that white polystyrene stuff that is used in cardboard boxes, around appliances (like TVs, washing machines, etc) to keep them from getting damaged in transit....I hate the noise when one breaks it up.
I love that squeaky, snappy sound! Maybe I'm just weird?
Polystyrene foam being twisted
To save space, instead of repeating the same predictable jokey comment just use this universal one:
The worst sound in the world is [insert name of least favourite, singer, band, musical genre].
Surely the nastiest sound around its Cher Lloyd singing?
Owwwwwww!
One of my most disliked sounds was Jimmy Savile yammering. Nice, after all these years, to find that I'm at last one of a majority.
The no1 worst sound has to be Rapp so called music.
The nastiest sound is the doors of Eton opening for another term. Look at the results!
The ruddy magpies sat on my roof cackling!...and people cracking their knuckles.Ewww!
After listening to the TV excerpts from the Tory party conference, I've heard all the nasty sounds I want to hear for quite some time. Give me a knife on a bottle any day.
6: Chinese wind chimes. Absolute Chinese torture!
The sound of a fart - because of what might come next, especially if it's a blubbery fart; and the sound of vomit, which is intrinsically curdling. That "blurgh" sound cannot be imitated.
Politics aside I never really took to Maggie's voice. And cats in the night, the sound is grating and slightly creepy.
Oh that's a good point, especially when they're distressed, they sound like a baby left out in the back garden. Truly disturbing.
"The most unpleasant sounds, as ranked by the 13 volunteers in the study, lay in the frequency range from 2000 to 5000 Hz" ... as indeed does one of the universe's most pleasant sounds - the trio slow movement of the Bach concerto for flute, violin and harpsichord. Dr Kumar's hypotheses isn't borne out by common experience.
Even the proverbial bright schoolchild might guess that the unpleasantness of the alleged unpleasant noises ("alleged" because I've known quite a few people totally immune to the blackboard torture) is that a lot of the energy in them is at inharmonic frequencies. That's certainly a good predictor of whether or not people will like a synthesised sound they've never heard before. Even if this research has disproved that observation - that in itself would be significant enough that you'd expect Dr Kumar to at least have mentioned it.
And, as someone who has experienced the form of tinnitus that manifests as noises in exactly that frequency band for every second of my waking life, I can vouch that it has no effect on my perception of the pleasentness or otherwise of real noises. One wonders just how big the sample upon which he bases this claim was.
To me "the 13 volunteers in the study" gives a pretty good idea of how big the sample was...
Personally, the nastiest sound is the creaking of my chair as I shift position...
Another pointless study using equipment better used in medicine.
I suppose it is pointless if you were not born hypersensitive to noise at certain frequencies so every day can be hell. One person I knew was permanently on the verge of nervous breakdown before the invention of noise cancelling headphones he had to wear most of the time. They used this sort of equipment some time ago when he visited a firm in the US who showed that to him the sounds at certain frequencies he heard as equivalent to a jet engine at about ten yards. The relief when he found there was physical cause had to be seen and that was not a cure merely an explanation and the joy of having someone understand.
Not pointless at all. For example the findings could be used to make more effective fire alarms, to think of just one practical application.
Has to be Kirsty Wark' s squark by a mile.
Sounds like they used the 'fork on a glass' for the shower scene in Psycho.
I know they didn't btw.
Schadenfreuden — This was a fashion craze over 5 years ago. Who writes these articles?
THeJ — I don't care if it is winter, you should never put that many fingers up there.
SpartacusMars — Ah yes. 1984. The movie.
Happy65 — Not one mention of fathers and the part they play in their daughters' lives!