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LONDON - A person vomiting is the most offensive sound to the human ear, a worldwide survey has found, but for Australians an argument in a TV soap opera is almost as bad.
The growl of a Tasmanian Devil was also high on the list of the most horrible noises, coming in at No 11 -- ahead of a dentist's drill and fingers scraping down a blackboard.
The study, conducted by University of Salford Professor of Acoustic Engineering Trevor Cox, sought opinions on 34 noises via a website and analysed 800,000 votes to arrive at the findings.
Professor Cox said it wasn't just self-preservation that made vomiting such a repulsive sound.
"The assumption is you've got someone being ill in front of you and the survival instinct is that you want to get away from it because you don't want to catch that disease," Professor Cox told AAP.
"We found it wasn't just that ... there was manners and etiquette."
The notion of "socially disgusting" noises was also in evidence with a whoopee cushion rating equal seventh on the list.
In second place was the ear-splitting sound of microphone feedback, while a train scraping on its tracks and many babies crying were equal third.
The Tasmanian Devil sound featured in the survey after Professor Cox wanted to gauge opinion on animal noise, particularly a fox on heat -- commonly recognised as a chillingly awful noise heard in urban Britain.
Unable to find a suitable recording, he came across the monstrous utterances of the Tassie creature on the website of the state's Parks and Wildlife Service, who obligingly let him use it.
The survey threw up some interesting cultural questions, with Australians considerably more likely to rate an argument in a soap opera as a more horrible noise than respondents from all other countries.
"Maybe this is why Australian soap operas are so tame!" Professor Cox joked in his survey report.
But he also conceded it could be that Australians are so laid back, they find the sound of confrontation more offensive than other cultures.
"It's really interesting, one of the problems with the survey is it threw up a lot of things like this that we don't really know the answer to," he said.
"Now we know that arguments were (rated) worse in Australia. We need to do more of a search to ask why."
The study found adults generally find noises more horrible as they get older, with respondents aged over 60 more likely to choose a higher revulsion rating than those aged 25.
There was also a gender divide, with females rating 25 out of the 34 sounds more horrible than males.
However, baby cries were one of the few sounds males found worse than females.
Professor Cox said understanding how people react to certain noises had practical applications.
In the field of acoustic engineering, a manufacturer will seek advice on how to make a product such as a washing machine sound better so people will choose it over one which makes an annoying noise.
- AAP
