kosher salt and sugar are easily differentiated, but I’m not sure that you can easily adopt this to your cooking style.
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I’m not sure how useful standard hearing protection could be given the levels of High sound sensitivity.
I’m a 20+kHz hearer (I can hear the freaking coil whine in the overhead lights and frequencies usually known only to dogs) - I know how frustrating it can be to have hearing sensitivities dismissed.
Or put more simply: the problem with designing for the average human is that there is no such thing as average.
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True.
But don’t confuse kHz with dB. If someone can’t hear certain frequencies, no amount of increasing the dB of those frequencies will help them hear it.
Whereas insulating something making sound at a frequency someone can hear can help them not hear it.
Insulation has nothing to do with the human. A device for frequencies, like a hearing aid, does.
ETA: this is why old-school hearing aids were such a pain to use and why many Deaf and hard-of-hearing people decided to just go without --they just made everything louder. Newer ones try to make the frequencies the wearer can’t hear so well louder and leave the rest alone.
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I have a similar problem… I’m the only person who can hear the squealing of my car’s brakes. The mechanic says there’s nothing to do, nothing’s wrong, that’s just the way this car is and he can’t hear the sound. Also, those annoying high pitched ring tones for teenagers? Yeah, I can hear them too… I shoulda been a high school teacher.
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I’m the same for high frequencies. I suspect there are a lot of us.
I have noticed the “teenage repellant” devices don’t get talked about so much anymore. I wonder if that means people realised lots of older people can hear that tone after all. I remember reading an article about it which included a file of the tone, and everyone I tried it with – people in an age range of 35 to 60ish – could hear it.
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Was it a BBC article? If so, I think I remember it and I could hear it, despite having serious problems with my hearing since childhood and listening to it on crappy laptop speakers.
My guess at the time was that someone in the process had converted a flac into an mp3 and the compression algorithms had pitch shifted everything downwards in an effort to record something in the spectrum that MP3s are capable of using.
Just a guess, but there is no way on Earth that I should have been able to hear it, given that I couldn’t have heard it when I was a child.
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Don’t think it was the BBC. Might have been the Guardian.
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If you insulate a room (i.e. none of the sound reaches the human), sure. If you’re just forming insulation around the ears themselves to attenuate the sound, though… I can certainly see how individual factors could affect how easily sound can get around the noise protection.
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Right, which comes back to the gear and how you wear it. And which is why the over-ear gear tends to work better, because one’s ear canal shape and diameter doesn’t matter then (easier to provide insulation too).
Also why I’ve been recommending gear made for work places – it’s made for truly noisy environments and has some regulations around its manufacture (or, barring that, industry standards), and made for people to share if they have to. The cans fitting over the ears form that room you mentioned.
I’m drawing on what I’ve learned from people who work on airport tarmacs, people who are teachers of the Deaf, people who are technicians at large-venue concerts – all friends and family, all very concerned about hearing loss.
And honestly, I’m getting kind of tired of being pilloried in this thread for not crying uncle, and admitting that maybe some people have super powers that can beat out industrial hearing protection designed to block out the sound of fucking jet engines.
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I don’t think that’s what anyone is trying to do here. I think the most that anyone is trying to convey is that the functionality of these devices requires creating a firm seal; if you can’t obtain such a seal, it doesn’t take “defying the laws of physics” or “super powers” to prevent the sound from just going where the protection is not. And, while I haven’t used the professional style of ear protection myself, I’ve seen them depicted, and have used more traditional over-ear headphones, and can absolutely see how head shape or size, or ear shape or size, or even hair or something worn (e.g. a turban) could prevent such a seal from occurring.
And that’s exactly what Marja describes:
Also: “pilloried?” Seriously? The harshest comment I’ve seen directed anywhere near you is Marja’s “It’s frustrating when people insist my day-to-day struggles can’t be real. They are real.” That hardly seems like you’re being metaphorically chained up in the public square for humiliation and abuse.
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My original text was harsher. But I am also frustrated with this discussion. I know that decibels are a log scale, and I am a bit puzzled that my best fit for mis-fit ends up quartering a log scale. It may be mathematically implausible.
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I’m kinda curious how much / to what degree sound waves pass through via internal conduction even with properly sealed external hearing protection. As an example, if you stand close to a speaker at a concert, you can feel the bass vibrations roll through your internal organs as well as feeling your arm hairs move etc. I’ve never tried that with hearing protection to see how much sound gets through or conducted via bone, but I’m also not sensitive to it.
I could imagine if the nature of the sensitivity isn’t actually the hearing itself, but internal, then even with totally effective hearing protection, vibrations conducted through the body could trigger the sensitivity. It seems like they would be greatly dampened by having to pass through flesh and bone, but if that’s where the sensitivity actually is, then it might still be enough to have an effect that makes the hearing protection seem ineffective for that purpose even if it was functioning properly and protecting the hearing itself.
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How about the part where I’ve just spent ~6 posts describing something I’ve already provided a link for, because apparently lots of people don’t believe me when I say industrial-level safety gear works?
And to your most recent point, that’s what the cushioning around the cans is for – to provide a seal. And to @DaakSyde ‘s point, yes induction through bones is a thing, which is why Deaf sports teams use a bass drum to get the players’ attention when they’re on the field.
To sum up, this thread is now about finding a plausible case where someone:
- Doesn’t like using their vacuum cleaner because the noise is a migraine trigger (this part I can believe) but also:
- Has unusually shaped ear canals which don’t work with any earplugs on the market, including moldable ones
- Has an unusually shaped skull which doesn’t work with any of the industrial safety gear on the market, including gear designed to be modified to the shape of one’s skull
- Has tested this by ostensibly testing gear, but using a method designed to make her more sensitive to the triggering sounds (this one I had a hard time with, because I can’t imagine anyone deliberately giving themselves supposedly debilitating migraines)
- And, oh yeah, has already done all this but not thought about, I don’t know, saving up for a less noisy/more effective vacuum cleaner
- This person is also someone who doubts the efficacy of all this safety gear and how it works, but has no problem believing in the efficacy of wearing eyeglasses.
And now they’re not even on this thread, but the rest of us are left trying to find some, any loophole where all of this could be true, and therefore anyone who doubts is ableist.
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I agree.
Further: I offered an optimal solution as a very early post in this thread and was flatly dismissed out of hand.
Beating the rugs outside allows the use of ear protection and further allows the operator to self modulate the intensity of the experience (sound and whatnot). There is likely no better solution.
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I was hoping that people came to their senses and realized that repelling teenagers is just an assholish thing to do.
Most of my family can’t hear the ring tone… my teenage (at the time) cousin was surprised I could. Apparently, she and her classmates were all using it at school.
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The ones you show are rated 27 nrr. So if they worked as rated they would reduce that 101 dBa to 74 dBa. My current Peltor models are rated 30 nrr. Decibel Defense model at 38 nrr.
Now if they worked as rated, any of these would reduce the vacuum cleaner to comfortable levels for me. But that leaves my brother, the downstairs neighbors, and so on. I try to ask my brother before using, but occasionally we get mixed up. So I conscientiously try to get it over with, and I get awful post-exertional migraines the next day. Otherwise I would try to get a bit done, rest, move some furniture rest, get the next bit done, rest, etc. And I might avoid the post-exertional migraines.
I wonder too. Car engines idling outside make me feel like everything’s shaking. Helicopters buzzing overhead are ridiculously loud and make me feel like everything’s shaking.
Children’s moldable swimming ear plugs, and half a kit of Radians adult moldable ear plugs.
What?
I was looking for options here. “Quiet” robot vacuums which work with carpet seem to run a few hundred dollars. “Quiet” cannister vacuums several hundred.
Daily experience with both. And I’m not saying the ear plugs and protectors are useless, just that they aren’t effective enough.
Somehow I am supposed to move all my furniture out of the way, remove the wall-to-wall carpeting, and beat it outside? When I get post-exertional migraines from moving a little for the vacuum?
Your original post specified no such thing.
You want specific answers? Ask specific questions.
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And your solution would work well for those carpets. I’d roll them up and keep them out of the way so they don’t interfere with sweeping. But those carpets aren’t the usual ones here.
Can you leave the house while the robot vacuum is running? If you’re vacuuming wall-to-wall carpet, you likely are using an attachment specifically designed to set up vibrations in the carpet to loosen the dirt so it can be sucked out. If you’re doing the vacuuming yourself, you’re going to feel it no matter what you use.
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I kinda worry they might eat my bedsheets if I’m not watching. I also want to minimize trouble for my brother and downstairs neighbors.