$80 noise-cancelling earbuds should not sound this good - ZDNet

These earbuds punch way above their weight.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

One of life's little pleasures is listening to music in such a way that you truly "hear" it. By that I mean you can hear the separation between the instruments or voices to allow all the subtlety to come through. When that happens, you hear things in songs you might never have heard before…even though you've listened to that piece of music thousands of times.

Also: These $26 earbuds sound better than I expected, and I'm an audiophile

Generally, such listening pleasure is associated (at least in my book) with vinyl. When music is straight-up analog, the lack of compression can create space and fidelity that digital simply cannot match. But when you do find a digital device that offers up some semblance of audio quality, it can be transformative.

I'm not saying this $79 pair of earbuds can compete with my vinyl setup. However, the EarFun Air Pro 3 earbuds certainly do an impressive job. When I received the headphones, I assumed they would sound like every pair of earbuds I've tested to date. But instead, I was pleasantly surprised.

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EarFun Air Pro 3 earbuds

These inexpensive earbuds will have you hearing your music in ways to delight and wow you.

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Instead of a flat, overly-produced, bass or midrange-heavy sound, these earbuds produced a delicate balance between bass, mid, and treble that suited many different types of music. I put the EarFun through my usual test of classical, vocal, musical theatre, rock, and metal to see how they'd perform. The song list was as follows:

• VOCES8 - Angus Dei
• Mozart - Piano Concerto 23
• Band-Maid - Before Yesterday
• Anthem - From the musical Chess
• Rush - Tom Sawyer
• Devin Townsend - Kingdom

I was very much impressed with how these sub-80-dollar headphones could handle that range of musical styles. Each piece of music felt fresh, alive, and exceptionally well-balanced. Rush's Tom Sawyer felt particularly agile coming through these headphones. It was an absolute joy hearing the separation between Geddy's bass, Alex's guitar, and Neil's drums. 

Also: Best earbuds: Sony, Bose, Apple and more compared

Every song on my shortlist was a delight to hear through the EarFun Air Pro 3 headphones, making them sound as if they cost considerably more. But what's the secret behind the Air Pro 3 headphones?

The specs

Here are the specs for the EarFun Air Pro 3 headphones.

• Powered by the advanced Qualcomm QCC3071 chipset and Qualcomm aptX Adaptive Audio technology
• Premium 11mm wool composite dynamic drivers that deliver deep, moving bass, clear mids, and crisp highs.
• Qualcomm cVc 8.0 ENC with 6 environmental noise cancelling Mics with Qualcomm cVc 8.0 technology.
• Feature unique Hybrid ANC technology-QuietSmart 2.0 to eliminate environmental noise by up to 43dB.
• Multipoint Connection via Bluetooth 5.3
• Low 55ms latency
• 9 hours of playtime and up to 45 hours of extra charge from the compact USB-C wireless charging case
• Fast charging with a quick 10-minute charging provides 2 hours of playtime. 
• EarFun App allows for firmware updates and sound customization with a 10-band equalizer.
• Includes three different sizes of silicone ear tips for a custom fit, a charging case, and a USB cable

I also did a quick call test and the EarFun earbuds performed quite well. I could hear the caller and they could hear me more clearly than when using my Pixel 7 Pro without earbuds.

The controls

Using the EarFun Air Pro 3 headphones is simple. Once you've inserted them and have selected your music of choice, you can do the following:

• Triple tap left earbud - previous track
• Single tap left earbud - volume down
• Triple tap right earbud - next track
• Single tap right earbud - volume up
• Tap and hold (2 seconds) left earbud - enable noise canceling
• Double tap left or right earbud - answer calls
• Tap and hold (2 seconds)  left or right earbud - reject call
• Tap and hold (2 seconds) right earbud - enable voice assistant

The one thing I did not do was take these earphones out for a run. But judging from the fit, I'm thinking they probably won't withstand the jarring that happens when I'm zipping through the streets. On top of that, there's no mention of a waterproof rating, so I'm guessing these would definitely not withstand the amount of sweat I produce when I run. 

Also: I replaced my Shokz with these bone conduction headphones for one key reason

However, for general listening, the EarFun Air Pro 3 earbuds offer outstanding performance for the price point. No, they aren't going to stand up to a pair of serious studio-quality headphones but for $79, you could do a whole lot worse.

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No, ‘Sound Of Freedom’ Hasn’t Been ‘Banned’ From Netflix—And Other Growing False Conspiracies About The Controversial Film - Forbes

Topline

Misleading claims that Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have “banned” or “just turned down” streaming the controversial box office hit after its theatrical run in order to hide alleged pedophilia in the film industry are going viral on social media—but these claims misinterpret a quote from the film’s producer saying only that they had passed on the film’s initial release.

Key Facts

A viral tweet with more than 81,000 likes and 4.6 million views, posted by right-wing social media creator Matt Wallace, falsely asserts “Netflix and Amazon Prime JUST TURNED DOWN Sound of Freedom” to hide alleged pedophilia in Hollywood.

Citing Wallace’s tweet, The Quartering, a right-wing YouTube channel with 1.5 million subscribers, posted a video titled, “Netflix & Amazon Just BANNED Sound Of Freedom,” accusing the streaming platforms of “being against this movie that’s about protecting kids.”

The Quartering and some social media users criticized Netflix for allegedly declining to stream Sound of Freedom while hosting the 2020 French film Cuties, which was the subject of controversy as conservative critics alleged that the film sexualizes young girls, though the film’s director, Maïmouna Doucouré, has said the film was meant to criticize child sexualization, and it received generally positive reviews.

These claims likely stem from a weeks-old interview with Sound of Freedom producer Eduardo Verástegui, who told Breitbart in July that he went “knocking on doors with Netflix, Amazon, and other studios” in search of a distributor for the film’s initial release, all of whom declined before he struck a deal with Angel Studios earlier this year.

The film, which wrapped production in 2018, previously had a deal with 20th Century Fox, but once Disney acquired the company in 2019, Angel Studios CEO Neal Harmon said Disney declined to release the film.

Angel Studios acquired the distribution rights to Sound of Freedom in early 2023 and launched a crowdfunding effort to release the film, which opened in theaters July 4.

Vulture reported earlier this month the Sound of Freedom team has been shopping the film to streamers for weeks, claiming it is “more likely to land on a major streamer than not,” citing sources at three different streaming platforms.

Forbes has reached out to Netflix and Prime Video for comment.

Key Background

Sound of Freedom became the subject of heated political controversy this summer, with the right wing championing the film’s anti-sex-trafficking message and the left criticizing the film’s ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory—the central idea being that a group of Satanic global elites are running the world and preying on children. The film stars Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard, a former government agent and founder of Operation Underground Railroad, which conducts missions to rescue children from sex traffickers. Caviezel has reportedly spoken at multiple QAnon events, where he has promoted the baseless “adrenochrome harvesting” conspiracy theory, which suggests that the Hollywood and political “elite” ingest the adrenochrome chemical from children’s blood to stay young. Ballard has also voiced support for the adrenochrome theory, though he has said he and Caviezel condemn “the majority of what they see with conspiracy theories.” A Vice investigation also claimed Operation Underground Railroad exaggerated its role in sex-trafficking rescues, with multiple law enforcement agencies calling their partnerships with OUR “insubstantial.” Plenty of right-wing figures, including former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and pundits Sean Hannity and Jordan Peterson have promoted the film on social media. It has a 65% critics score and 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Surprising Fact

This isn’t the only false claim about Sound of Freedom that’s gained traction among right-wing social media users. After the film’s opening in July, claims that AMC theaters deliberately sabotaged screenings by randomly refunding tickets, evacuating theaters or making the room’s temperature uncomfortable went viral. Heavyweight boxer David Niño Rodriguez claimed on social media the screening he attended at an AMC was “horrendous” because the volume was turned “all the way down to nearly inaudible.” AMC CEO Adam Aron criticized these allegations as “conspiracy theories.” Harmon thanked Aron for AMC’s support for Sound of Freedom in response.

Big Number

$180,587,629. That’s how much Sound of Freedom has grossed at the global box office so far, more than 12 times its $14 million budget. It’s the tenth-highest-grossing film in the United States and the nineteenth-highest-grossing film worldwide so far this year. Sound of Freedom surprised by outgrossing films thought to be surefire blockbusters: It’s made more money at the domestic box office than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One and Elemental, all of which struggled to profit on their huge nine-figure budgets.

What To Watch For

How much Sound of Freedom’s box office numbers will continue to rise. The film began opening in international markets in August and is set to premiere in Latin America on August 31 and the United Kingdom and Ireland on September 1.

Further Reading

Box Office Hit ‘Sound Of Freedom’ Controversy—Including QAnon Ties And False Claims Theaters Are Sabotaging Screenings—Explained (Forbes)

‘Sound Of Freedom’ Outgrosses Big-Budget Films ‘Fast X,’ ‘Elemental’ At Domestic Box Office (Forbes)

Is Sound of Freedom About to Strike Streaming Gold? (Vulture)

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What's making that noise? Chasing down the insect sounds of summer - Colorado Public Radio

Most cicadas have a special organ called a tymbal they use to make the incredibly loud calls that pulse through summer afternoons. But Putnam’s cicada is different; it belongs to a genus known as wing-tapping cicadas, and its sounds are just that.

Having an unusual sound gives wing-tappers their own audio niche as they try to stand out in their search for a mate.

“There's all of this sound specialization,” Gharbi said of insects in general, “where they're all competing with each other for the same sound space. And so to minimize competition, they each take on their own specific frequency, sound [and] rhythm. They're all basically … making sure that they can still be heard in this cacophony of insect noise.”

Suspect number three: None of the above

At the end of the day, without an actual specimen, it’s impossible to say for sure what Garfinkel has heard, or whether the sound has come from just one type of insect.

“A lot of animals can click,” Garcia said. “So if you don't see the actual beetle then, I don't know, maybe it's not necessarily that kind of beetle.”

But the internet does have lots of places that will try to help you Shazam any insect sounds you’re hearing, if you’re willing to work at it. 

Songs of Insects provides little audio clips of crickets, katydids, grasshoppers and cicadas, with delightful descriptions such as “A plaintive, dissonant trill from trees at night.”

iNaturalist, Gharbi’s Pokedex of living things, allows users to upload, ID and discuss all sorts of creatures they run into out in the world. 

And for Colorado-specific insect curiosities, Colorado State University’s Extension has information on all sorts of invertebrates: pests, pollinators and much more.

But with fall fast approaching, there isn’t all that much time left in the year to wonder over those clicks and calls from the underbrush; the first Colorado cold snap will silence much of that chorus until their offspring emerge next spring.

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NASA officials sound alarm over future of the Deep Space Network - Ars Technica

Enlarge / NASA has three Deep Space Network stations in California, Spain, and Australia, collectively tracking dozens of space missions.

NASA/Bill Ingall's

NASA officials sounded an alarm Tuesday about the agency's Deep Space Network, a collection of antennas in California, Spain, and Australia used to maintain contact with missions scattered across the Solar System.

Everything from NASA's Artemis missions to the Moon to the Voyager probes in interstellar space rely on the Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive commands and transmit data back to Earth. Suzanne Dodd, who oversees the DSN in her position at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, likes to highlight the network's importance by showing gorgeous images from missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Perseverance rover on Mars.

"All these images, and all these great visuals for the public, and all the science for the scientists come down through the Deep Space Network," Dodd said Tuesday in a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council's Science Committee.

DSN is in deep sh!#

But Dodd doesn't take a starry-eyed view of the challenges operating the Deep Space Network. She said there are currently around 40 missions that rely on the DSN's antennas to stay in communication with controllers and scientists back on Earth. Another 40-plus missions will join the roster over the next decade or so, and many of the 40 missions currently using time on the network will likely still be operating over that time.

"We have more missions coming than we currently are flying," Dodd said. "We’re nearly doubling the load on the DSN. A lot of those are either lunar exploration or Artemis missions, and a lot of Artemis precursor missions with commercial vendors. So the load is increasing, and it’s very stressful to us.”

“It’s oversubscribed, yet it’s vital to anything the agency wants to do," she said.

Vint Cerf, an Internet pioneer who is now an executive at Google, sits on the committee Dodd met with Tuesday. After hearing from Dodd and other NASA managers, Cerf said: "The deep space communications system is in deep—well, let me use a better word, deficit. There’s a four-letter word that occurs to me, too."

Enlarge / An antenna at NASA's Deep Space Network station near Madrid.

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Because astronauts are involved, the Artemis missions will come with unique requirements on the DSN.

"We're not going to have bits of data. We're going to have gigabits of data," said Philip Baldwin, acting director of the network services division at JPL. "I don't want 1080p for video resolution. I want 8K video."

Each of the three stations on the Deep Space Network has a 70-meter (230-foot) dish antenna, the largest antennas in the world for deep space communications. Each location also has at least three 112-foot (34-meter) antennas. The oldest of the large antennas in California entered service in 1966, then was enlarged to its 70-meter diameter in 1988.

“We have reached a really critical point on the DSN’s aging infrastructure," said Sandra Cauffman, deputy director of NASA's astrophysics division.

Artemis I case study

Dodd presented some numbers from late last year to highlight the problem. During the Artemis I mission, NASA's Orion spacecraft spent about 25 days traveling from Earth to a distant orbit around the Moon, then returned to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The Deep Space Network's antennas collectively spent 903 hours tracking and communicating with the Orion spacecraft during Artemis I.

But there's more to the story. There were 10 small rideshare secondary payloads that flew into deep space on the Space Launch System rocket on Artemis I. These CubeSats ranged in size from a shoebox to a briefcase, with small antennas and low-power transmitters that required large antennas on Earth to make a reliable connection.

Eight of these CubeSats were tracked with the DSN, according to Dodd. "They got 871 hours of tracking, nearly as much as Artemis for eight little CubeSats," she said.

"I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to put up (so many) CubeSats with Artemis I," Dodd said.

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Al Ittihad 'sound out' yet another Liverpool star - Anfield Watch

Saudi Pro League champions Al Ittihad have been linked with yet another Liverpool player.

The PIF-backed club signed Fabinho for £40m earlier this summer, while they have recently made overtures at Mohamed Salah.

Nuno Espirito Santo's side supposedly want to put Salah among the highest-paid footballers on the planet and are prepared to offer Liverpool £86m up front to get him this summer. Nevertheless, a deal seems highly unlikely this window.

READ MORE: Liverpool fans reveal how much it would take to sell Mohamed Salah

On top of that, another recent report claimed that Joe Gomez is 'very high' on Al Ittihad's shortlist for a new defender.

Now, Fabrice Hawkins of RMC Sport claims that Al Ittihad have also 'sounded out' Ibrahima Konate in the centre-back search, having been knocked back by OGC Nice's Jean-Clair Todibo.

However, it is added that Konate 'feels good' at Liverpool, suggesting little chance of a deal actually materialising.

The 24-year-old Frenchman, who joined the Reds for around £36m in 2021, is currently out with a muscle injury having missed the win over Newcastle on Sunday.

Jurgen Klopp has suggested Konate is likely to return after the international break, but could feature at the weekend against Aston Villa – when Liverpool will be without suspended captain Virgil van Dijk.

Liverpool are also in the market for a new defender and have looked at Piero Hincapie of Bayer Leverkusen. European clubs have until 23:00 BST on Friday, 1 September to complete their business. However, the Saudi Pro League window remains open until Wednesday, 20 September, potentially leading to another three weeks of rumours and destabilisation involving Premier League stars. Klopp branded the late Saudi deadline 'not helpful' earlier this summer, calling on football's authorities to look at the issue.

Interestingly, Saudi Pro League sides currently have a registration limit of eight foreign players per team, meaning Al Ittihad – who currently have all eight slots occupied – may have to ditch one of their non-Saudi stars before actually bringing in another big name.

There are rumours that former Celtic star Jota – who only moved to Jeddah for £25m this summer – could be the man to make way for a new defender.

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The inaudible 'fear frequency' that makes horror films more terrifying - The Telegraph

In the early 1980s, Vic Tandy was one of a team designing medical equipment in a laboratory at Coventry University. Everybody said that the lab was haunted; it just felt weird in there. That evening, when Tandy was on his own, he felt something very strange. 

“I was sweating but cold, and the feeling of depression was noticeable – but there was also something else,” he told the Birmingham Post at the time. Suddenly, he felt like he was being watched. “It was as though something was in the room with me.” 

A greyish shape appeared on the edge of his vision. The temperature dropped. As he turned to look at the shape, it disappeared. “There was absolutely no evidence to support what he had seen so he decided he must be cracking up and went home,” Tandy and his colleague Tony Lawrence wrote in a 1998 paper on the incident.

Tandy was a man with many interests. He became a lecturer in information technology at Coventry University and was an engineer, but was also a keen magician and member of the Leamington and Warwick Magic Society. In his spare time he had time to go fencing too. On another evening in the same laboratory, another odd thing happened. 

His fencing foil was clamped in a vice on a table in the middle of the room. Nothing else was touching it but slowly at first, then faster and faster, the blade started to vibrate up and down. Intrigued, Tandy started to investigate and discovered a new extractor fan near the laboratory. It was sending rumbling, low-frequency soundwaves of 18.9 hertz into the laboratory, which were bouncing around and focusing where his foil was clamped. 

Ghost frequency

These frequencies were below the range that the human ear can hear, but Tandy surmised that these low-frequency sounds – known as infrasound, the polar opposite to high-frequency, high-pitched ultrasound – were what had caused his experiences. In another investigation a few years later, Tandy found that an apparently haunted 14th century cellar underneath Coventry’s tourist information centre was focusing infrasound at 19 hertz from the pump of a nearby fountain. 

“To find exactly the predicted frequency was astonishing and the experiment was repeated several times to ensure that it was not an anomaly of the equipment. While reluctant to rule out other frequencies in the infrasound band, clearly 19 Hz must be of particular interest,” he wrote in a 2002 paper titled Something in the Cellar.

Tandy and Lawrence suggested that frequencies of 19 hertz – invisible, inaudible waves which seep through buildings and the ground, and into our bodies – might caused those exposed to experience what they perceive as a haunting. Since their work the so-called “ghost frequency” has built up quite a mythos: some say it can make you vomit, send you running from a room, or induce shivers and sweat. 

The paper even suggested it could make you see ghosts, citing a Nasa report that put the resonant frequency of the human eyeball at 18 hertz. “If this were the case then the eyeball would be vibrating which would cause a serious ‘smearing’ of vision,” Tandy and Lawrence’s first paper, Ghost in the Machine, put it in 1998. “It would not seem unreasonable to see dark shadowy forms caused by something as innocent as the corner of [Tandy’s] spectacles.”

But that’s not all infrasound can reputedly do. In 2003, director Gaspar Noé admitted adding low frequencies to scenes in his film Irréversible to unsettle audiences. “You can’t hear it, but it makes you shake. In a good theatre with a subwoofer, you may be more scared by the sound than by what’s happening on the screen. A lot of people can take the images but not the sound. Those reactions are physical.” 

Unnerving: Gaspar Noé added 27 hertz to Irréversible Credit: Moviestore Collection Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

Some cinemagoers on Reddit recalled feeling nauseous and unnerved while watching Irréversible, though that might have been down to graphic sequences where characters are sexually assaulted or beaten to death with fire extinguishers rather than any “fear frequency”. Yet Noé isn’t alone in using deep frequencies to try to scare audiences: Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring 2 are rumoured to have used infrasound, as was the zombie movie The Battery. How, though, does infrasound work?

Human speech spans between around 500 and 2000 hertz, and the lowest C note on an 88-key piano is just under 33 hertz. Infrasound, explains Dr Trevor Cox, head of acoustics research at Salford University, is generally taken to be anything below 20 hertz. Noé added 27 hertz to Irréversible, so technically it isn’t infrasound. “But the key thing from a perception point of view is your ear can still pick this up. It just has to be very loud for it to be audible.”

All sorts of things create infrasound in our everyday lives: big engines and fans, washing machines, thunderstorms. Tandy wasn’t the first person to investigate infrasound: the Moscow-born scientist Vladimir Gavreau’s experiments in the 1960s led him to suggest that the Soviet Union created a giant 10,000 watt acoustic resonator to kill enemies with silent sound. “There is one snag,” William S Boroughs noted in a 1968 National Enquirer article about it. “At present, the machine is as dangerous to its operators as to the enemy.”

Not everybody is sensitive to infrasound. Whether you are or not is due in part to how good your hearing is, and partly a natural sensitivity. “So some people can hear it, some people can’t, and that’s just natural variation.”

Tandy died suddenly in 2005, aged 50. But two papers he and collaborator Tony Lawrence published in 1998 and 2003 theorising that infrasound might explain reports of hauntings have lived on as other academics have investigated too. Ciàran O’Keeffe, a parapsychologist and head of the School of Human and Social Sciences at Buckinghamshire New University, is one. You’ve felt sound affect your body before, he says.

“Imagine you’re in a club and there’s a very deep, deep bass playing through the speakers and you’re relatively close to the speakers,” says O’Keeffe. “And you can hear the beat, but actually you can feel it in the pit of your stomach.” 

Add in infrasound frequencies and there are other effects too. “There can be kind of a heaviness, on your head or your ears. Some people even report hairs going up on the back of their neck, a sense of presence as well.”

Sarah Angliss is a composer and sound designer who has used infrasound in theatre productions, and whose background is in engineering. “It’s a very odd feeling if you’re in the room when infrasound is present because it’s a sound that you feel rather than hear,” she says. “It’s like it gets in your body, you sense it almost like on your skin and you’re aware of it. If it’s loud enough, if it’s powerful enough, you have a sense of the air being alive in a certain way.”

Not that it’s a portal to the underworld. “If you’re expecting to see a dead uncle in the room or something like that, it wasn’t like that at all,” she says. “I mean, it’s a really marginal effect. It’s just like a slight addition to the room, a slight sense of something extra in the room. It’s almost like the room feels slightly electric.”

In 2003, Angliss and O’Keeffe collaborated on an experiment to test Tandy’s theory. “I started to realise that all these organ builders around the world have been building these pipes that are so long, and their bass frequency is in the infrasonic range,” says Angliss. These pipes were huge, and needed enormous bellows and engineering to force enough air through them to play a sound which nobody could actually hear. 

“So it begs the question, if this stuff is junk sound – stuff that we don’t need to think about because it’s outside the human range of hearing – why did people go to these extraordinary little lengths to build these pipes?”

Paranormal Activity is believed to include infrasound Credit: Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

They both went to St Albans cathedral to investigate. “It just didn’t make any sense why these pipes were being built. But when Sarah and myself were in St Albans cathedral, and we asked the organist to play an infrasonic pipe, you could feel an added intensity to the music. You could feel it in your body.”

Angliss felt it too. “These very, very deep pipes were put in to create that kick, some kick in the music, the drop, where you feel a sense of awe in the cathedral.”

She, along with the National Physical Laboratory, helped design and build an infrasound machine in a Sussex shed, using a 23-foot piece of corrugated plastic sewer pipe as their own organ pipe to create a resonance at 17.5 hertz. When they turned their ‘acoustic cannon’ on, odd things started happening: the strip lights in the shed vibrated and furniture trembled slightly. The room stayed nearly silent. 

Spookily enough, one of the best low-tech ways to tell the presence of infrasound is to light a candle and watch its flame flicker and tremble. “I used to go around and demonstrate it [the cannon] and [it was] very, very exciting to pick up a candle and just walk around the room and see the candle flickering as you moved into the antinodes of the signal, and bits of paper flapping, or the chair slightly vibrating, and you really felt it on your chest.”

Not everyone was keen on the experiment. Angliss remembers having “a whole stack of the email equivalent of green ink letters from physicists who said I shouldn’t be running the experiment on ethical grounds,” and had been warned off investigating infrasound by a salesman in an audio tech shop on Tottenham Court Road.

“He said, you really shouldn’t be messing with brown noise. It was like, ‘Don’t do drugs’ – like, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. It’s like the classic opening to a horror film. It was hilarious.”

Undeterred, says O’Keeffe, they “blasted infrasound at an unsuspecting audience in the Royal Festival Hall to test the theory”. On May 31 2003 they took the acoustic cannon to the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre, where they put on two concerts on one afternoon that mixed live piano pieces and some of Angliss’ electronic work. Underneath the music, though, O’Keeffe mixed in sound from the cannon at different points in each performance. The audience filled out questionnaires detailing their feelings through the pieces.

“What was quite obvious,” says O’Keeffe, “was that people were having emotional responses to the music, of course, regardless of whether infrasound was present or not. Infrasound appeared to increase the intensity of the emotional response.”

It helped O’Keeffe and his colleagues come to the conclusion that Tandy’s idea was intriguing but imperfect. “Vic Tandy had a really interesting theory that I love, but actually his theory to say it was 19 hertz that was responsible for haunting experiences is not now held up amongst parapsychologists.”

Ghosts and poltergeists have a lot of causes, he says. “It’s a contributing factor, but we can’t say it is the cause of all haunting experiences.”

Madison Wolfe in the infrasound-powered Conjuring 2 Credit: Matt Kennedy

Many hauntings take place around bedtime or during the night, and “is easily attributable to the state between waking and sleeping, hypnagogic effects,” O’Keeffe says. The two biggest factors are psychology and the environment which a person is in.

“If you go into a place that I’ve suggested to you is haunted, and you feel a breeze on the back of your neck, potentially you’re going to be looking around thinking, was that a ghost that just walked behind me? As opposed to if you’re in an office building and feel a breeze on the back of your neck, and you’re looking for an open window or an air conditioning duct.”

A lab late at night, or a creepy medieval cellar, will prime a certain kind of response. “It affects your interpretation of what’s going on. So imagine in St. Albans Cathedral, feeling that physical effect of the infrasound and then interpreting it as a sense of profundity – a sense of awe here in the cathedral. Now, in a haunting context, given Vic Tandy’s theory, you experience the infrasound, you can’t attribute it to any source, it affects you physically and you think, well, maybe that’s the spirit, maybe there’s a ghost here.”

That gig in the Purcell Room suggested something similar. “It’s the same thing: people having an emotional response to the music, that response is not going to alter, but the intensity of the response will alter.”

Cox points out that infrasonic frequencies can penetrate most places you could try to hold an experiment: “It’s very hard to make very controlled experiments at these very low frequencies because any venues you go into are almost certainly going to be washed with infrasound from other sources.”

The other problem is that after a rush of funding when Defra tried to get to the bottom of annoyance from infrasound and ultrasound around the turn of the 2010s, few academics have returned to the subject. “There’s just not been very many experiments, to be honest,” says Cox.

Angliss, though, has applied infrasound in work including a production of The Twilight Zone at the Almeida, and she still feels the excitement of first exploring infrasound. “It was like opening an amazing door. Oh my god, I just could not believe what I found. There’s all these tantalising things.”

I want to feel these tantalising things too, so I open one of the many YouTube videos purporting to send out the 19 hertz ‘fear frequency’. A comment on one 12-hour video makes it sound particularly promising. ‘I am listening to it right now and well... as soon as I placed it [sic], the vains [sic] in my face starting pumping, as I am typing this, it’s a little hard to breathe, this stuff is pretty cool, I am starting to see things, my feet are vibrating. This is sick.”

I put my AirPods in and wait for something to happen. There’s a soft rustling noise, like static down a phone line. I sit in my kitchen waiting for a visitation for a good 15 minutes before admitting it’s not happening. No tingle on the back of the neck, no cold sweats, no ghosts. It turns out firing up a very compressed YouTube video on my tinny laptop speakers in a bright, tidyish flat at 8am doesn’t have quite the same presence and effect as a giant pipe organ in a creepy cellar in the dead of night. 

It doesn’t look like there are any ghosts in my machine. But there are still machines out there which might be sending infrasound silently into your home, shaking your eyeballs, and – just maybe – sending a shiver down your spine.

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How Pope Francis Was Involved in 'Sound of Freedom' - Newsweek

Pope Francis played a special role in ensuring Sound of Freedom made it to the silver screen, the movie's producer has told Newsweek in an exclusive interview.

The film, about former Homeland Security agent turned anti-child sex trafficking champion Tim Ballard, is the 10th highest grossing in the United States so far this year, surprising everyone with its success. But it sat in limbo for years after filming wrapped in 2018, with producers never knowing if it would see the light of day.

Sound of Freedom producer Eduardo Verástegui began developing the project with writer/director Alejandro Monteverde in 2015. Soon after, Verástegui got to meet Pope Francis and made sure he took his chance to tell him about it.

"I had a private audience with Pope Francis and I told him, 'Holy Father we are about to start this project called the Sound of Freedom movie, it's about raising awareness, which is the first step to eradicate child trafficking,'" Verástegui said.

Pope Francis attends the Stations of the Cross on August 4, 2023, in Lisbon, Portugal, for World Youth Day. The pontiff apparently prayed for the success of the film "Sound of Freedom." Jose Sena Goulao/Getty Images Europe

The producer then asked the pope: "Will you please pray for the people?"

The head of the Catholic Church was apparently happy to oblige, and according to Verástegui said, "This is something very important and it's very close to my heart, and I will pray in a special way for this project."

Little did Verástegui know, he would need all the prayers he could get because Sound of Freedom would face some major roadblocks before its premiere.

Starring Jim Caveziel as Ballard, Sound of Freedom tells the story of how Ballard left the government agency to start Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) and saved hundreds of children from sex trafficking.

Film studio 20th Century owned the distribution rights to the film, but when the company was bought out by Disney in 2019 the House of Mouse told Verástegui that the movie wasn't for them. He spent the next few years wrangling back the rights and eventually partnered with Angel Studios, which distributed the film by crowdfunding $5 million.

Read more about Sound of Freedom

The independent movie astonished Hollywood when it had a massive opening weekend in July and has managed to outperform mega franchises Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Well known in his native Mexico as an actor and producer, Verástegui spoke to Newsweek from Rome, where he had just completed his annual private meeting with Pope Francis.

"I told Pope Francis this morning that, 'After working for eight years, the movie came out on July 4 and became the number one movie in America. Thank you for your prayers,'" Verástegui said. "He was very happy to hear about the success of the film and was very happy to hear that this movie is saving lives already, that it's raising awareness worldwide."

Verástegui also gave Pope Francis his own copy of the film to watch in his native Spanish language, and the pontiff promised to view it.

The movie itself has proved controversial. Its director, Alejandro Monteverde, has previously told Newsweek that it had been subject to relentless attacks from critics following its release.

Monteverde said the film had been "victimized" and "bullied" by mass media and social media users, many of whom had not actually seen it.

Some critics have claimed there are connections between the movie and the QAnon conspiracy theory. The Guardian called Sound of Freedom a "QAnon-adjacent thriller," The Washington Post called it a "box office hit whose star embraces QAnon," while Rolling Stone called it a "superhero movie for dads with brainworms: The QAnon-tinged thriller."

Ballard has dismissed such suggestions as "kind of sick."

"Where's the QAnon doctrine being spewed in the film and in the script? I have no idea because this is actually what it looks like. This is what happened. I was there, and several others were there to confirm so this is just some other agenda," he told Fox & Friends on Fox News.

Pope Francis has previously spoken out about human trafficking. In a video message on February 8, 2023, to mark the World Day of Prayer and Reflection against Human Trafficking, he said: "Human trafficking disfigures dignity. Exploitation and subjugation limit freedom and turn people into objects to use and discard. And the system of trafficking profits from the injustice and wickedness that oblige millions of people to live in conditions of vulnerability."

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Pink salmon are having a great 2023 return in Puget Sound - KUOW News and Information

Did you know pink salmon are quite considerate? They schedule their returns during odd-numbered years. That makes things easier for folks watching salmon communities around Puget Sound, and in 2023, they are observing one of the largest pink salmon runs in the past decade.

Matt Bogaard with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is one such salmon expert who keeps track of these numbers.

"We're forecasting to see about four million Pink Salmon returning to Puget Sound this year. That's right around the 10-year average," Bogaard said. "We did see a run size of a little over 8.5 million in 2013. And we've had several large run sizes since, but in the last two pink salmon cycles, we've seen declining run sizes. So it's great to see a larger number coming back this year."

RELATED: One way to help coho salmon survive NW pollution

The 2023 pink salmon run is expected to peak now through early September.

In 2021, about 3.7 million pink salmon returned to Puget Sound.

"Pink salmon tend to swim in high-density aggregations, sort of at the shoreline, so they are a bit easier for folks to observe. They're typically chasing their preferred food source and honing in on their natal stream habitats," Bogaard said.

In recent years, the Pacific Ocean experienced consecutive La Niña cycles, which created favorable conditions for the young salmon. That could be one reason that pink salmon numbers are so high for marine observers, recreational catches, and commercial observations this year.

"We've also seen an increase in abundance in some of our other stocks," Bogaard noted. "Baker [River] sockeye, for example, has had one of the highest run sizes on record. So we're hoping that the pink, and other stocks, follow suit."

"I think we have some really positive inclinations, so far, that we should see a higher abundance of pink salmon communities here, which is great for us to meet our conservation objectives, but it's also going to be excellent to hopefully provide an increase in both recreational opportunity, as well as commercial opportunity, and for tribal co-managers as well," he said.

RELATED: This Seattle salmon has a huge bite out of his head. Will it reach its home stream?

Bogaard added that pink salmon are one of the more resilient species of salmon.

“Because of the shorter life cycle of pink salmon, I think they are a bit more resilient to some of the habitat changes that we see — especially compared to other species," he said. "They're also especially good at colonizing new habitats and coming into new areas.”

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How Cirularity Is Leading The Way In Materials That Absorb Sound - Forbes

With only 12% of clothing materials being recycled and 92 million tonnes of textile waste being produced globally, repurposing textile waste can significantly impact the construction and fashion industry's mega carbon footprint.

At the intersection of design and circularity and creating products that absorb sound, soft, pliable, or porous materials make good acoustic insulators. Recycled paper milk cartons, recycled clothing, and even plastic bottles can be transformed into sound insulation materials.

Laurence Carr, an international regenerative interior architect, product designer, and founder of Laurence Carr, says as we see our reserves of renewable natural resources rapidly depleting, there's a growing (and vital) global focus on innovative ways to use recoverable waste.

"Given that the cost of raw materials makes up a big chunk of production expenses, using less desirable leftover materials from unavoidable processes can actually give manufacturers a significant upper hand," said Carr. "In this way, circular principles are not just good for the environment and human health; they also benefit the economy at large. It's a win-win-win!"

The innovation that Carr refers to is happening. Volunteers repurposed used milk cartons at the Hope Recovered Library in Lethabong, South Africa, into an eco-friendly and effective insulation material for the library. BAUX, a venture from the Swedish industrial design firm From us with Love, transformed textile waste into sound insulation products with Acoustic Felt in 2021.

In 2023, The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies awarded the Green Good Design to HexStargon Archiv Acoustic Collection designed by Mary-Ann Williams for Illu Stration. Inspired by three-dimensional origami folds, the collection is sustainable and encourages reuse and re-creation to cut waste.

And now, a Swiss startup, Impact Acoustic, has created a new sound-absorbing product—Archisonic cotton—made from the cellulose from cotton linters that are by-products of the cotton industry that would typically be thrown away.

Sven Erni, Co-founder and CEO of Impact Acoustic, said cotton cellulose is a 100% natural and resilient material. "Cotton cellulose has a rich history dating back to the 12th century in Italian paper-making traditions," said Erni in an email interview.

Erni says the company crafts lightweight and structurally sound acoustic products with a unique and contemporary design. Their production is entirely manual and relies on the expertise of skilled artisans. Founded in 2019, their first product, Acoustic Felt, transformed single-use plastic bottles into acoustic materials. In 2022, the company won the Central Switzerland Startup Entrepreneur Award.

"Although the process itself is straightforward and does not involve the use of heat or other energy-intensive resources, we are actively working on industrializing our operations to further cater to customers worldwide," said Erni. "Our production process follows a circular model, emphasizing the recycling and reutilization of all materials and creating no waste whatsoever while prioritizing minimal energy use by leveraging energy produced by our solar-powered system."

"Even the water we use in the production process is handled in a closed cycle, reducing the waste to zero," added Erni.

The cotton linters are sourced from Spain, which Erni says solidifies the company's commitment to creating an entirely European product.

"The cotton material can absorb up to 60% of sound, rendering it exceptionally effective as our standard PET-based acoustic absorbers, Archisonic Felt," said Erni. "To fashion our tiles, we combine cotton linters with clays and color them using earth pigments sourced from a century-old factory in Verona."

Erni says that their cotton represents the epitome of circular products.

The Michele Litvin Studio at Design Days in Chicago in 2023. The studio uses acoustic cotton from Impact Acoustics.

MICHELLE LITVIN

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"It requires minimal energy and is produced using our solar energy collectors," said Erni. "With this innovative approach, we can utilize the same product repeatedly without additional materials, all while maintaining its quality and avoiding resource wastage."

Erni believes that circular products still need to be better understood and equated with sustainable products.

"However, it is important to note that not all circular products are sustainable, as the carbon footprint associated with recycling certain products can be higher than that of creating new materials," said Erni. "For instance, the recycling process for certain plastics can only be repeated a limited number of times, as they gradually weaken and accumulate toxins with each recycling cycle."

"We firmly believe that embracing the circular economy is crucial for addressing challenges such as resource depletion, waste generation, and environmental degradation while fostering a more sustainable, prosperous and resilient society," said Erni.

Carr says circularity has the ability to not only mitigate environmental harms commonly done through the design process but to potentially reverse them.

"We can, as an industry, turn our environmental impact from negative to positive through the embrace and application of circular practices such as upcycling and innovating biomaterials from waste products and naturally renewable resources," said Carr.

"Considering that the built environment generates nearly 50% of annual global CO2 emissions, and global building floor area is expected to double by 2060—the equivalent of adding an entire New York City to the world, every month, for 40 years—quite a lot of global responsibility rests on the shoulders of architects and designers," adds Carr.

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What's making that noise? Chasing down the insect sounds of summer - Colorado Public Radio

Most cicadas have a special organ called a tymbal they use to make the incredibly loud calls that pulse through summer afternoons. But Putnam’s cicada is different; it belongs to a genus known as wing-tapping cicadas, and its sounds are just that.

Having an unusual sound gives wing-tappers their own audio niche as they try to stand out in their search for a mate.

“There's all of this sound specialization,” Gharbi said of insects in general, “where they're all competing with each other for the same sound space. And so to minimize competition, they each take on their own specific frequency, sound [and] rhythm. They're all basically … making sure that they can still be heard in this cacophony of insect noise.”

Suspect number three: None of the above

At the end of the day, without an actual specimen, it’s impossible to say for sure what Garfinkel has heard, or whether the sound has come from just one type of insect.

“A lot of animals can click,” Garcia said. “So if you don't see the actual beetle then, I don't know, maybe it's not necessarily that kind of beetle.”

But the internet does have lots of places that will try to help you Shazam any insect sounds you’re hearing, if you’re willing to work at it. 

Songs of Insects provides little audio clips of crickets, katydids, grasshoppers and cicadas, with delightful descriptions such as “A plaintive, dissonant trill from trees at night.”

iNaturalist, Gharbi’s Pokedex of living things, allows users to upload, ID and discuss all sorts of creatures they run into out in the world. 

And for Colorado-specific insect curiosities, Colorado State University’s Extension has information on all sorts of invertebrates: pests, pollinators and much more.

But with fall fast approaching, there isn’t all that much time left in the year to wonder over those clicks and calls from the underbrush; the first Colorado cold snap will silence much of that chorus until their offspring emerge next spring.

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