I'm really sensitive to noise in general, but over the past year, I've been having an increasingly difficult time dealing with electrical hum.
A difficulty I've had with this is that most people don't actively hear electrical hums - it is simply background 'noise' that they filter out.
I think part of why I notice it / am bothered by it is related to the narcolepsy. As I get progressively more chronically sleep deprived as time goes by, I have to put more thought into everyday things that other people barely even realize that they are doing - such as being able to ignore background conversations, noise, shiny lights.
Anyway, back to the 'hum'. Partner and I were both noticing hum last night, in bed. Wooden headboard, speakers were in cubby-holes on headboard. Turning the speaker off did not change the hum [but did get rid of the baseline 'bad ground' type signal without any input]. Unplugging the speaker did, but we're both geeky and figured this was not an elegant solution. Moving the speaker the power and audio connects into to a table beside the bed eliminated the hum at that point.
However, when I woke up, the hum was back. Not as intense as last night, but there nonetheless [I also woke up with my left ear near blocked, and aching sinuses - sleeping with space heater on low and door closed produced same sensation as being in a car with its heater on full blast]. I gritted teeth, trying to ignore it, but with no success. Unplugged speaker, hum faded. Plugged speaker back in, hum lesser intensity than it was a moment before.
I should have seen if putting it back in the headboard produced same intensity of hum as existed last night. Possibly an issue where the signal builds over time until it reaches a frequency where it can resonate with the surface. Our sleepy conclusion as to the headboard had been that it was a semi-enclosed space - functioning like putting a speaker in a wooden cabinet.
My thought as to should have put back in headboard would be to determine if it was right back to same level of hum for headboard -- if the headboard being more dense makes it faster to reach a level of annoying OR if it is due to different load on house power from people upstairs being awake for a bit.
My parents' house is worse - the entire house 'hums' as soon as I walk in. My father thinks it is totally in my head - as an employee of a power distribution company, he refuses to listen to it. Possibly he feels that I am trying to blame him - but I simply want to understand why it is, and how I can make it less intense.
I think the simplest / most reliable method would be to get an oscilloscope and look at the waveform / frequency. I suspect that both houses experience issues with waveform distortion [from reading various white papers by APC - I need to do more reading though]
 amalyn · Sun Mar 02, 2008 @ 04:34pm · 0 Comments |
