This is topic Audio Teen Repellant in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 11-30-2005, 05:58 PM:
 
Saw this on another forum I frequent and just had to share.

quote:

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Barry Journal
What's the Buzz? Rowdy Teenagers Don't Want to Hear It

By SARAH LYALL
Published: November 29, 2005 New York Times International

BARRY, Wales - Though he did not know it at the time, the idea came to Howard Stapleton when he was 12 and visiting a factory with his father, a manufacturing executive in London. Opening the door to a room where workers were using high-frequency welding equipment, he found he could not bear to go inside.

"The noise!" he complained.

"What noise?" the grownups asked.

Now 39, Mr. Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day - that children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can - to fashion a novel device that he hopes will provide a solution to the eternal problem of obstreperous teenagers who hang around outside stores and cause trouble.

The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Mr. Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he says, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.

So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to the Spar convenience store in this town in South Wales. Like birds perched on telephone wires, surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays inside.

"On the low end of the scale, it would be intimidating for customers," said Robert Gough, who, with his parents, owns the store. "On the high end, they'd be in the shop fighting, stealing and assaulting the staff."

Mr. Gough (pronounced GUFF) planned to install a sound system that would blast classical music into the parking lot, another method known to horrify hang-out youths into dispersing, but never got around to it. But last month, Mr. Stapleton gave him a Mosquito for a free trial. The results were almost instantaneous. It was as if someone had used anti-teenager spray around the entrance, the way you might spray your sofas to keep pets off. Where disaffected youths used to congregate, now there is no one.

At first, members of the usual crowd tried to gather as normal, repeatedly going inside the store with their fingers in their ears and "begging me to turn it off," Mr. Gough said. But he held firm and neatly avoided possible aggressive confrontations: "I told them it was to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic."

A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange truth of the phenomenon. The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although this reporter could not hear anything, being too old, several young people attested to the fact that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it was extremely annoying.

"It's loud and squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in school. "It gets inside you."

Miss Evans and a 12-year-old friend who did not want to be interviewed were once part of a regular gang of loiterers, said Mr. Gough's father, Philip. "That little girl used to be a right pain, shouting abuse and bad language," he said of the 12-year-old. "Now she'll just come in, do her shopping and go."

Robert Gough, who said he could hear the noise even though he is 34, described it as "a pulsating chirp," the sort you might hear if you suffered from tinnitus. By way of demonstration, he emitted a batlike squeak that was indeed bothersome.

Mr. Stapleton, a security consultant whose experience in installing store alarms and the like alerted him to the gravity of the loitering problem, studied other teenage-repellents as part of his research. Some shops, for example, use "zit lamps," which drive teenagers away by casting a blue light onto their spotty skin, accentuating any whiteheads and other blemishes.

Using his children as guinea pigs, he tried a number of different noise and frequency levels, testing a single-toned unit before settling on a pulsating tone which, he said, is more unbearable, and which can be broadcast at 75 decibels, within government auditory-safety limits. "I didn't want to make it hurt," Mr. Stapleton said. "It just has to nag at them."

The device has not yet been tested by hearing experts.

Andrew King, a professor of neurophysiology at Oxford University, said in an e-mail interview that while the ability to hear high frequencies deteriorates with age, the change happens so gradually that many non-teenagers might well hear the Mosquito's noise. "Unless the store owners wish to sell their goods only to senior citizens," he wrote, "I doubt that this would work."

Mr. Stapleton argues, though, that it doesn't matter if people in their 20's and 30's can hear the Mosquito, since they are unlikely to be hanging out in front of stores, anyway.

It is too early to predict the device's future. Since an article about it appeared in The Grocer, a British trade magazine, Mr. Stapleton has become modestly famous, answering inquiries from hundreds of people and filling orders for dozens of the devices, not only in stores but also in places like railroad yards. He appeared recently on Richard & Judy, an Oprah-esque afternoon talk show, where the device successfully vexed all but one of the members of a girls' choir.

He is considering introducing a much louder unit that can be switched on in emergencies with a panic button. It would be most useful when youths swarm into stores and begin stealing en masse, a phenomenon known in Britain as steaming. The idea would be to blast them with such an unacceptably loud, high noise - a noise inaudible to older shoppers - that they would immediately leave.

"It's very difficult to shoplift," Mr. Stapleton said, "when you have your fingers in your ears."

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quote: Louis Bornwasser

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I thought Barry Manilow music had this same effect...

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quote: Monte L Fullmer

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Now, if they can make a device like this that could be mounted on the rear of our cars so when some "street racer" with their pounding, drug and gang related "jungle" music comes behind us at an intersection, we can crank on our "mosquitos" to ear screeching levels to let them have a taste of their own medicine

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quote: John Hegel

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Why do all CRT devices make the high pitched noises they do?

I must still have good hearing since most CRT’s and dimmed incandescent light bulbs annoy me to no end.

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So true!! Even if a tv set is on in another room with the volume muted, I can hear it whining! I've noticed that I can hear this with all tv sets, new or old. weird.
 

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Posted by Wolff King Morrow (Member # 2226) on 12-01-2005, 02:20 AM:
 
Noticed that too about CRTs when I was younger. But now in my 30's, the high pitched noise is less noticable.
 

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Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 12-01-2005, 03:06 AM:
 
Here in Melbourne we play classical music at railway stations to ward off teenagers.

Regards Peter
 

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Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 12-01-2005, 03:20 AM:
 

quote: John Hegel

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Why do all CRT devices make the high pitched noises they do?

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quote: Dan Lyons

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Even if a tv set is on in another room with the volume muted, I can hear it whining! I've noticed that I can hear this with all tv sets, new or old.

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quote: Steve Guttag

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When I was in college, I had to leave a lecture hall due to the horrible whine comnig from the monitors that were just showing black...it was truely painful.

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Indeed, there was one lecture hall at the university I went to where taking a couple of classes in there I quickly realized that I had little chance of learning anything in there because the stupid video projector's whine was so incredibly loud and distracting. Many students pointed it out to the professor, who insisted that there was no noise and would not even bother trying to figure out how to turn off the projector (which foolishly ran 24 hours a day).

As far as this idea of a high pitched noise for loiters, I can still clearly hear the whine of a tv set at 35, so it's hardly a "teen" repellant. When I needed my ushers to clean the auditoriums faster, I simply put on a Carpenters CD and they would work twice as fast to get out of there. So if Barry Manilow doesn't do the trick, try the Carpenters!
 

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Posted by Matt Barth (Member # 3429) on 12-01-2005, 11:49 AM:
 
I'd love to see that guy get sued for damaging the kids' ears. Then again I suppose that's my American liberalism at work.

---Matt (can't stand leaving the TV on in another room)
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-01-2005, 12:19 PM:
 
NTSC H rate is 15,734.26 Hz (at least for that flavor of NTSC that uses 3,579,545 Hz as its color subcarrier frequency). Yes, those flyback transformers can really sing.

At age 50 I can still just barely make that out. Never was annoying to me though. Can still hear incandescent bulb filaments though, especially when they are being dimmed by SCRs or triacs. It's another reason I don't like to leave the house lights at a glow during features. The students in my school's anime club complain if we do that in our screening room.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-01-2005, 12:46 PM:
 
I can hear TVs whine if I listen for it, but never has it bothered me. If I sit in a room with nothing going on and listen, I can hear ringing in my ears which is ALWAYS there. I think it is for everybody, at varying levels. It doesn't really bother me.
 

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Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 12-01-2005, 04:53 PM:
 
Women keep their 12 year-old hearing until age 60. Men are 50 db down at 5k by the time they are 50. I am not sure a program to reduce or eliminate this is desireable since it is related to male hormones and pbberty. Louis
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 12-02-2005, 01:40 AM:
 

quote: Paul Trimboli

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What is the best way to preserve my hi end hearing? Aside from not listening to loud music and having proper ear protection when operating loud equipment?

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quote: Paul Mayer

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At age 50 I can still just barely make that out.

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quote: Louis Bornwasser

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Women keep their 12 year-old hearing until age 60. Men are 50 db down at 5k by the time they are 50. I am not sure a program to reduce or eliminate this is desireable since it is related to male hormones and pbberty. Louis

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Men: Keep your hearing, lose your ability to . No thanks.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-02-2005, 03:33 PM:
 

quote: John Pytlak

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I used to hear the horizontal scan frequency from the flyback (part of troubleshooting in television repair), but alas, no longer.

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How about right when you engage the power to a CRT television, can you hear the high pitch start up then?
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-02-2005, 03:38 PM:
 
You hear the sound when the horizontal oscillator started, which then also generated the high voltage for the CRT. In a tube set, the tubes had to warm up a few seconds before it happened. If you adjusted the "horizontal hold" control, you could hear the frequency change.

Sometimes when you turned on a old CRT set, you heard the "thump" of current in the power transformer, or the automatic degaussing coil.

Flybacks: "I miss the smell of ozone in the morning".

(I don't miss the painful high voltage burns if I accidently got near the lead from the flyback tranformer to the cap of the high voltage rectifier tube (e.g., 1B3)).

(God, I'm old ).
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 12-02-2005, 04:58 PM:
 
1B3GT? Yes Pappa John, you are old.

I thought most of the 15.734kHz (15.750KC, for you John) was emitted from the deflection coils. The higher the CRT deflection angle, the more power needed to deflect that beam thus more noise.

In the old CRT high-end studio monitors that didn't have a flyback for HV but used a separate supply, one could still hear the noise.

And yes, that "buzz" at turn-on of color CRT monitors/TVs is due to the initial high current applied to the degaussing coil which then tapers off.


(BTW: I have NO personal knowledge of this as I'm too young to know about such things and have only read about them in OLD books.)
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-02-2005, 07:11 PM:
 
In my experience, the sound came mostly from the flyback. Often, you could shim or pot the windings to quiet it somewhat.

I've dealt with 3A3's as well, in my "later" years.

I was 3 years old when "I Love Lucy" premiered on television. Here I am a year later:


 

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Posted by Wolff King Morrow (Member # 2226) on 12-03-2005, 02:57 AM:
 
Did that little boy ever dream he would become a film god?
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-03-2005, 03:24 AM:
 
I really want to see 70's John Pytlak wearing polyester pants.
 

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Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 12-03-2005, 11:51 AM:
 
from quoted article:

quote:

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The results were almost instantaneous. It was as if someone had used anti-teenager spray around the entrance, the way you might spray your sofas to keep pets off. Where disaffected youths used to congregate, now there is no one.

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Sounds to me like dialogue lines from Dr. Strangelove.
Using classical music to drive away young people is certainly a perverted idea, maybe someone got the idea from seeing A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: (quotes from www.imdb.com)

quote:

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Alex: No. No! NO! Stop it! Stop it, please! I beg you! This is sin! This is sin! This is sin! It's a sin, it's a sin, it's a sin!
Dr. Brodsky: Sin? What's all this about sin?
Alex: That! Using Ludwig van like that! He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music!
Dr. Branom: Are you referring to the background score?
Alex: Yes.
Dr. Branom: You've heard Beethoven before?
Alex: Yes!
Dr. Brodsky: So, you're keen on music?
Alex: YES!
Dr. Brodsky: Can't be helped. Here's the punishment element perhaps

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quote: Joe Redifer

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I really want to see 70's John Pytlak wearing polyester pants.

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quote: John Pytlak

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Made out of recycled polyester film?

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quote: Joe Redifer

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Of course not. I want to see the outfit you wore that was recycled into my print of The Fugitive.

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I don't send my old polyester clothes to Belgium!

"The Fugitive" was not printed on Kodak print film, but I sure got lots of calls about some issues the prints had. Likewise for "The American President".
 

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