Background noise – how to trace?

Stuff that keeps me awake:

humming from:

Bathroom extractor over-run
NAS hard drive in a cupboard in another room
Cross Channel Ferry idling in port 1.5 miles away
Automatic water butt pump after rain

Pet hate is the squealing some phone and laptop chargers make once the device is fully charged!

If it is really quiet sometimes you can start to hear your own noises, such as the blood swooshing through your head/ears.

Do you live near a wind farm ? I had the joy of reading through a case recently where a guy was convinced that he could hear constant humming from the windfarm 2kms away, and commenced a letter writing campaign to ask that they turn it off.

Do you live near a wind farm ?

Can of worms definitely open

The reason why older people hear deep rumbling noises and frequencies is that they often can’t hear higher-pitched sounds, so they become more aware of lower sounds.

Wow this went on…

I do have tinnitus – it’s not that. I think I have tinnitus because I have sensitive ears , therefore hear this noise that my partner only sometimes does.

Asked the developer about stuff online – no generators left on overnight. Closest guess is water pump 100yds away but that’s dead silent when I hear the noise in the house. It might be that it reverberates underground into the house?

Council coming round next week, not sure what to do, doesn’t feel like something that’ll get solved.

How can you say its not the tinnitus?
That’s what tinnitus is, a background noise that only you can hear all the time.

Cloaked alien spaceship hovering above the house?

Strange Sounds: Are UFO Spaceships Source Of Loud Humming Sounds?

It’s The Hum. Nobody knows what causes The Hum. Learn to live with it.

Pumping station for the sewerage/increasing the mains pressure?

I was serious about the screwdriver method!

Back with a vengeance after being very sporadic over winter months. Bad enough to wake me up twice last nice, it sounds like a helicopter hovering nearby yet others can’t hear it. If it was tinnitus, I’d hear it elsewhere.

Its becoming a worry…

Did you power off your electricity at the mains like suggested?

What did your Doc say?

What did your psychiatrist say?

I think I have tinnitus because I have sensitive ears

That is what I thought, but really it was the early on set of Tinnitus.

If it was tinnitus, I’d hear it elsewhere.

Not true really. I have Tinnitus, but only notice it at home late at night when it is quiet and can come in different forms. Pulsing of my heart beat/blood going to brain at a low pitch, similar to a Heli hovering nearby 😉 or high pitch ringing, or complete distortion of sound. A lot of the time I don’t notice the Tinnitus until it stops, then I think I’ve just gone deaf, but really its just the Tinnitus has stopped. 😉

Google “Jean Clough Thongsbridge ASBO” a former mill worker who terrorised her neighbour for years, banging, screaming, throwing excrement, threatening and assaulting her neighbour and was eventually imprisoned. She was adamant her neighbour was running highly secret but noisy industrial equipment late at night. It was eventually diagnosed as tinnitus, i seem to remember. It may have been diagnosed earlier, but I’m afraid Jean wasn’t keen to engage with the powers that be on a particularly positive basis.

Any success recording it or council noise dudes capturing it?

perhaps a Blue Whale

Electricity sub station anywhere within a mile of the house? I’ve got one a little way down the road. Can’t hear it outside but if it’s quiet enough I can sometimes hear a hum from it.

Other things is the fridge in my kitchen causes a resonance hum in other parts of the house and yet is fairly just normal fridge noise in the kitchen.

Neighbours if it’s not detached and any equipment they’ve got. I’m sure I piss my neighbours off with my NAS. When sat on a shelf it causes a hum through the shelving. I’ve tried lots of ways to dampen it but still hear it unless I pick it up off the shelf. Again it seems more noticeable in other rooms.

Or, got any lights that use a DC transformer? Likewise shaver sockets in bathrooms have an isolating transformer which will hum.

Hard drive in a sky+ box?

Constantly spins to allow live pause / rewind even if not actively recording.

Drove me mad for weeks until I realised what it was.

Where’s your house Jimmy?

Sound frequency apps for sound engineer’s. There is a 50 Hertz rumble in Salford at the moment. Sounds like road works or night time demolition. Doing my heid in!!!

Did you power off your electricity at the mains like suggested?

Yes. There’s another lady on the estate who hears it. MsJimmy hears it occasionally. The thing is, describing it and getting annoyed by it makes me feel a bit mad. I can empathise with those characters in movies who know something to be true but can do nothing about it…

I haven’t had my ears tested for a while, but I know what’s in my head (high pitch whine + white noise) and what’s not (fluctuating, resonating hum).

I await council man’s response. They did Come round with some fancy-looking equipment around the time this thread started. As luck would have it, the noise wasn’t ‘on’.

Unfortunately I’m on parental leave now so stuck around the house half the day. Fortunately the wee one is going through a shrieking phase so that masks it out. And the tinnitus.

There is a 50 Hertz rumble in Salford at the moment

One of your neighbours installed an electric motor? 😀

Electricity sub station anywhere within a mile of the house? I’ve got one a little way down the road. Can’t hear it outside but if it’s quiet enough I can sometimes hear a hum from it.

Why do transformers hum ?

Why do transformers hum ?

cos they don’t know the words.

😀

Why do transformers hum?

Large variations in internal magnetic fields cause the laminated steel cores to expand and contract at 50Hz.

Why doesn’t OP just set up a coupla recording devices. Maybe borrow a good quality microphone from somewhere and leave it running?

Pop into a local musician’s shop and ask about borrowing a decend handheld digital recorder, like this maybe:

Some of the things that has cause a hum for me…

Bakery close by
Potato factory close by
Power substation

Jimmy I have a Zoom H2 recorder if you want to borrow it, however I’m not convinced the hum will be heard as it’s relatively noisy compared to higher end kit. If you can get with and without hum recordings you still might be able to pick something up using spectral analysis though. It’s only going to tell you it’s a real noise and not what the source is though.

Actually are you near the weir? That could be it on a still night, might get some weird resonance going on with the rooms in your house.