Thank god for Gregorian Chant...

[julesjones]

Over the last couple of months, I've been noticing low frequency hum on and off, mostly at night but occasionally in the day. At first it was so quiet I thought it might be tinnitus. But for the last few days it's been 24/7 and loud enough to be noticeable even when I open the window to let in traffic noise to mask it. I'm pretty sure it's a major factor in my poor sleep the last few nights, and I now understand why at least one person was driven to suicide by the Bristol Hum.

I can't work with this going on; it's too distracting. And so I have resorted to a technique from my student days, when I was living in a building with people who thought that it was perfectly reasonable to have the top 40 on very loudly at all hours that it wasn't explicitly banned by the college, because the beautiful people never bothered to study, only spods did that. I have got out my CD of Gregorian chant which I bought years ago specifically as white noise to mask other people's taste in music, and put it in the laptop's CD drive.

The volume is even, the emotional tone is too, and I don't speak Latin so I don't listen to the words. It doesn't distract me, to the point where I have owned this CD for two decades and have no conscious idea what most of the tracks actually sound like because I tune them out. Bliss...

ETA: There's a hell of a lot of pseudoscience about LFN, but there's also a solid study on measuring LFN from the University of Salford done for Defra in 2005:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/noise/research/lowfrequency/pdf/nanr45-criteria.pdf
2003 literature survey for Defra: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/noise/research/lowfrequency/pdf/lowfreqnoise.pdf

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Gregorian chant is lovely... Very soothing.

I also find those 'rainforest' type CDs, godawful in most other respects, also provide good background fill. I can't have music on when I'm working, because I think music deserves respect. If you're going to play it you should at least listen to it! However rainforest CDs don't come under my heading of 'music' they are 'pleasant noise'. You can put them on a loop and listen endlessly because your brain doesn't even register the fact that you've heard it all before.

Re the constant ear noise. You have been and had it checked out medically, right? You need to rule out the fact that it's internal.

[julesjones]

watervole has a set of three "natural noise" CDs that I've been meaning to buy for a while. I think it just got bumped up the priority list -- I'll phone her this afternoon and ask for the catalogue number.

I need to get it checked, though I also need to register with a GP so that I can do that. Tinnitus isn't completely out of the question, given my job history, though it's unlikely because I was always careful about hearing protection. But this is very definitely building related (which is characteristic of low frequency hum, as I've found out this morning) -- it was loud enough yesterday and other noise was quiet enough yesterday that I was able to do a survey.