what were you DOING

context: using polaris lance in destiny 2, and complaining about a weird case of tinnitus, it just wouldnt seem to go away. I started to worry if i was losing my hearing or something. then it seemed to come in bursts, and.... wait....

I shot my gun, and ohhh my god oww my ears, that is the highest pitch I have ever heard in my life. I took it into audacity to have a look:

what the actual hell that is at the top of the spectrograph. analyzer says it B9 WHAT. the NINTH octave WHAT

so then i open up my music program (sunvox) just to double check, and for the love of god B9 is literally the top note on its interface

it doesnt seem like this is the top of the midi standard, but maybe its the same in other programs. did the designer straight up add a highest note sine wave??? to the ??? gun???

the hilarious part is that sunvox wont even let you play B9. I believe because of harmonics and nyquist? I could explain these seperately but what i mean here is that its tapering towards the high end (not that B9 is the "highest pitch" in machines or humans however). i guess they dont expect you to play a ballad in OCTAVE NINE.

this is like 15.8kHz, and with rough testing of my hearing, till 18kHz still sounds just as loud?? so its very. high. and we perceive tones logarithmically, so thats only like 4 semi tones up i believe.

these pitches might normally be in a sound, like a high hat, but definitely tapering down towards that end! not just a pure isolated pitch. maybe it was added for a machine-like sound? perhaps because of sensory issues it definitely signals in my brain as "machine that i want to walk away from very quickly"

anyways yeah, it seems it really was B9

it feels like they sprinkled CRT humm into the sound effect for good measure, and it is actually going to stop me from using this weapon. sad because i was liking it too

heres the pitch if you want to hear it but WARNING that it might actually be unpleasant to listen to if you are like me!