this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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I notice echoes even in smaller spaces. Like rooms. Carpets don't stop the echoes. These echoes are unique in homes. They always sound "metallic". Like sound bouncing off metal. Hard to explain.
Any room that is mostly empty (regardless of curtains, rugs, carpet) will have that echo sound. But furnishings definitely mute it.
It's not pleasant.
It's distorted in a strange way like when people talk through a fan. That's the closest way I can describe it.
Idk what causes it specifically. I suspect windows.
The glass is likely the culprit.
Also the echoes have a very short latency. But I'd be surprised if others havent noticed them.
Probably related: apparently (some?) people can learn to use echolocation. Particularly useful for blind people of course, but I've read it's too much effort and too limited compared to the alternative solutions so that it's generally not considered worth pursuing. Naturally I had to try it myself: distinguishing the distance to one wall isn't hard at all, at least coarsely; the difficulty seems to be in rapidly (while walking) finding smaller objects (especially ones that dampen sound), figuring out angles if you're not facing or precisely perpendicular to a wall, and dealing with background noise
With your superhuman hearing, maybe you'd enjoy casually learning to do this at some level and getting some use out of the hearing sensitivity :)
I definitely cannot use it for spatial perception. I just hear it. And it's annoying and unpleasant.
It's not as bad as nails on a chalkboard, but it's unpleasant in the same way. It's the "metallic" aspect I find unpleasant. Not echos in general.
This bothersome type is only in rooms. Or at least that's the only place ive noticed it.
But yeah there are people who can learn to use echolocation.
Because the ears are on the sides of the head, any sound coming from the side will reach one ear before the other. And that delay between them can be used for location.
Often humans suck at this because we also pick up sounds from surfaces the sound has bounced around from.
We typically think the ear it's loudest in, is the direction of the sound.
When latency/timing is more accurate for location.