Bizarre venting/rumbling sound over the last two weeks?

Have you ever sat near a very large vent from a heating duct. It has that deep sound of rumbling and moving air. Most everyone has probably heard this type of sound at some point or another especially if you have a gas furnace in your house that rumbles and forcefully blows air out of large vents. The ambient sound of the "ship" in Star Trek Next Generation is similar. Sort of a low frequency white noise-ish rumble.

So starting about a week or two ago a sound very much like that has been "happening". I don't know where it's coming from. I started noticing it when I'd lay down in bed, and then I'd hear it. It is the sort of sound that is easier heard through solid matter rather than in the air, but it's not all bass. It comes on and goes for several minutes then shuts off for a while then comes on again. Sometimes it goes for as much as an hour. I don't have any central heating in my house plus I've lived here 20 years and there has never been such a noise. I can't hear it without sticking my ear to the ground like something deep in the earth. Very strange, never heard such a sound. It has no trackable direction it just seems to be everywhere when it's going, but "in the ground".

It's not like any of the videos or recordings I've seen/heard of strange sounds so far.

It's coming on and off at all hours of the day and night at this point. It seems to be becoming more frequent.

Curious if anyone else has been hearing anything like this as of late?

Try www.abovetopsecret.com... as one possibility.

P

This is quite a common phenomena. It could be caused by anything from a slow exhaust vent's resonance to a car left idling a mile or two away.

Low frequency audio is exceptionally hard to 'localise' and so it's normal for you not to be able to tell which direction it's coming from. Generally the only way to locate the cause of things like this is endless searching and elimination.

Wish I could be more help sorry but it's something that plagues a lot of people. I have a neighbour who has a particularly poorly tuned exhaust that causes this when he gets home from work.

Ok I can say for absolute certainty it is not a car or truck idling. This is a very strong sound and it's coming on and off all day and all night. The volume of it never changes, either. I did think about the underground tunnel stuff, or seismic activity of some kind. I have gone exploring outside trying to find a source but it's just "everywhere". I understand the non-directionality of low frequency but it has that "airy" frequency in it too, like white noise that should be more definable. I don't really expect anyone to have a definitive answer but I wanted to test the waters to see if this is a more widespread phenomena. I'd like to try to get a recording somehow but I don't know how I'd go about it.

Originally posted by 0001391
Ok I can say for absolute certainty it is not a car or truck idling. This is a very strong sound and it's coming on and off all day and all night.

Good chance it's something like air conditioning or sump pumps etc. These are periodic low frequency vibration sources.

The volume of it never changes, either. I did think about the underground tunnel stuff, or seismic activity of some kind. I have gone exploring outside trying to find a source but it's just "everywhere". I understand the non-directionality of low frequency but it has that "airy" frequency in it too, like white noise that should be more definable.

It's hard to know what exactly you mean here, very low tones produce this sort of effect in people though and there's considerable research about them causing 'unease'.

I don't really expect anyone to have a definitive answer but I wanted to test the waters to see if this is a more widespread phenomena. I'd like to try to get a recording somehow but I don't know how I'd go about it.

It's very widespread, google 'the hum' to learn more. It's a natural consequence of our ears being developed in a time before thousands of electrical motors were turned on around us.

My 4 year old son is hearing this hum too & we are in Australia. He says its loud & he mainly hears it from lunchtime onwards. My husband, daughter & I can't hear it or his teachers at pre-school. We don't know how to proceed, any info or research will be greatly appreciated.

Again, all i can say is this is no ordinary sound because I lived here 20+ years and it has never existed before. My attempts to describe the sound are somewhat incompetent because I have never heard anything quite like it. It's not a hum. It's like the sound of air but not wind. I can hear it but it has no tone. It sounds like the whole earth is the speaker in a way such as how a surface transducer can make a wall or whatever object create a sound. It comes on very directly and then it switches off very clearly. There is no fading in and out. It's on or it's not. It has a level of audibility but it's not the same as the volume of a tone.

BUT.. regarding the HUM, that has been an issue for the last few years as well. I started noticing it in my telephone (land line) first. I thought something was wrong with the phone. Then I noticed it was in the AM radio when I tried to listen. It ended up getting so loud on the AM radio and in the telephone that it became useless. I noticed it was coming out of all my electronics in the house. I went crazy, rewired the phone system, installed new jacks, checked all the grounds in the power system. I couldn't make it go away. I could go out and shut off the house's power at the box and the hum, which is pretty much a dead on 60hz ground hum tone, could still be heard. It was in the whoel neighborhood. I walked around to all the telephone poles trying to locate a transformer that was noisy but the sound never got louder, it was just everywhere. Hummmmmmm. I have basically learned to live with it because there's nothing I can do about it. Everywhere I go throughout the city I can hear it.

I also suffer from tinnitus, and know the difference between the tinnitus tones and tones outside. This hum I recorded on a number of occasions. It just sounds like ground loop hum but it's everywhere. All I know is it wasn't always omnipresent. I don't know if that's the same tone people all hearing all over or if this town just has some kind of epidemic of bad wiring.

I'm going to try get a recording of this bizarre rumbling/venting this weekend assuming it doesn't mysteriously go away. I'm not sure how, but I'm thinking just setting a condenser mic into the ground should work.

reply to post by 0001391


At first I was just going to write this whole thread off as someone who wanted to believe he was hearing something... ( honestly who puts their ear to the ground?) I know I don't anyways... but this last post made me believe your probably hearing things others can't and that my friend i can relate to because since August I have been hearing this incessant hmmm... i won't say ringing ... because it's not "ringing" in my ears... it's in my head, it changes tone, frequency, vibration, and amplification throughout the day and night AND I have no idea what it is ( it's not tinnitus although most people won't believe me) and it never stops... not even when I'm asleep. I'm well versed in what tinnitus is... so if you want to reply to me that is what I have don't bother.. it's been ruled out by two specialist. My father also started hearing the hmmm... a couple months ago. So, I don't know what you're hearing and I can't hazard a guess of what it means.

Please do not forget that human hearing differs from person to person. We are taught what the limits to human hearing are, but we are not taught what the exceptions are. At age 17 I could hear up to 25 KHz. That is way higher than the average.

Additionally some people have much more sensitive hearing than others. What one person can hear quite clearly may be well above the hearing threshold of another.

Lastly, people can and do get used to a sound such that the mind simply ignores it. Have you ever visited a person living next to a train line. They become oblivious to the train sounds while you as a visitor will find them very distracting.

A simple way to record underground noise is to use a small microphone connected to the type of stethoscope used by mechanics that has a rod attached to it. Place that in the ground.

P

Originally posted by Oneggod
My 4 year old son is hearing this hum too & we are in Australia. He says its loud & he mainly hears it from lunchtime onwards. My husband, daughter & I can't hear it or his teachers at pre-school. We don't know how to proceed, any info or research will be greatly appreciated.

Perhaps taking him to the doctor would be a good start...

Earth's natural hum? 7.83hz?

maybe the variation you are hearing is the
earth changing as it is being pulled and pushed upon
by plates and close planets etc.

Originally posted by gnosticagnostic
reply to post by 0001391

 

(snip)... ( honestly who puts their ear to the ground?) ...(snip).

I thought I explained this earlier. In any case sound travels differently through solid objects, water, air, etc. This venting sound, also perhaps comparable to a military jet engine sound but very muffled, only became audible to me when laying down in my bed which has a solid frame. I would sit up and not be able to hear it. Put my head back down, there it is in the pillow. The pillow amplifies vibration, just like if you stick your hand under the pillow your head is on and rub your finger on the fabric it is as if it is being amplified through headphones.

My first impression had been "oh, the furnace is on" because I grew up in a house with a gas furnace, but the house I've lived for 20 years has no gas furnace and I'd never heard the sound before here so that's when I started paying a lot more attention to it. I spent a few days passing it off as something normal before the peculiar nature of it began to bother me enough to start doing things like walking around the area and sticking my head to the ground.

As to your concern about being told by anyone here that you have tinnitus - far be it from me to diagnose the
The humming tone is recordable and isn't in my ears or brain. The "venting" rumble is also external and heard by others. Sources as yet to be determined!

Today I found this blog post dated Nov 30th, so just three days ago. It doesn't look like too many people connected with this thread but for anyone who might be watching, perhaps this person is onto something? Maybe this is related to what I've been experiencing. I have no idea if the blogger is legit, or a nut or what but I can't help but be intrigued by his or her most recent entry given the circumstances.

Off-site Link to Wordpress blog:

Strange "vibrations" detected throughout the United States

reply to post by Domo1


Yes we have nohinng wrong with his hearing or ears.