Vomiting: Worst Sound Ever

Someone better call up Bloomberg’s office and tell ’em the news. Car alarms, air-conditioners, and Mister Softee jingles may, in fact, not be the most intolerable aural burdens. According to a study conducted by Dr. Trevor Cox of Britain’s Salford University, the sound of somebody vomiting is officially the most revolting to the human ear. It looks like New York’s new noise code – you know, the one slated to go into affect July 1st, the first major change of its kind in 30 years – might be in need of some revision. Nowhere among Local Law No. 113’s 25 pages will you find any mention of “vomit” or “retch” or “barf.”

Early last fall, Cox set up a website (http://www.sound101.org/) presenting test-takers with 34 different samples the good doctor and his team had recorded themselves. After hearing the sharp whir of a dentist’s drill, say, or the flatulent ripple of a whoopee cushion, users were asked to rate the recordings on a six point scale ranging from “Not horrible” to “Horrible.” (Emoticons in various stages of distress were provided for purposes of clarity.) Over one million curious masochists took the challenge, crowning the sound of vomiting – a sample Cox made with the help of a fairly unconvincing actor and a can of baked beans – the most “Horrible” sound of all time. Microphone feedback came in second, while babies crying and something described as a “horrible scrapping” sound tied for third.

The classically repellent screech of fingernails on a chalk-board (just typing it makes me cringe) came in at an astounding 16th place. Other surprises revealed by Cox’s lovely potpourri had more to do with gender than cultural expectation. Women gave a worse rating than men to 25 of the 34 recordings. Conspicuously absent from those 25, though, was the sound of babies crying. For reasons that Cox surmises have something to do with women’s traditional role as protectors, men found the chorus of wailing infants much harder to bear than their mates. “It could be that females have become habituated to the sound of babies crying,” Cox says.

Beyond Cox’s stated hope that his project will “inform industry about how to engineer sounds which are more pleasant,” and its pleasingly simplistic (and imminently quotable) results, one wonders exactly how much his BadVibes experiment (as he calls it) actually engages with the ways humans experience sound on a daily basis, particularly within the cramped environs of New York City. With Bloomberg’s new noise regulations approaching – regulations that aim to clamp down on common city annoyances ranging from noisy bars to barking dogs – “horrible” sounds seem to be on everyone’s mind (and in everyone's ears). But there is, of course, something different between a single test subject gagging while someone looses their lunch, and thousands of commuters gritting their teeth against the daily grind of a whining subway train. Cox is explicitly testing individual reactions to sounds generally experienced only by individuals. Bloomberg and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection – the agency that pushed forward the new regulations – are dealing with communal reactions to sounds generally experienced by all of us. More importantly, so many of the city’s aural assaults are patently unavoidable aspects of daily life. One can’t choice not to take the subway in the morning in the same way that one can’t simply pick up and move to another building when the idiot next door won’t curb his hateful obsession with Eurotrash dance music.

I certainly don’t mean to suggest that Cox’s ambitious experiment is a failure for not addressing these differences. I’m only suggesting that its gimmicky premise – its understanding of a “horrible” sound as something you can be rid of the moment you close your browser – does not, for the most part, apply to the public noise debates currently raging in New York City (see, for example, this recent story in the New York Times’ City Section, The Sound and the Fury). In fact, the parties involved in these debates are not fundamentally talking about “sound” at all. They’re talking about what one should or should not be made to endure as a citizen of a vibrant city – which urban nuisances are part of the fabric of New York and which are beyond the pale. This is a culture war, not a battle of the bands.