-crt screens too. I remember a flat screen (LCD?) that made a different noise depending on the color it displayed. White and light colors made a lot more noise and if you had good ears you could tell the difference without looking. Not sure how they work though to explain this.

Some power-supplies also do this high pitch noise too and it bothers me a lot. Most people can't hear it.

You have adhd

I can hear CRTs too, but I haven't seen one in so long I don't know if I still can. It was so high pitched I've probably lost the ability to hear the frequency.

I could detect it as a kid, but definitely not past 25

You probably should get yourself checked for Autism Spectrum Disorder and so does anyone else who experiences anything similar

Some people with ASD have a sensitivity to things neurotypical people don't notice

Autism is a Spectrum Disorder so not all autistic people have the same symptoms and you can't self diagnose yourself, you need to see someone specialised for that

Yeah I think everyone used to be able to hear that. Elementary school videos all the kids could hear of the teacher left the TV on in our class rooms.