Friday open thread: favourite and/or least favourite sounds

[dolorosa_12]

Just a straightforward one this week: talk to me about your favourite sounds, or your least favourite sounds, or both.

My favourites are, I suspect, pretty basic:

The movement of water (waves breaking, rivers flowing, water tumbling over rocks, etc)

The wind moving through leaves, or bare branches

Onions frying

Fire crackling

The crunch of dry leaves, twigs, or snow underfoot

Lots of sounds related to paper — pages turning, paper being cut with scissors or folded precisely, the sound of a fountain pen moving across the page

Babies laughing, or babbling, or small toddlers learning to talk

The song of Australian magpies

My least favourite sounds (other than obvious stuff like sudden unexpected loud noises) are audible chewing, or anything that sounds like lips smacking wetly — even just thinking of those sounds makes me grimace involuntarily.

What about you?

Comments

[luzula]

I just heard the sound of the lid of a newly-made jam jar popping, as it cools down enough for the lower air pressure to pull the lid down. It makes me feel accomplished. : )

Also I like the song of (European) blackbirds.

[raven]

I love this question. Like you, I love all sounds to do with the movement of water. I also like the sound of wind howling and rain battering glass. And I like regular, familiarly meaningful announcements: the Shipping Forecast, the "Mind the Gap" message, the radio closedown.

Sounds I don't like: most noises made by babies and small children, and the scrape of cutlery on plates.

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

Ooh, this is a fun question! I'm autistic and have near-perfect (and frustratingly sensitive) hearing, which is often a trial. I can't stand ticking clocks, background electrical noises like fridges or freezers, beeping, motorcycle engines, traffic noise or garden machinery. But I do love the sounds of nature - birdsong, rustling trees, flowing water, sheep and cows...all very soothing

[chestnut_pod]

I absolutely love hearing an orchestra tune to A: first the oboe, then everyone else joining in. It's the sound of wholeness!

[hamsterwoman]

This is such a wholesome post! I loved your answers and everything in the comments.

Wind in leaves/long grass is probably the biggest favorite one for me, and I also love the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, running water and crackling fire. Also the sound of stones falling into water, especially pebbles into fairly deep water -- it's a very satisfying plop.

This is probably a weird one, because I know it annoys others in my household: I love the sound of keyboard keys when someone is typing, and in fact prefer "clacky" keyboards to quieter ones for my own typing. I find the sound cozy, similar to other repetitive but not uniform noises like wind, water, fire.

I find animal sounds neat, but I think less for the sound and more because it means an interesting critter is nearby. Like, I always get excited to hear the skree of a red-tailed hawk or the hooting of an owl, but that's just because I like owls and raptors. (Although hawks do sound pretty badass, so that's hard to deconvolute). And I get excited to hear frogs and bugs at night, but that's because I like frogs and bugs and don't get to hear them very often, living in a city.

I think I'm fairly tolerant of "negative" sounds, at least compared with the people I live with. My husband and daughter hate the sound of audible chewing or people talking with their mouth full, but it doesn't bother me. My husband, who I'm pretty sure has misophonia, absolutely hates any kind of repetitive high-pitched noise -- sirens, car alarms, dogs barking -- even fairly distant ones that don't bother me at all, and also sounds like a chair scraping on carpet. I wouldn't listen to them for fun, but I'm unbothered by most of them. I also find aural things the hardest to tune into -- my mind wanders during lectures if I'm not focusing on something visual or tangible, I don't do audiobooks -- so possibly that also means I automatically tune out noises that would otherwise be unpleasant, and so they end up not bothering me.

[nerakrose]

there are a lot of sounds that I don't hear or don't notice because my hearing is just that bad, but when I want white noise on to distract me from something else or to keep me focused for studying, I go for the sound of rain and thunder, and bird sounds mixed in. I don't have any strong opinions about bird sounds either way and they don't make sense with the rain and thunder, but they kind of break up the same-ness of rain/thunder - or they did, with the white noise generator I used to use. (I think it's now defunct, at least I can't find it anymore... it had sliders so you could adjust the intensity of each sound. I'd always put the rain as the weakest, only just audible.) I also like the sound of real rain against windows, the kind of random wet slashing you get here in the UK when it's relentlessly raining and also windy.

I think my actual favourite sound is that of a cat purring. maybe primarily because if I can hear a cat purring, that means it's in in my lap :D

my least favourite sounds are the sounds of my own blood rushing (the sound you get when you stick your fingers in your ears or otherwise block the ear canal. I can't hear my pulse, but I can hear a rushing and wow do I hate it.) and the sounds of my own chewing. these are particular challenges whenever I get new hearing aids so there's always a lot of fiddling and adjusting to make that sound less obtrusive. it's difficult because these things *are* designed to pick up sound and well, when I'm chewing that sound is the thing that's closest to the mics in my hearing aids so it's kind of more amplified than everything else. (I sometimes have to turn them off to eat, especially if it's crunchy stuff like crisps. it truly sounds like somebody else is crunching up crisps directly into my ear and it's the worst. with the hearing aids turned off I can still hear the crunching but it's muffled).

related to this is the sound of my own voice - I don't dislike it day to day, but hearing myself on *a recording* never sounds like *me*, and it's this kind of knee-jerk hate-on-sight kind of feeling. just instant hatred and disgust that I don't know how to explain. (hilariously this is your best safeguard against me ever starting a podcast. I do NOT enjoy listening to myself, lol.)

[pauraque]

I like the muffled soundscape of walking in snowy woods. Boots in the snow, soft chickadee chirps, whispering wingbeats of a raven far overhead.

[yarnofariadne]

I love the sound of waves crashing on the beach - I don't especially care for other water sounds, but that, especially combined with seagulls, feels like home to me.

It's cheesy but I love the sound of my partners' voices. They both have very soothing voices.

Babies' laughter is another one of my favourites.

Least favourite by a mile is yelling and shouting, particularly men yelling. Other least favourites are cars modified to sound unnaturally loud, the buzzing of an insect you can't locate, and nasal singers.

[charlottenewtons]

The sound of the sea will always be my favourite. Least favourite, other than some of the things other people have mentioned, is the scroll button on a computer mouse.

[thawrecka]

Weirdly, the sound of my own voice. While I often feel faintly embarrassed hearing myself on tape, at the same time I've got a calm, measured speaking tone. Occasionally people joke that I should do plane announcements, but I feel like I sound more like an ABC radio announcer on a Sunday afternoon in the late 1980s.

I also like the sound of the rain on the windows.

My least favourite sound is metal scraping against metal. I just can't handle it. I hunch up and want to hiss like a cat.

[montfelisky]

Oh yes, the movement of water! And this is a lovely way to put it, I was opening this comment to write "the sound of water" as soon as I saw the prompt, but it's the movement of water.

I like the wind in the trees, the fire crackling, twigs and leaves underfoot. I also like the sound of snow underfoot. The rumble of thunder. The cooing of wood pigeons. The purring of a cat.

Noises I dislike: babies crying, yappy dogs, chewing sounds, traffic noise, school playgrounds, lots of people in an indoor space.

[lirazel]

WATER MOVING! The greatest sound in the world! I also love the wind, too.

Babies laughing, or babbling, or small toddlers learning to talk

Yessss!!!

Birdsong in general is a fave, of course, as are cats purring.

It's not exactly a favorite in that I don't love it for its own sake, but the sound of cicadas singing far away (not close!) just sounds like summer to me, and I enjoy that.

Sounds I hate: STYROFOAM!!!!!, anything scratchy, anything to do with chalkboards, etc. Basically: anything that sounds too dry? Idk how to explain it, but that's how it feels to me. Also: dogs barking, especially little yappy dogs.