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I don't think its my ears and my wife hears it too. I guess it's at about 70 Hz? It's very constant in frequency and maybe I'm only hearing a harmonic of a lower one?

Took a little drive about a mile out and its still there, a good distance from any industrial buildings.

Drives me a little nuts.

My laptop and phone mikes don't seem to pick it up, I don't see any discernable peaks in the spectrum analyzer with Audacity.

Maybe there is a pump running somewhere, since we had torrential rainfalls since about yesterday. But to still hear it, almost two kilometers out?!?

I don't think its my ears and my wife hears it too. I guess it's at about 70 Hz? It's very constant in frequency and maybe I'm only hearing a harmonic of a lower one? Took a little drive about a mile out and its still there, a good distance from any industrial buildings. Drives me a little nuts. My laptop and phone mikes don't seem to pick it up, I don't see any discernable peaks in the spectrum analyzer with Audacity. Maybe there is a pump running somewhere, since we had torrential rainfalls since about yesterday. But to still hear it, almost two kilometers out?!?

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[–] • 2 pts

Try Spectroid (Android). In Audio set to Unprocessed audio source, FFT size to 8192. Then on the main display you can pinch/zoom and scroll to center around 70 Hz. Be sure your phone isn't filtering it out by checking near an AC compressor or other low-frequency source.

Fuck I dealt with that for YEARS, due to the building and cars, or geography or something. I had to start generating low frequency to mask it (for years I used a bathroom ventilation fan with a weight attached to make it unbalanced, so it wobbled badly, then moved to a subwoofer and some brown noise, which I use to this day during sleep).

[–] • 1 pt

Got Spectroid installed since years but hadn't looked into the settings for probably as long. :) I tried with Audacity and generated a 50 Hz tone on a BT speaker. Spectroid picked it fine, also its harmonics. So at least I know the microphone in my phone is capable enough.

Thanks for the tip with the brown noise. I noticed today that other sounds seem to effectively mask the hum while watching a video. It would be "gone" when people were talking but immediately return when there was silence. To have to hear this for years? Enough to drive one crazy.

Did you ever find the source?

[–] • 1 pt

First for me it wasn't a continuous tone, but really low frequency stuff (say below 50 Hz), like vehicles in the distance, but continuous (people idling cars outside would drive me nuts). Never found any solution or source. I now think it's just resonance of the land/buildings. Maybe it was some kind of sensitivity to it. Maybe something physiological in my body actually generating that near my ears. Where I live now it's quiet. I can still hear vehicles a block away when they pull up and stop, or idle, but it doesn't drive me nuts anymore.

For the brown noise I use an old mp3 player with some noise tracks (used Audacity to generate an 8-hour track to convert to mp3).