Solving a noise problem with speakers

Поділитися
Вставка
  • Опубліковано 20 вер 2023
  • Rowan Ellis, Katie Steckles and Bill Sunderland ('Escape This Podcast') face a question about a sound investment in a speaker.
    LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
    GUESTS:
    Rowan Ellis: ‪@HeyRowanEllis‬, / heyrowanellis
    Katie Steckles: ‪@KatieSteckles‬, / stecks
    Bill Sunderland: ‪@consumethismedia‬, / escthispodcast
    HOST: Tom Scott.
    QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
    RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
    EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
    GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
    MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
    FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
    EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
    © Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023.
  • Розваги

КОМЕНТАРІ • 162

  • @NabeelFarooqui
    @NabeelFarooqui 10 місяців тому +224

    Imagine complaining to a big corporate building and them actually trying to help you

    • @pepn
      @pepn 10 місяців тому +25

      isn't the BBC publicly owned ? I always assumed that due to the name

    • @lexistential
      @lexistential 10 місяців тому +12

      @@pepn yes

    • @joaquincardonaruiz2481
      @joaquincardonaruiz2481 9 місяців тому +6

      ​@@pepnit's a big, state-owned corporation. "Corporation" just means a legally recognised organization.

  • @macdjord
    @macdjord 10 місяців тому +70

    I was surprisingly close! My guess was that, being a broadcast studio, the building was full of sound-dampening foam and such, resulting in an unnatural and eerie silence from the building's direction. (My inspiration was having read at one point that modern submarines are /so good/ at being quiet that they can sometimes be detected by the absence of natural ambient noise.)

    • @soumitrakandpal
      @soumitrakandpal 10 місяців тому +11

      I remember there were 2 submarines (French and British?) which collided because they couldn't hear each other

    • @Stirdix
      @Stirdix 10 місяців тому +1

      I had the same guess

    • @daerdevvyl4314
      @daerdevvyl4314 7 місяців тому +1

      I was also close. But having never been to London, I didn't think of Big Ben. I thought it was church bells, or possibly a mosque's call to prayer.

  • @WLivi
    @WLivi 10 місяців тому +41

    You may not know why you mentioned that Captain Scarlet episode, Tom, but I love that you did

    • @EdwardMillen
      @EdwardMillen 10 місяців тому +1

      I'm also glad he did, it was interesting, and just before he said that I was thinking about how they would have had to be careful to match the timing of when the sound would naturally reach that point, which wouldn't have been an issue in terms of undesired delays as everything was analogue back then, but if the microphone they were recording the live feed with was actually at (or closer to) Big Ben (or whatever the tower was called back then), then they would have had to delay it on purpose somehow...

    • @WyvernYT
      @WyvernYT 10 місяців тому +3

      I liked it too, and I appreciated that a children's show would get the science right. It's completely reasonable that someone near Westminster might be about 350 meters from Big Ben (with some margin for the unknown microseconds it takes for the signal to move through the BBC's electronics). Also, Google found the episode easily; it's actually titled Big Ben Strikes Again (13 October 1967).

  • @Alsadius
    @Alsadius 10 місяців тому +52

    Regarding Tom's comment at 3:10 that we don't have the tech to cancel noise at that scale, you might be surprised. My wife works on airplane acoustics, and some planes are equipped with active noise cancellation systems to help reduce the sounds of flying. It doesn't bring it down to zero or anything, but it does improve things pretty noticeably.

    • @deyfuck
      @deyfuck 10 місяців тому +6

      I almost commented a similiar thing, thinking "we absolutely have the technology to cancel out sound in the environment", but then considered that it is a very hyperlocal bit of tech (and, like, military-grade tech at that) and so it probably wouldn't apply to something like "the area surrounding a large building".

    • @juanignaciolopeztellechea9401
      @juanignaciolopeztellechea9401 10 місяців тому +2

      Maybe because it's very consistent during the flight, so you just cancel the one frecuency. Idk

    • @Womcataclysm
      @Womcataclysm Місяць тому

      @@juanignaciolopeztellechea9401 Nah it's white noise, so it's all frequencies

  • @arcanics1971
    @arcanics1971 10 місяців тому +66

    If the pedants want to be really pedantic, they can point out that technically it's NOT the clock that is Big Ben, but the bell itself.
    In reality we've used Big Ben to refer to the clock, the clock tower and the building as a whole for a long time- a lot longer than the few years that we've referred to the tower as Elizabeth Tower- and I would argue common usage trumps pedantry based on original naming every time.

    • @haggielady
      @haggielady 10 місяців тому +3

      The whole world calls it Big Ben.
      Even when I have been over there I never heard it referred to as anything else.
      Learn something new every day.

    • @faulit
      @faulit 10 місяців тому +2

      So, is this an example for an Metonymy? Using the name of the bell as a name for the clock and as a name for the whole tower?

    • @woodfur00
      @woodfur00 10 місяців тому +9

      And the real kicker is in the video they only ever talked about "the chimes from Big Ben," which _is_ accurately referring to the bell. Anyone pedantically calling them on that is just factually wrong.

    • @MarkTillotson
      @MarkTillotson 10 місяців тому +4

      When the bell pedants arrive, run like the clappers! (well, techically hammers as it a clock bell).

    • @gdclemo
      @gdclemo 10 місяців тому +3

      Is that synecdoche? (are we into the realms of meta-pedantry now?)

  • @Brenosakaguti
    @Brenosakaguti 10 місяців тому +37

    6:28 I've never been to London and I read from a random website, so it might not be the most accurate, but it said Big Ben can be heard from 5 miles away, which would mean a delay of nearly 30 seconds. That seems like plenty of time to hear an extra bong or two from a transmition

    • @losthor1zon
      @losthor1zon 10 місяців тому +1

      Copying my other comment here: if sound travels at approx. 1,100 ft/sec (approx. 340 meters/sec), how far away would a person have to be to experience a one second delay? Seems like it wouldn't be that far away at all.

    • @woodfur00
      @woodfur00 10 місяців тому +1

      @@losthor1zonThe answer will shock you… it's about 340 meters

    • @losthor1zon
      @losthor1zon 10 місяців тому +1

      @@woodfur00 - I suspect that's an approximate answer, since there might be variations due to altitude (a constant) and weather (not a constant).
      And the broadcast itself might have a small delay.
      So I don't know what the exact distance would be, but it wouldn't be too far removed from that.

  • @brucekives2194
    @brucekives2194 10 місяців тому +25

    3:30 Tom, you are almost right, but the problem occurs more with FM radio transmitters, not AM.
    Lets talk antenna gain.
    Let's say you put up one antenna, and it has a gain of 1. That means its signal is the same strength in all directions. Think of the signal as looking like a sphere with the antenna at the center.
    Now let's put up two antennae elements stacked on top of each other some fraction of a wave length apart. That antenna now has gain, and the transmitter doesn't have to put out as much power to get the same Effective Radiated Power, ERP, out to the listeners. The signal now looks like a flattened sphere, with less power going straight up where there aren't any listeners, and straight down, where there might be a few.
    Now lets really save on the transmitter power bill and stack up 3 or maybe 4 antennas above each other. Much less transmitter power but the same ERP. The signal strength now looks more like a donut, with almost nothing above or below. The below part doesn't matter if the antenna stack is on a tower in the middle of nowhere. But if the antennas are on top of a tall building, the people in the building might not hear you.
    Yes, you remembered it right.

    • @WyvernYT
      @WyvernYT 10 місяців тому +1

      Yes, this. It would be counterproductive to get into the details of radio signal propagation neepery in a UA-cam comments thread, but the short answer is that there are plenty of reasons why there might be dead spots even very close to the transmission antenna. In the US you'll read up on about this before taking the test for an amateur radio operator's license.

    • @MarkTillotson
      @MarkTillotson 10 місяців тому +2

      The problem is front end overload if you are too close to a transmitter the radio front end circuitry may be overloaded and saturate, distorting or blocking the signal. A good front end has to cope with signal levels from sub-microvolts upto volts (a power ratio of around 15+ orders of magnitude) and still work...
      The hard part is receiving the microvolt signal when its 100kHz away from a volt-level signal - the input may overload from a different signal to the one you want to hear.

    • @brucekives2194
      @brucekives2194 10 місяців тому

      @@MarkTillotson
      You are very correct. But there is the additional problem that I talked about.
      I was a Chief Engineer for an FM radio station in the early 1980's. Everybody back then had 3 and 4 and 5 antenna stacks.
      I got back into FM radio recently, helping out a LP-100 station. Now everyone inside the city has 2 antenna stacks. You only see the bigger stacks for transmitters away from the city. The reason that this changed was the donut hole under the transmitter.
      I personally understand the issue that you mentioned. The FM radio that we had in the transmitter room has been dropped too many times. Now I'm looking for a portable radio that has a good front end, is actually Stereo not just two speakers, and is inexpensive. Portable radios like that don't exist anymore, so I've been hitting up garage sales.
      And the frequency spacing is 200KHz, and the FCC doesn't allow radio stations to be co-channel in the same city, although I've heard that there are some exceptions for very large cities.

  • @ta-theoadonis465
    @ta-theoadonis465 10 місяців тому +25

    Me, hearing it's about the UK: "Oh this is gonna be about some very British thing like the Big Ben, isn't it?"
    Me, at the end of the video: "Oh."

  • @shaunhouse8469
    @shaunhouse8469 10 місяців тому +2

    Broadcasting house is limestone clad steel frame building opened in 1932, Alexandra palace was were the BBC started television in 1936. "New" broadcasting house is the glass structure next to the original building and was to take some of the operations from television centre when the BBC moved from there about 5 years ago

  • @variousthings6470
    @variousthings6470 10 місяців тому +2

    That episode of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons happens to be the _only_ episode of that series I remember seeing as a kid. (When it was repeated in the early/mid-'90s.)

  • @panda4247
    @panda4247 10 місяців тому +55

    (Chris and Gary in unison): "why would you want that?"
    Why would you want to hear the bell ringing?
    I would be glad if they built a house between the nearest church tower and my house here...
    And then I would be furious if they added a damn speaker to play the sound back...

    • @ac.creations
      @ac.creations 10 місяців тому +11

      Still waiting for the tech diffs episode of this.

    • @randomwerewolf1099
      @randomwerewolf1099 10 місяців тому +2

      Well while I think wrist watches existed back then, this might be a time when people might use the church ringing to tell the time.

    • @cyborg98
      @cyborg98 10 місяців тому +2

      Holy shit@@ac.creations , that's genius

    • @SylviaRustyFae
      @SylviaRustyFae 10 місяців тому

      Honestly, probs cuz it was still in a time period when watches and clocks cud lose anywhere from at least several secs to whole mins of time from one day to the next
      Sure, it was nowhere near as bad as it was in the time of Ruth Bellville (from the town of Ruth Bellville) goin around sellin the time, when one wud prty much have to get the exact time anew each day (before even considerin things like times when you had to get the new time in each new town you entered bcuz it was exact within mins to each town); but it was nowhere near today when we can just take for granted that our clocks will show the correct time from day to day bcuz theyre usin atomic clocks to calibrate them, and are just better able to keep the time instd of driftin by a little bit. Unless ofc someone is still usin older clocks bcuz of nostalgia; then they do get the enjoyment of resettin the clocks every few months or so bcuz the times on them drift, and worse yet at diff paces

    • @SylviaRustyFae
      @SylviaRustyFae 10 місяців тому +1

      ​@@randomwerewolf1099 Its both and there actually, as in both those things are true; and also watches at the time were far less reliable than our digital ones of today. The bong of big ben was the way you cud be sure your clocks were correct to the local time, which at least meant you and your locals wud all be usin the same time to track things; and when your watch or clock started to drift, you just adjusted the time to match the towers bong

  • @vikkiruss
    @vikkiruss 10 місяців тому +1

    I’ve never forgot that episode of Captain Scarlet, the 13 bongs really stayed with me

  • @KefazX
    @KefazX 7 місяців тому

    "The bongs of Big Ben" sounds like the title of a fun movie. Has a nice ring to it.

  • @nanardeurlambda
    @nanardeurlambda 10 місяців тому +1

    5:18 THIS IS SUCH A BRITISH CONCERN! I love that.

  • @markiliff
    @markiliff 10 місяців тому +5

    No-one is as hilarious as Sunderland thinks he is

  • @macdjord
    @macdjord 10 місяців тому +5

    I don't think it's possible for you to be unable to pick up a radio because you 'got too close' in a physics sense - there's no situation where you are X meters away from the transmitter and can hear it fine, but you move X/2 meters directly towards it you suddenly can't hear it. But it might be possible if you 'get too close' in more human terms.
    Radio antennas are directional. The simplest possible antenna - a single straight wire - radiates most strongly in a 360 degree circle perpendicular to the wire and (assuming a theoretical perfect antenna) _not at all_ directly in line with it, with a gradual falloff between those extremes. For a broadcast radio station, this is exactly what you want: make your antenna a tall vertical tower and you get maximum power pointed out towards the horizon (which is where your customers are) while the dead zones are pointed at the ground beneath your antenna and the empty sky above it, where there's nobody to listen anyway.
    However, this means that if you are right at the base of the tower, despite being very close, you are in that 'dead zone'. This would be especially noticeable if the transmission tower is mounted on the top of a tall building instead of running all the way to the ground, since someone standing next to the base of the building is effectively underneath the antenna. Thus, someone could be able to hear the station from across the street, only to lose the signal as they walk closer to the station. Technically, they aren't losing the signal because they're getting *closer;* they're losing it because they're changing the angle between them and the tower.

    • @WyvernYT
      @WyvernYT 10 місяців тому

      Yes. Not to get into radio neepery here, but I found it perfectly plausible that there might be poor reception right near the base of the building.

  • @galacticmechanic1
    @galacticmechanic1 10 місяців тому +24

    I feel that a speaker back them just wouldn't have the same ring to it as the real thing.

  • @majorfallacy5926
    @majorfallacy5926 10 місяців тому +1

    I'd have absolutely loved that 13th chime plot as a kid

  • @JimC
    @JimC 10 місяців тому +3

    Did they ever check how much the sound of Big Ben was reduced behind the building? I googled and didn't find anything about it except a snippet from "Wireless World" for 1937: "The loud speakers fitted on either side of the clock on the roof of Broadcasting House , which are used to relay Big Ben , have an out-put of 150 watts".

    • @fumthings
      @fumthings 10 місяців тому

      ok, but how many watts is the Bell?

  • @MrUhlus
    @MrUhlus 10 місяців тому +2

    5:50 Darn it Tom because you talked about it and i didn't have context i now watched that episode. and i think i now need to watch more because it is so goofy

  • @Phlarx
    @Phlarx 10 місяців тому +2

    My guess was a loud HVAC system was annoying residents because it would turn off and on every few minutes. A study showed that just leaving it on permanently was less noticeable, but expensive. So they installed a speaker to play HVAC sounds while it was off.

  • @clausewitzianwar
    @clausewitzianwar 10 місяців тому +3

    Big Ben's bongs from a big bulky British Broadcasting building

  • @matthewdejesu2115
    @matthewdejesu2115 9 місяців тому +1

    I want to watch that episode, that Tom was referring to

  • @tomcardale5596
    @tomcardale5596 10 місяців тому +3

    Bird scaring speakers are a thing, and they work very well.
    You play distress "I'm being attacked" sounds of whatever bird you've got problems with. Birds here it and think "oh no, predators, run away". Predators think "ooh, lunch in distress, better go see if there's some for me".

  • @christopherdurham1999
    @christopherdurham1999 10 місяців тому

    I got it immediately. I think because I am currently rereading Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld, and read a scene yesterday where the bells of Ankh-Morpork struck noon.

  • @RFC3514
    @RFC3514 10 місяців тому +2

    5:29 - Acktcherlly, 🤓 the pedants will point out that Big Ben is the *bell,* and therefore it *_is_* the thing producing the sound people wanted to hear, so that "clarification" was totally unnecessary here. "Big Ben" _is_ the correct term.

  • @kiro9291
    @kiro9291 10 місяців тому

    I only got it halfway through lol that is fantastic

  • @smithandshortdogs
    @smithandshortdogs 2 місяці тому

    The distance would be roughly 340 meters for the sounds to sync up with an offset of 1 second. It is one of the things that I remember from the lying textbooks that I read as a kid.

  • @FlesHBoX
    @FlesHBoX 10 місяців тому +1

    I think this is the first time where I knew the answer immediately despite having no idea whether it was right or not. Right off the bat I thought "because the building blocked big ben?

  • @sophiamarchildon3998
    @sophiamarchildon3998 10 місяців тому +1

    Initial thoughts: it uses wave interference to silence a constant noise (play the opposite sound: N + -N = silence). The noise source could be backup generators used to ensure vital telecom operation, some HVAC units, or maybe some electrical equipment (tranfos). But that doesn't feel Lateral enough.
    So, all the rooftop antennas, towers, dishes, equipment, etc, attracted birds that used them as perches, and we're talking a lot of noisy birds. That loudspeaker would emit sounds outside human hearing that made the place uninviting to said birds. Quite similar to how some airports uses such devices to clear the airspace around runways to prevent birdstrikes.

  • @deebea6364
    @deebea6364 10 місяців тому +2

    My first thought is... what if it worked like noise cancelling headphones? where the speakers put out roughly the opposite of the ambient noise to cancel / neutralise it out

  • @route2070
    @route2070 10 місяців тому +1

    Not being able to hear a broadcast since you are too close to an attenae. When I am in Chicago, I can get the FM stations no problems, but I struggle to get the AM stations. I don't know if I am too close to receive the signal, or if (since the problem is in downtown) if it is the skyscrapers blocking the AM signal.

  • @lauxmyth
    @lauxmyth 10 місяців тому +2

    I arranged a tour of a CBC (Canuck version of BBC) FM tower. I was tuned to their station and it died as I drove directly under the tower. I never asked but just have assumed the signal was over some saturation limit for my radio. Just went silent.

    • @WyvernYT
      @WyvernYT 10 місяців тому

      That can happen, where a 'loud' signal swamps the radio (I've had signal dropout when using radio between two nearby cars), but it's also quite likely the geometry of the signal. There's no benefit in transmitting straight up or down, and a lot to sending sideways, so antennas are designed for that.

    • @lauxmyth
      @lauxmyth 10 місяців тому +1

      @@WyvernYT Makes me recall others story. Somebody on a plane thought their cell phone should work fine even UP there. Of course, those are sticks too so the signal is lateral* to the ground as that is where cell phones generally are. Signal leakage directly up is just that leakage and wasted power. (I did not want to get into the problem of how often your cell would have to jump from tower to tower.)
      *Lateral was the right word but neat to be able to use it here.

  • @Cossieuk
    @Cossieuk 10 місяців тому +8

    Given that Big Ben is the bell it would be correct to say Big Ben and not Elizabeth Tower formally St Stephen's Tower

    • @michaels4340
      @michaels4340 10 місяців тому +3

      I think you out a word there :P

    • @michaels4340
      @michaels4340 10 місяців тому +1

      But yeah, Big Ben is the biggest bell of Elizabeth Tower's clock, not the clock itself as the video claimed. And it would probably be responsible for most of the noise output, so it's certainly not inaccurate to say it's the noise of Big Ben that they were recreating...

    • @Cossieuk
      @Cossieuk 10 місяців тому

      @@michaels4340 ops

    • @chiralvandal
      @chiralvandal 10 місяців тому +2

      @@michaels4340what do you mean, I thought they the whole thing.

    • @MrDannyDetail
      @MrDannyDetail 10 місяців тому +3

      Formerly (in the past) rather than formally (in official circumstances)?

  • @MrTandtrollet
    @MrTandtrollet 10 місяців тому +3

    My initial guess was that the question was faced in a tricky way and that the building actually blocked some "noise" people wanted to hear. And then I thought it might be the church bells of the church that the building is next to.

    • @MrTandtrollet
      @MrTandtrollet 10 місяців тому

      I wasn't too far off actually =)

    • @MyRegardsToTheDodo
      @MyRegardsToTheDodo 10 місяців тому

      I thought it was a muezzin, until Tom mentioned that the tower was built in the 1940s or 50s, for some reason I then switched to church bells.

  • @SylviaRustyFae
    @SylviaRustyFae 10 місяців тому +4

    Im prty sure Tom is right about that radio tower broadcastin fact, and i actually wanna say i probs first learned/noticed it from an early Simpsons episode which was a followup on a prior ep with the same char.
    The second ep involvin Bleedin' Gums Murphy has Lisa listenin to a radio transmission and she has to walk across the street from the small radio station (with a ridiculously low range, that was even lower bcuz it was nighttime*) to hear the album bein broadcast
    On that, radio actually works better at night, but that means smaller stations have to broadcast to a much narrower area bcuz the west and east coast stations in USA can be heard over halfway into USA at night, so that everywhere (almost actually by quite relatively small strips, and excludin the noncontiguous USA states and territories) in USA can hear one coast or another, or both for many midwesterners.
    But anyway yea, Lisa has to walk away from the radio station to be able to hear the broadcast of the album. Not that far away from it rly, but if you did have a much larger radio tower; it wud have the same problem, bcuz of the physics of radio transmissions and just the fact theyre not sendin radio waves practically directly down; bcuz they obvs want to broadcast their radio transmissions further, and they wud travel less far if shot at the ground directly below instd of shot at the ground 20 m, 200m, 2 km, etc away

    • @macdjord
      @macdjord 10 місяців тому +4

      I don't think it's possible for you to be unable to pick up a radio because you 'got too close' in a physics sense - there's no situation where you are X meters away from the transmitter and can hear it fine, but you move X/2 meters directly towards it you suddenly can't hear it. But it might be possible if you 'get too close' in more human terms.
      Radio antennas are directional. The simplest possible antenna - a single straight wire - radiates most strongly in a 360 degree circle perpendicular to the wire and (assuming a theoretical perfect antenna) _not at all_ directly in line with it, with a gradual falloff between those extremes. For a broadcast radio station, this is exactly what you want: make your antenna a tall vertical tower and you get maximum power pointed out towards the horizon (which is where your customers are) while the dead zones are pointed at the ground beneath your antenna and the empty sky above it, where there's nobody to listen anyway.
      However, this means that if you are right at the base of the tower, despite being very close, you are in that 'dead zone'. This would be especially noticeable if the transmission tower is mounted on the top of a tall building instead of running all the way to the ground, since someone standing next to the base of the building is effectively underneath the antenna. Thus, someone could be able to hear the station from across the street, only to lose the signal as they walk closer to the station. Technically, they aren't losing the signal because they're getting *closer;* they're losing it because they're changing the angle between them and the tower.

    • @SylviaRustyFae
      @SylviaRustyFae 10 місяців тому +1

      @@macdjord I didnt mean that one cant physically do it, but more that just it isnt seen as necessary for them to design it to broadcast diretly under it
      But yes, technically its not that theyre grttin closer to the tower; but theyre just gettin closer to the buildin which is at a diff angle as you said, and they dont wanna broadcast there instd of brodcastin to a larger portion of possible area they can broadcast to by anglin it as they do

    • @SylviaRustyFae
      @SylviaRustyFae 10 місяців тому +1

      @@macdjord Oh also, in the simpsons ep, the radio tower is indeed mounted on the top of a buildin, tho not a tall one rly; maybe two stories if that, so not sure if that wud effect things diff here

    • @macdjord
      @macdjord 10 місяців тому

      @@SylviaRustyFae AIUI, the transmission pattern of an ideal linear antenna is a torus with a radius 0 hole. So I'd say you'd probably have to be within, like, 15 degrees of the axis to have it fade out? So, yeah, for a 2 story building, not being able to pick it up at the front door but hearing it just fine across the street seems reasonable.

  • @andrewgrant6516
    @andrewgrant6516 5 місяців тому

    A person standing at the foot of Big Ben with a radio, will hear the bongs through the radio before the soundwave reaches the ground. I believe on a clear day the equilibrium point is somewhere in Switzerland.

  • @christinesizemore3
    @christinesizemore3 10 місяців тому

    LMAO, my theories followed the exact plotline of the video! On first hearing the question, "I'm calling birds. They're using a predator noise." When that was looking not so great, "maybe it's letting off a hum and they're cancelling it out." Again, no go. Something they're not hearing? "Bats. They're roosting and squeaking so they play an ultrasonic deterrent." No, something they WANT to hear? "Must be a construction issue, where the building blocked the view/sound of something and they're compensating. Clock chimes? Is that near Big Ben?" Most in-sync I've been besides the ones where I either guessed immediately or already knew.

  • @Zadster
    @Zadster 10 місяців тому

    I'm not sure how true it is, but I'm sure I remember being told that that all English (possibly others too) church bells are referred to as "she", but are almost always given male names, which are sometimes cast into the bell metal.

  • @xolotlnephthys
    @xolotlnephthys 10 місяців тому +2

    Only episode of captain scarlet I remember

  • @pace1195
    @pace1195 Місяць тому

    The bongs of Big Ben from the BBC broadcast building.

  • @PeterBeckleyArt
    @PeterBeckleyArt 10 місяців тому

    The bongs of Big Ben brought back by the British Broadcasting Corporation

  • @JouvaMoufette
    @JouvaMoufette 10 місяців тому

    Eventually over the speaker you hear "It's 11:55... * doooong * trust me, that's wrong"

  • @paramdandekar562
    @paramdandekar562 10 місяців тому +1

    "Big bulky BBC building blocking Big Ben broadcasts bell bongs."

  • @RadicalEdwardStudios
    @RadicalEdwardStudios 9 місяців тому

    Elizabeth wants to be called Ben, and we should respect that

  • @SwordofAlabastor
    @SwordofAlabastor 3 місяці тому

    Commenting a guess at the start. I think it's to cancel out an electric hum via destructive interference.
    Edit: 3:03, damn

  • @LizIsWeird-tk7uk
    @LizIsWeird-tk7uk 4 місяці тому

    my guess ahead of time is that it's playing like the inverse waveform of the noise, like noise cancelling headphones. actually now ive said it that wouldn't work but whatever

  • @abbasshahjafri
    @abbasshahjafri 6 місяців тому

    I guessed that they played White noise but I was completely wrong lmao.

  • @LewisLittle66
    @LewisLittle66 10 місяців тому +5

    "...a science textbook I read when I was 6 years old..." somehow I'm not surprised that Tom was reading science textbooks at the age of 6. 😄

  • @jannetteberends8730
    @jannetteberends8730 10 місяців тому +3

    It was the very specific formulation of a “noice problem”, that was a clue for me that it was about a noise that vanished after the building was placed.
    Didn’t get further however.

  • @loddude5706
    @loddude5706 10 місяців тому +1

    Bongs at the BBC? . . . who'd have thought . . . : )

  • @roeesi-personal
    @roeesi-personal 7 місяців тому

    I'm pretty sure you can hear a giant bell from a distance of 343 meters but I've never been to London so IDK

  • @pyrobryan
    @pyrobryan 10 місяців тому

    Tom was right about being too close to a transmitter. The signal can be too strong and overpower a receiver leading to "no reception".

  • @maxpayne2574
    @maxpayne2574 10 місяців тому

    I wonder why Bill laughed the first time Rowan calls the ringing bongs. lol Why they would want to hear it would be to check and adjust their clocks. The things people that don't know history take for granted like winding and setting clocks.

  • @PMX
    @PMX 10 місяців тому

    It's like automakers who make their electric cars play a fake engine noise for the driver - why can't people appreciate silence? As a kid, a radio in my town had loudspeakers all over the main street and transmitted constantly, luckily they eventually stopped, but I'm sure there are people who still miss that too.

  • @MrDannyDetail
    @MrDannyDetail 10 місяців тому +1

    I was about 95% of the way there straight away. I guessed it was to be able to hear some sort of bells that were being blocked by the building, but my mind went to church bells, and so I was thinking of Bow Bells and that maybe the residents of that area wanted to still be able to hear Bow Bells so they could still be classified as Cockneys. Then again I don't know if the geography would work for that.

    • @MyRegardsToTheDodo
      @MyRegardsToTheDodo 10 місяців тому

      I thought it was about a muezzin and then I switched to church bells when Tom mentioned when the tower was built.

    • @neonwired4978
      @neonwired4978 10 місяців тому

      wrong area for that i think

  • @andrewgrant6516
    @andrewgrant6516 5 місяців тому

    To be fair, the neighbour was Michel roux and the smells wafting out of his kitchen are something else.

  • @losthor1zon
    @losthor1zon 10 місяців тому +2

    Re Tom's story about the kid's show - if sound travels at approx. 1,100 ft/sec (approx. 340 meters/sec), how far away would a person have to be to experience a one second delay? Seems like it wouldn't be that far away at all.

    • @fumthings
      @fumthings 10 місяців тому

      the answer is 1100ft approx 340meters...

    • @WyvernYT
      @WyvernYT 10 місяців тому +2

      Not far at all! Even if the BBC's electronics delay the signal by a full second, that still places the listener within a mile of Big Ben. This is the realization that lets Spectrum find the missing plot item. (Big Ben Strikes Again, 13 October 1967)

    • @losthor1zon
      @losthor1zon 10 місяців тому +1

      @@fumthings - I suspect it won't match the figure exactly because changes in air pressure due to altitude and weather could be a factor, but I don't know enough to say for sure.
      Also, the broadcast itself could have a small delay.
      But it wouldn't be too far removed from that.

  • @ianb5949
    @ianb5949 2 місяці тому

    What type of noise annoys an oyster most?---- A noisy noise annoys an oyster most!

  • @Qexilber
    @Qexilber 10 місяців тому +3

    So the bulky Britisch Broadcasting building blocking Big Ben broadcast Big Ben's bongs binstead!

  • @winkletter
    @winkletter 10 місяців тому +1

    Should there be a special comments section: For Pedants Only?

  • @nuclearbastard
    @nuclearbastard 10 місяців тому

    I was thinking it was playing a high-pitched noise that scared away loud and annoying birds.

  • @raphaelnikolaus0486
    @raphaelnikolaus0486 10 місяців тому

    Did they say, "Big Ben" was actually the name for the CLOCK, not the tower??! I thought it was the BELL!

    • @WyvernYT
      @WyvernYT 10 місяців тому +1

      Technically it's the bell, I'm told. But if someone says "Big Ben" when talking about a clock or the tower, everyone knows which clock or tower they mean.

  • @Vanatice
    @Vanatice 10 місяців тому +16

    a guess before watching, is it about noise canceling / phase canceling?

    • @NICHOLSON7777
      @NICHOLSON7777 10 місяців тому +3

      with ya so far

    • @Vanatice
      @Vanatice 10 місяців тому +3

      unfortunately we were wrong

    • @o_re_va
      @o_re_va 10 місяців тому

      Same guess...

    • @SilverEye91
      @SilverEye91 10 місяців тому

      My first thought as well.

    • @michaels4340
      @michaels4340 10 місяців тому

      Yeah I absolutely thought it was that :P

  • @Slikx666
    @Slikx666 10 місяців тому

    And there me thinking that it was Tom that did the big ben striking 13... It wasn't. 🤔👍

  • @cyrilio
    @cyrilio 10 місяців тому +1

    Bill should be a regular on this show. Love him.

    • @karolis685
      @karolis685 10 місяців тому +1

      I find him very annoying

  • @bigsarge2085
    @bigsarge2085 10 місяців тому +1

    👍👍

  • @punklejunk
    @punklejunk 10 місяців тому

    Me: "Let me guess...they wanted to hear Big Ben? No, that sounds so weird, can't be right. My first guesses are always wrong."
    This video at 4:54 : Mwahahahahaaaa! Karma owes you nothing now.

  • @AnonymousFreakYT
    @AnonymousFreakYT 10 місяців тому

    Bill went on a run of B-soundalikes, and somehow didn't end on "bongs belonging to Big Ben"….

  • @SteinGauslaaStrindhaug
    @SteinGauslaaStrindhaug 4 місяці тому

    1:40 Big Bulky Building for the BBC aka BBBBBC

  • @CompletelyNormal
    @CompletelyNormal 10 місяців тому

    Clearly the people demand their bongs.

  • @brucegoatly
    @brucegoatly 10 місяців тому

    I can't say I understand the problem -the Palace of Westminster is more or less to the south of Langham Place, but Broadcasting House is to the north... So it wouldn't block the sound of the bongs.

    • @northernanorak
      @northernanorak 10 місяців тому +1

      If you are further north of BH?

    • @brucegoatly
      @brucegoatly 10 місяців тому

      @@northernanorak Good point, well made. I was thinking of a friend who lived to the south...

  • @edgarleft
    @edgarleft 10 місяців тому +10

    Bill Sunderland was again correct in his first joke answer. It happend at least trice now.

  • @PaulParkinson
    @PaulParkinson 10 місяців тому

    Big Ben is the biggest bell in the tower and nothing to do with the clock /pedant

  • @thecomputerguy6335
    @thecomputerguy6335 9 місяців тому

    So the big bulky building for the BBC broadcasting the bongs of big ben

  • @uplink-on-yt
    @uplink-on-yt 10 місяців тому

    Big Ben bongs, blocked by big bulky building, broadcast by BBC.

  • @alistaironeill930
    @alistaironeill930 10 місяців тому

    'ow else we gonna know it 7 bong?

  • @ThePyrosirys
    @ThePyrosirys 5 місяців тому

    Not beating the bonger allegations

  • @ericlanglaismm
    @ericlanglaismm 10 місяців тому

    The big bulky BBC broadcast building.

  • @robspiess
    @robspiess 10 місяців тому +1

    Big bulky brick BBC Broadcasting building blocks Big Ben's bonging

  • @generalZee
    @generalZee 10 місяців тому

    How many times can you say the word "Bongs" before UA-cam demonitizes you?

  • @jamesphillips2285
    @jamesphillips2285 10 місяців тому +1

    Nearly 3 minutes in, and based on the size of the speaker described, I am going to guess:
    To suppress 50Hz hum from the high power broadcast equipment.

  • @invention64
    @invention64 10 місяців тому +1

    The technology does exist to cancel noise with other noise, and they probably could've approximated something back then depending on what the noise was

    • @branbroken
      @branbroken 10 місяців тому

      Yes the tech did and does exist, pretty sure some of the earlier uses was by pilots to counter the engine noise, which i guess as its a fairly constant range of frequency was somewhat simpler feat than the modern adaptive noise cancellation tech.

  • @SylviaRustyFae
    @SylviaRustyFae 10 місяців тому

    The thing ppl dont get is the tower is called both Big Ben & Elizabeth Tower bcuz together they make the towers full name; thus the tower is truly named Big Ben Elizabeth Tower
    Elizabeth is just the towers last name, and Ben is their first name.

  • @JossieMimo
    @JossieMimo 10 місяців тому +1

    Damn, i thought it was gonna be anti-young people speakers or something

    • @MercenaryPen
      @MercenaryPen 10 місяців тому

      anti young people speakers would probably be covered by BBC Radio 4

  • @mattymerr701
    @mattymerr701 7 місяців тому

    All yelling is with an accent

  • @SasquachPL
    @SasquachPL 10 місяців тому +7

    Bill gets just a tad annoying when he's tryharding to be funny too much:/

  • @andrewmullen4003
    @andrewmullen4003 10 місяців тому +6

    Can we mute Bill?

  • @__cypher__
    @__cypher__ 10 місяців тому +6

    Why was the annoying guy with glasses allowed back again?

    • @DerekHartley
      @DerekHartley 10 місяців тому +6

      Because most people don't find him annoying?

    • @__cypher__
      @__cypher__ 7 місяців тому

      ​@@DerekHartleyYou want to speak for yourself? Great! Try not to be so presumptuous as to speak for other people.

  • @gcewing
    @gcewing 10 місяців тому

    Yes, if the neighbours can't hear Big Ben, then obviously they're going to suspect that the Mysterons are up to something.