Freesound Forums

https://youtu.be/Nw5MLAu-kKs

Sounds like a high pitched cicada bug. Interesting.. I am curious as to the back story of this sound.

The two suggestions are it's an ultrasonic signal carrying surveillance data.
Or an irritant to harass people working in the US embassy in Havana.

Can shift the frequency down ... https://freesound.org/people/Timbre/sounds/420991/

Encrypted digital would be the way to go if it is surveillance, so don't expect to hear voices.

Its spectrogram does look like a Shepard tone ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone ,
which will drive people to distraction if they are exposed to it for more than a few minutes.

So it could be like psychological audio harassment to drive people crazy. Could be..
Stretching it to about 14 minutes longer gives interesting effects.
Almost like being in the cabin of a space ship. Who knows what it means or if nothing at all.

Hi Eroica

The AP recording may be genuine or not, I don't know, but I can't see Associated Press faking something like this or not checking their sources.

Here is some back story.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-42628342

Critically, veracity would depend on the original intensity of the sound, and if the AP recording had already been frequency downshifted from the ultrasonic. For the original signal to have been intense enough to cause hearing/psychological damage at these frequencies it would have been deafeningly audible but none of the victims reported hearing anything, hence the ultrasonic hypothesis.

Wibby

Erokia wrote:
Sounds like a high pitched cicada bug. Interesting.. I am curious as to the back story of this sound.

Hi Erokia,

A quick apology for spelling your name totally wrong in last reply. I'm getting old and slow now and meant no disrespect. Spell checker never recognizes user names, so my attention flits on by.

Regards
Wobbly

Hey guys... interesting article...

I do not think this could be created by surveillance equipment, but could certainly be anti-surveillance...

The recording could be a device intended to create electronic or audio interference (or both) to any recording devices at the embassy.
If the device creates audio interference by using frequencies high frequencies outside or at the limit of human hearing, it could work by over-saturating the input of microphones making any recordings unusable.
I am not sure how effective such device would be.
Would it be possible to really over-saturate microphones this way? Maybe others more expert at sound recording than me can comment...

Another (more recent and more high-tech) way to eavesdrop on conversations in a room involves aiming a laser at an object. The glass on a window is the target of choice, since typically the laser is aimed from the outside, so would have tom come in through a window anyway, and because of the flat, smooth nature of the glass make it an ideal target and because it will also catch the sound waves really well.
The way this works would be bounce a laser (assume an infra-red laser, invisible to the human eye) of the object (lets assume a window), and capture the reflection with a sensor (assume a photo-sensitive screen). The tiny audio vibrations on the window glass make the reflected laser wobble very slightly. That wobble can be converted back to sound and thus record the conversation.
I am sure a high power, ultrasonic source in the same room would make this process impossible.

Such device would belong to and have been installed by the USA. So, if suspected of causing harm to staff, we should assume they would have switched it off.
Importantly, we should also remember that there is no confirmed connection between the sound and the staff sickness. So the two may not be related at all.

There seems no question that some kind of attack is tacking place, given that the number of
sicknesses reported and number of people affected is too large to be a coincidence.
So, who could be doing this?
We could hypothesise further - and here I am in to the field of speculation and conspiracy theory.
The improvement of Cuban-USA relationships seem to be advantageous to both countries.
So, maybe a small independent group could be acting outside and against its own government (maybe some Cuban hard-line communist group?).
On the other hand, interference by a third country certainly cannot be excluded. Russia or China certainly coming up high in the list.

If we want to entertain the hypothesis Russia is doing it, we should consider that Russia has already performed one confirmed attack (and a suspected second one) in UK soil, using poisonous substances.
So an attack with a chemical or biological substance certainly cannot be ruled out.
A radioactive substance could also have been used, but is less likely since I imagine that has already been looked at.
An attack with a mild virus would, on the other hand be extremely difficult to detect and identify. Also a new unknown chemical in concentrations of parts-per-billion would also be difficult to detect.

Very informative information AlienXXX.
In the way you described this situation. Maybe, just maybe they'll figure out how sound can control the human brain like a smartphone.
Cell (2016) movie reference

hehehe

But in no doubt, some governments have found ways to utilize sound as a physiological weapon.
for instance the LRAD used for riots and crowd control - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Acoustic_Device

Who knows what else they have in store for the use of sound.

Cheers!

Here we have an unidentified noise in Örebro, Sweden
https://youtu.be/7XaZhQ6QlfE?t=41s

This noise has was on the news for some days. Don't know what happened to it...
Maybe CIA was called? Or some old Cuban secret service ppl.