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Sonic Weapons / Acoustic Weapons

There do appear to be sites offering the Mosquito Buzz ringtone for download, but as i don't have a mobile, someone else will have to take the investigation further...
 
I think the Mosquito Buzz ringtone being offered is the audible one. Not being tehnically minded, I don't really know if the average mobile can broadcast ultra high frequency. Why would it need to? According to No 2 Daughter, the idea behind the buzz her classmates downloaded was to play it back at all the vicious shopkeepers who play the Mosquito to innocent hoodies. But as there aren't actually any shops using the device around here....I think we may have a UL within a UL here. Or just the usual teenage nonsense. :roll:
 
It's not uncommon for speakers to have a dynamic range outside that of normal human hearing. That's because cutting off the upper harmonics often makes things sound funny.

Now, that is actually one of the problems with phone conversations. To fit the sound into the bandwidth available over the phone system (whether wired or cellular) the dynamic range is often truncated, which is partly why people don't always sound right on the phone. That and cheap microphones and speakers in old fashioned phones that probably had a more limited dynamic range.

So the question is, whether the speakers on the phone - particularly the ones used for the ringer which are often separate from the earpiece - have the dynamic range to play something in the ~20kHz range (which is where I guess this noise is). Unfortunately, I can't find this information in a quick search of the Nokia home page. I'll have to do a bit more research to find out.
 
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, recently chased away the hordes of teenagers who clustered on the street (it is a major downtown bus stop) by piping music outside.

The teens complainred on television news that the music was "absolutely the worst stuff I've ever heard....genuinely painful to the ears....enough to drive you crazy." And it was "played at an ear-splitting volume."

I checked it out for myself a day or two later. The music is the local classical music station and the volume is quite pleasant.
 
The music of Barry Manilow is being used in a similar tactic to the 'Mosquito Buzz' and others in an effort to disperse what we in the UK would call 'boy racers'.

Mr Saravinovski said it should not annoy residents, but would will be loud enough for the youths to hear it.

"Daggy music is one way to make the hoons leave an area, because they can't stand the music," he told Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
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Class!
 
An ASBO? Try Barry Manilow instead.

Forget Asbos. Australia uses Barry Manilow

Jacqueline Maley
Tuesday June 6, 2006
The Guardian

In Britain, the Asbo is wielded to curtail the antics of hooligans. In Australia they have a different, though not necessarily more humane, means of control: the music of Barry Manilow.

For the next six months the ears of the youth of Rockdale, a suburb south of Sydney, will be subjected to the sounds of the singer's back catalogue after the local council resolved to get tough on antisocial behaviour. Councillors hope piping Manilow hits such as Mandy and Copacabana through a loudspeaker into a car park troublespot will kill the atmosphere and force the youths to move on.


In keeping with a great Australian suburban tradition, every Saturday night up to 100 car-fancying youths, or "hoons", take their souped-up vehicles to the parking lot at Cook Park Reserve at Brighton-le-Sands. There, they rev their engines, compare fittings, and play their own "doof doof" music, very loudly. According to Bill Saravinovski, a councillor, their behaviour is antisocial and disturbs the peace.

"There are restaurants nearby and people can't park in the car park because they're intimidated by these hoons," he told Australia's Daily Telegraph. "So we're giving the music a go to see if it has any success."

The idea has been tested elsewhere in Australia. Bing Crosby was used to drive teenage loiterers out of an Australian shopping centre several years ago.

"Based on reports ... daggy [uncool] music is one way to make the hoons leave an area because they can't stand the music," Mr Saravinovski said. "We're hoping it works. These people don't show any respect for the law.
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Link

Now that's what I call getting tough on crime!!
 
One of the oddest, saddest, weirdest books I ever read was devoted to the letters that fans write to celebrities. I made the mistake of lending it to a relative and it seems to have passed out of sight.

The most prolific letter-writers were Manilow-fans - but they wrote their lurid sexual fantasies to each other. All of them female and of a wide age-range but sharing some of the most graphic fantasies about the odd-looking singer.

Anyway, maybe there should be a contest as there are now three competing approaches to youth dispersal: the Mozart, the Mosquito and the Manilow.

The Mozart approach is territorial I suppose, marking the bus-stop or whatever as an uncool place to be. I know a teacher who begins every lesson with a tape of classical music, which I suppose marks the territory as hers from the start.

The Mosquito is actually uncomfortable to the sensitive adolescent ear but I used to read reports that young ears were being damaged by amplified music.

The Manilow may disperse the youths but do we want a lot of salivating menopausal women rubbing each others' crotches in public?

No. We call that a rhetorical question. One you mustn't even think about!
:roll:
 
June 12, 2006

Inventor hopes to hit big time with silent ringtone

By Philippe Naughton

An inventor from Merthyr Tydfil hopes to make his fortune by selling a mobile phone ringtone that he has never heard and never will.

Howard Stapleton made headlines last November with the launch of the Mosquito, a device that emits an annoying ultrasonic hum designed to deter teenage yobs from hanging around outside shops and public buildings. The vast majority of adults over 20 cannot hear the sound emitted.

Mr Stapleton has since sold more than 1,000 of the £500 devices through his company, Compound Security Systems, but now hopes that a spin-off product - the Mosquitotone - could be even more lucrative.

The ringtone was initially the work of an unidentified group of Welsh teenagers who decided that a high-frequency ringtone would be the ultimate in teacher-proof technology. Their product, dubbed Teen Buzz, spread like wildfire through classrooms in the UK and abroad, allowing pupils to receive surreptitious text messages without their teachers noticing.

But when Mr Stapleton's 16-year-old daughter, Isabel, came home with one of the ringtones on her phone three months ago, the inventor decided that he was missing out on an opportunity to make money out of his own invention and quickly devised the "official" Mosquito ringtone, now available via text message for £3, which he says is better.

He told Times Online: "It makes me smile. Some kid has applied science and taken my product - which is designed to keep them away from shops, and turned it into a ringtone.

"I had considered making a ringtone in January, but decided that possible misuse could cause problems in the classroom... Then I decided that if someone was going to make money out of it, I may as well."

Mr Stapleton first realised that people gradually lose the ability to hear high-frequency sound when he was just 12 and visited a factory in the Midlands with his father, Colin, then chairman of the British arm of Ever Ready batteries. The factory used ultrasonic welding techniques, using high-frequency sound to melt and fuse plastics, but the young boy had to walk straight out because of the excruciating noise - which none of the adults was even aware of.

At 39, Mr Stapleton is now too old to hear either the Mosquito deterrent system or its ringtone spin-off, but he still works with his father, now 70.

"My father is a director of Compound Security Systems and when I joked that the ringtone might be the icing on the cake, his comment was that this might actually turn out to be the cake," he said. "When I explained the revenues generated by ringtones he was quite amazed. Having four children, I'm well aware of the money they make."

Mr Stapleton is lining up the Mosquitotone for international distribution and is also working at making the tone less annoying, perhaps adding a simple melody. The 'unofficial' version of the tone reaches a frequency of 15 kilohertz while the official one reaches 17 kilohertz, making it less audible to adult ears.

An unscientifc test at Times Online suggests that it definitely works - only the callowest reporters noticed the noise.

But if Mr Stapleton has misjudged his market, he still has the original teenage deterrent device, the Mosquito, to fall back on.

That gadget has been licensed to Cooper Menvier, a leading security products manufacturer, and the Mark II version is due out soon, with added safeguards including automatic cut-off to prevent abuse and head off accusations that it infringes the human rights of teenagers.

The inventor says that the Mosquito is bound to be more efficient than a rival anti-yob sonic device being trialled in the Sydney suburb of Rockdale - loudspeakers playing Barry Manilow tunes or other "daggy" music.

"The obvious benefit of the Mosquito is that it doesn't cause noise pollution," he said. "Besides, the kids might actually get a taste for Barry Manilow or Cliff Richard. I'm yet to find a kid who likes the Mosquito."

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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I heard about this 'silent ringtone just for teenagers' on the news earlier today. They played a bit of it, and I heard it just fine.
I'm 44.

I have a theory that most people, by the time they get to 30, have ruined their hearing by listening to music at high volume or by working in a noisy environment without ear protection. I think my hearing hasn't deteriorated because I haven't done these things to my ears.
What I'm saying is that I think scientists have got it wrong, because they've just taken the statistics at face value - they've noticed that high frequency hearing has gone in most people by the time they become adults, but they haven't bothered to establish why. They've just taken it for granted that it's a natural occurrence. :roll:
 
I've just listened to it and was able to hear it too. I must say, my ears are still ringing. It wasn't particularly pleasant.


download it here
 
Yep, that's extremely irritating. I'd hate to be in a classroom surrounded by phones whining away like that. That's actually more annoying than the Crazy Frog.

I'm not sure I quite believe the story, though. Considering teenagers are reputedly so tech-savvy, surely they must know that their phones vibrate?
 
Mmmn, i just realisted i've still got Audacity installed on my machine, so here's several sine wave tones to experiment with:

13khz
14khz
15khz
16khz
17khz

I can hear 14 and 15 khz as tones, 16 i'm not sure i can hear or not, possibly something, but i might just be taking a cue from the start/end click the speakers make. 17khz i can't hear at all. I'm 37 btw...
 
Edit:arse, i can hear them all now, think mp3ing the wav files must have introduced some sort of artifact...:(

Edit edit: my connection's up the spout again now.. can anyone tell me if the links work?
 
Indeed, so I'm told, turning sounds into MP3s will compress them, clipping off the top and bottom frequencies beyond a certain level.

So, those ringtones probably don't sound exactly as they should do, perhaps?
 
I can hear the 13kHz note easy, the 14kHz...well, I think I can just hear it (easier to tell if there was less background noise in this office), but the 15kHz is - difficult to describe - it's like the silence has a slightly diiferent taste to normal. Anything above that, no chance! Am I therefore Mosquito-proof?

Mind you, I too am 37, so it's not surprising that bits of my body are starting to shut down...

(Shuffles off to the "Getting Old - Death Approaches" thread)
 
Edit edit: my connection's up the spout again now.. can anyone tell me if the links work?
Click to expand...
Yes, fine.
I can hear all except the 17khz one, but the 16khz I found quite unpleasant.
/edit/ I am ... ahem ... shall we say over 30
 
Am I therefore Mosquito-proof?
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Yes, the mosquito works at 16khz, so you and i both are.

The original article doesn't say what the actual tones the mosquito generates are, they'd be more complex than the sine wave test signals i put up, but if you're hearing stops after 16khz, you'd still be able to hear the 16khz fundamental, if not necessarily any higher frequency content.

There is some evidence we can perceive (if not actually hear) sounds above our audible range by their interaction with lower frequencies, but the mechanisms there aren't well understood...
 
Looks like it's a dance track now:

Secret alarm becomes dance track

A high-pitched alarm designed to repel youngsters from shops is being used for the melody of a dance track after the success of a mobile phone ringtone.

Merthyr Tydfil-based Compound Security released the "Mosquito" ringtone as a way of letting teenagers hear their phones ringing without adults knowing.

It was developed because adults lose the ability to hear high-pitched sound.

But now the sound is being used in a dance track, Buzzin', with secret melodies only young ears can hear.

The tune was developed after the success of the company's ringtone which was released in June.

Simon Morris from Compound Security said: "Following the success of the ringtone, a lot of people were asking us to do a bit more, so we got together with the producers Melodi and they came up with a full-length track.

"It has two harmonies - one that everyone can hear and one that only young people can hear.

"But it works well together or separate," he added.

Mr Morris is the commercial director of the firm which developed the Mosquito box. It emits a high-pitched noise that can only be heard by young people and is claimed to drive gangs away from troublespots.

The alarms were originally designed by the business to repel gangs of young people loitering around shopping centres without upsetting adult customers.

The firm claims international success, with the product selling in 18 countries, including America.

"Although it (the dance track) isn't our main business, the demand for it is definitely there," said Mr Morris.

"It is a bit cheesy: it's got a great beat and rhythm. I'm 41 and I like it," he confessed.

Iain Kerr, who is a director for UK-based production company Melodi said: "We quickly realised the potential of releasing a song using the ultra-sonic sound."

Opera Telecom who will sell the track as PC and mobile downloads said it was expecting big sales.

Gary Corbett who runs the company said: "After the launch of the 'Mozzy Tone' ringtone many adults were surprised that they actually couldn't hear it.

"The secret sections within this new song will work in the same way and we're sure kids will love it just as much."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/5382324.stm
 
I just did an experiment right here in the office.
I played the 18Khz sound for 5 people here in the office and here are the results:

Me (32): Can't hear anything, except the white noise that tells me the speakers are up really loud. But I agree, when it's playing the silence tastes different.

John (25): Same as me.

Jan (50ish): Nothing

Kristin (50ish): Nothing

Then as I'm playing it my 21 year old assistant pipes up from across the room "What's that noise?". To him it's a high pitched and very audible whine.

But my ears still feel a bit like I've been listening to loud music, though!
 
When I was around 12 years old we had a black-and-white television set that had an all-steel cabinet.

At the upper right front of the cabinet there was a tiny crimp in the metal.

I could hear a constant high-pitched wine from that crimp which my parents could not hear at all.
 
This high-pitched whine which children and adolescents and young adults can hear but fully mature adults cannot - does (or did) it have any evolutionary survival value?

Does this difference extend to other mammals? (That should be easily testable.)
 
Another Producer here just tested it out on some interns and interns count as other animals, right?

:roll:
 
The only thing that comes to mind right now is that perhaps our hearing starts out overspecified to allow for deterioration with time, so that for most of our adult life we end up with an optimal range...
 
I was thinking (vaguely) along the lines that maybe there was some sort of a prehistoric, poisonous animal which was much more dangerous to children than to adults, and which had a high-pitched whine.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
I was thinking (vaguely) along the lines that maybe there was some sort of a prehistoric, poisonous animal which was much more dangerous to children than to adults, and which had a high-pitched whine.
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Insects? Such as mosquitos? Insects were much bigger in prehistoric times...
 
Bigger insects would probably make lower frequency sounds though...

Out of curiosity, i just tested out the 18khz test tone while both my kittys were asleep in the room. They're both about the same age, though the slightly older seemed to be able to hear it, the other either couldn't or maybe was just sleeping too soundly. I may play around with that some more later, don't want to try anything else now as i'm feeling really guilty for disturbing Eugene's slumber :oops:
 
From Breaking News. I couldn't find a thread devoted to sonic weapons, but if there is one then merge away...

Reports from Russia’s Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics located in Irkutsk are reporting today that their Siberian Solar Radio Telescope (SSRT) detected a ‘massive’ ultra low frequency (ULF) ‘blast’ emanating from Latitude: 45° 00' North Longitude: 93° 15' West at the ‘exact’ moment, and location, of a catastrophic collapse of a nearly 2,000 foot long bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

To the horrific destruction of the Interstate 35W Bridge which spanned the Mississippi River we can read as reported by the Star Tribune News Service:

"The 1,907-foot bridge fell into the Mississippi River and onto roadways below. The span was packed with rush hour traffic, and dozens of vehicles fell with the bridge leaving scores of dazed commuters scrambling for their lives.

Nine people were confirmed dead as of 4 a.m. today. Sixty were taken to hospitals and 20 people were still missing this morning. Authorities said they expected the death toll to rise."

Russian Military reports state that the total collapse of such a massive bridge, and in the absence of evidence linking its destruction to terrorist activity, could only have been accomplished by an acoustic weapon, of which the United States Military is known to possess.

These reports further state that one of the United States primary research organizations into acoustic weapons research is Augsburg College, and which is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and most importantly less than 1 mile from the Interstate 35W Bridge collapse.

To the exact reason of why, and what exactly happened in this catastrophe we can only speculate, but, with what is known about the United States past history of using sophisticated weapons on their own citizens for ‘research’ purposes it certainly lies in the realm of possibility that this horrific tragedy is rooted in the use of ULF weapons.
Click to expand...

More here:
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1026.htm

If they were testing their sonic weaponry, then I would have thought they'd deploy it on a structure that wasn't in use? Every tragedy has its conspiracy now...

And exactly what is this acoustic weapon the USA is known to possess? Anyone ever heard of it? Are they getting mixed up with the Biggles film from the eighties?
 
I vaguely remember (sorry I can't be more specific!) reading about some sonic weapon that the French had invented back in the 1970s that was patented in France but has never been used since its original test. Basically, someone had wondered what would happen if a six-foot working prototype of a pea whistle (like a football ref's whistle with the dried pea in it) was to be built and blown. Apparently, when actually "blown", ie blasted with compressed air, the giant whistle caused all the internal organs of the hapless assistant who arranged to blow it (and was near it at the time) to turn to a "toothpaste-like consistency" (I remember that particularly gruesome descriptive detail!). The device was redesigned and tested in a field, and the same effects - though lessened - happened to the operator there too. As the weapon could not be made to be operated safely on the battlefield, the patent was upheld but the project shelved.

I can't remember where I read this, but I have read it in more than one source, though it's likely that a sonic weapon was designed but didn't work, and the gruesome detail is an urban legendary embellishment. Who knows?

It's an interesting story though, isn't it?... ;)
 
It's a great story! Although you'd think that after the device turned one person to toothpaste inside that they'd find a way of setting it off by remote control from a safe distance?
 
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