The 9 Most Annoying Sounds and Why They Bother Us

8. Vicious dog barking

A dog’s bark has almost everything: it can be loud and surprising, it has associations with danger and threat. People’s mental connections to the sound of a dog barking make them feel bad, because vicious dogs conjure up unpleasant memories. The actual sound itself is also irritating because of its rough quality; for most sounds, roughness makes the sound more grating. Acousticians define roughness as rapid fluctuations in how powerful a sound is (20-200 cycles per second). The fluctuations have to be fast enough that they are heard as part of the sound’s texture, rather than as individual changes in the sound’s loudness.