Re: Fwd: Re: apparent increase in loudness

[Brian Gygi <bgygi@xxxxxxxxx>]

I sent a posting to auditory list last year about this:

"In the New York Times magazine of March 23, 2003, there was a piece on
Woody Norris who works with highly directed sounds.  Apparently, the
military has interest in these as weapons.  It seems that the sound of a
baby crying played backwards mixed with some pure tones is actually
debilitating.  The author of the piece tries and it out and finds it to be
the case."

I have been doing some studies with time-reversed environmental sounds, one
of which is a baby crying, and none of my subjects has come screaming out
of the booth yet (in fact, it deson't that much different from the sound
played forward).   I have tried mixing the baby-crying-backwards-sound with
various pure tones (only on myself) and it sounded like a baby crying mixed
with a pure tone, not Bach, but hardly debilitating.

Brian Gygi

At 11:23 AM 1/30/2004 -0800, Ross Alexander Hendler wrote:

> Some studies have shown that the sound of a baby crying can
> actually be quite debilitating. I remember reading about these
> studies performed by the American Technology Corporation
> which incorporated the sound of a baby crying played
> backwards and mixed with some pure tones.
>
> I tried to find out more about what tones were used but got
> the reply that "Unfortunately, the recording in question is the
> the property of U.S. government and it is not a good idea for
> ATC to disclose their full contents."
>
> Ross A. Hendler