Is Beep harmful?

[trancexx]

For those of us that started with the hardware side of computers, The system beep's primary purpose is for trouble shooting boot issues. With your motherboard you would get a user manual. Inside would be a list of number of beeps and the meaning. If you pay attention, when you start your computer you should hear one single beep. Now the part about volume being the determining factor over frequency, I wouldn't say that's entirely true. The higher the frequency the faster the electro magnets in the speaker have to change polarity, the faster the rubber has to flex back and forth, the faster everything has to move. For example take a paper clip and flex it back and forth. If you do it slowly the paper clip will last for a while. Do it faster and it will snap quicker. My theory is if you had a system beep at a high frequency go on forever, it would damage the speaker quicker then lower frequency (Or is it higher frequency slower, lower faster?). But other then that time wise. It would probably take a few decades at constant power to break the speaker. The board would burn up first. I would be concerned though about the frequencies on the human ear. I'm no doctor but it does seem to me with the annoyingness of the beep that it could actually cause dead spots in your hearing range.

There are no electro magnets involved with beepers (buzzers). It works almost directly opposite.

[TurionAltec]

Trusty PC speaker, my 1 bit square wave friend.

Here's different arrangements you might see for PC speakers:

-A little piezoelectric beeper on the motherboard.

-A little speaker on the case, connected to the motherboard (yes, as in electromagnets).

-Instead of a speaker on the case, it's connected to a feed on the soundcard, and routed through the soundcard's speakers / headphones.

In the first two cases I wouldn't worry about damaging anything, because even if you did blow the speaker (because it was underspeced for the load), you'd still get SOME (distorted)sound out of it, and it wouldn't really matter for all the PC speaker is used.

If it is fed through the soundcard, it could potentially damage your speakers if the volume was set too high.

Here's a couple of arrangements I've seen for the third one:

-On my Eee it appears as a separate input in the sound mixer, and can have the volume controlled, can be muted by the master mute, and will be directed to either headphones or stereo speakers depending on if headphones are plugged in.

-On my HP laptop, if there's a PC speaker "Beep", it will take over the laptop's stereo speakers, and play the square wave sound REALLY LOUD regardless of any volume settings.

So if I were listening to an MP3 through the speakers and a PC speaker beep comes in, my music will temporarily cut out while it beeped. If I had headphones plugged in, the music will continue to play on the headphones and the beep will still be directed to the stereo speakers.

With the HP I worry at times that it might be too loud, because I know of people with similar laptops that have blown the speakers.

As far as harming the human ear, really high pitches (above 10,000Hz) are really annoying, and 4000Hz is also an annoying frequency. For signaling purposes I try to stay under 1000Hz.

[Confuzzled]

Alright I want to know if beep is harmful if I do it fast at certain pitches for how long etc. It seems safe but I just want to make sure before I go using it every day. It doesn't sound very good for my computer but it may be. I do want to ask one thing though, I know I sound like a dick but, if you have no clue that it's safe or not, it doesn't make you cool to pretend you do and potentially cause harm to my computer. Like I said, I'm not trying to be a dick but computers are expensive, especially in these economic times.

I'd try something a little more powerful if you are trying to scare Somali pirates away from your yacht. I've got mental images of you waving your eePC at them over the side, beeping away in the darkness and flashes of gunfire...

Why BEEP? Just play a Celine Dion MP3 - that will get them scuttling away at top speed, guaranteed!

If you are looking for answers to whether your sound may be harmful, look at what the Beatles and Rolling Stones did to the last generation.

I rest my case....

[CodyBarrett]

i did not know this, i probably should have since some of my friends are hardware geeks (like us software geeks) oh well i guess its true " you learn something everyday" especially in autoit

Trusty PC speaker, my 1 bit square wave friend.

Here's different arrangements you might see for PC speakers:

-A little piezoelectric beeper on the motherboard.

-A little speaker on the case, connected to the motherboard (yes, as in electromagnets).

-Instead of a speaker on the case, it's connected to a feed on the soundcard, and routed through the soundcard's speakers / headphones.

In the first two cases I wouldn't worry about damaging anything, because even if you did blow the speaker (because it was underspeced for the load), you'd still get SOME (distorted)sound out of it, and it wouldn't really matter for all the PC speaker is used.

If it is fed through the soundcard, it could potentially damage your speakers if the volume was set too high.

Here's a couple of arrangements I've seen for the third one:

-On my Eee it appears as a separate input in the sound mixer, and can have the volume controlled, can be muted by the master mute, and will be directed to either headphones or stereo speakers depending on if headphones are plugged in.

-On my HP laptop, if there's a PC speaker "Beep", it will take over the laptop's stereo speakers, and play the square wave sound REALLY LOUD regardless of any volume settings.

So if I were listening to an MP3 through the speakers and a PC speaker beep comes in, my music will temporarily cut out while it beeped. If I had headphones plugged in, the music will continue to play on the headphones and the beep will still be directed to the stereo speakers.

With the HP I worry at times that it might be too loud, because I know of people with similar laptops that have blown the speakers.

As far as harming the human ear, really high pitches (above 10,000Hz) are really annoying, and 4000Hz is also an annoying frequency. For signaling purposes I try to stay under 1000Hz.

Edited December 24, 2008 by bob00037

[GEOSoft]

So to sum up the answers that went on for 2 pages, a beep is only harmful if accompanied by a good slap to the ear.

[CodyBarrett]

lol pretty much(age MIGHT play a very miniscule factor, same with pitch) volume is the biggest threat.. am i right?

[GEOSoft]

Age plays a miniscule part in everything. At my age pitch and volume only serve as distractions. The damage was done years ago.