Mystery solved

[uscmatt99]

Had the weirdest experience at home that I feel compelled to share with the community.

My wife and I just had our home automation system updated. In replacing some of the aging electronics in our bedroom, the fan noise from one of the components that we'd been accustomed to was suddenly gone after 9 long years of getting used to it. We laid down to sleep one night, and a new noise emerged. I couldn't tell if it was something masked by the louder fan that had been replaced, or a new noise from recently installed electronics.

The hunt began. The best way I can describe it is the sound of faint electronic Morse Code, and very hard to localize. First I unplugged everything in the bedroom, noise still there. Then I hunted through all the rooms adjacent to the bedroom, unplugged everything, noise still there. Finally gave up on it, and for a couple weeks it disappeared completely. Then it came back last night.

My wife cracked the case. She has a small porcelain dish where she stashes here wedding rings and earrings before going to sleep. It turns out that when she placed her watch on the dish, it would start resonating with the movement! It didn't even cross my mind that this could be a mechanical phenomenon, let alone loud enough to hear from 15 feet away, generated by a watch.

I looked up the movement (Omega 8800) and it beats at 25200 per hour. Of course I had to test our other watches, and sure enough her Rolex Lady DJ, my Explorer, my Speedmaster, my Planet Ocean Chrono, and FPJ all beat at different rates. None recreated the noise. Turns out that the cessation of the noise was during the weeks my wife was wearing the DJ.

Case closed, we can finally sleep to the sound of our dog rustling around and licking the bed all night without distraction

[Blansky]

Reminds me of this:

[AzPaul]

Glad you found the problem.
Was worried this might be going in a Tell-Tale Heart direction.

[superdog]

Wow. That’s interesting

[enjoythemusic]

Very interesting. You now know one of the resonant frequencies of the dish.

[037]

That's awesome. Congrats on solving the case.

My wooden nightstand acts as a speaker when I lay a watch on it. It gets worse if I set it crown-down and dead center. Eventually I had to put it on something to dampen the noise, otherwise I'd lie awake listening to the watch.

[JasoninDenver]

Had a similar experience.

It is how I discovered I now have tinnitus.

[BigAppleBill]

Interesting. If the dish has a curved bottom and/or sides it may be a parabolic curve that’s concentrating the sound and also “throwing” it to a different spot in the room, which may be why it was so difficult to track the sound to the source. Science!

[mfm22]

I use a small fan every night for "white Noise" covers any lesser sounds and just enough drone to sleep by . I used to go nuts in the summer when crickets did their thing .

You folks must have some super hearing Lol

[GB-man]

Ha I can hear my Rolex through my pillow if I sleep on it just right. We sleep with a HEPA running which not only cleans the air but provides a nice calming white noise which I find extremely pleasing.

[yeohongwee]

it is an therapeutic process to hear the heartbeat of your watches. I always thought rolex watch is one of those that is hard to hear its heartbeat.