Pinging

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Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping

Imagine an orchestra consisting of 100 B-flat saxophones.
First, there are 72 soprano saxes in their upper registers:

The sopranos are in eight clusters of nine instruments. They do not play in unison, ever. Each cluster takes a turn, with each sax coming in at random.They play for 30 seconds, then they taper off at random. Five minutes later another cluster activates.
The 21 tenor saxes each play these three bars, again and again, beginning randomly, then repeating every three minutes, unrelated to each other or to the sopranos. Likewise, the seven bass saxes each play these three bars, again and again, beginning randomly, then repeating every seven minutes, unrelated to each other, to the tenors, or to the sopranos.
Now imagine that this orchestra is not on stage, but in your yard, playing right outside your windows, all day and all night, interfering with your ability to converse, to listen, to sleep, or even to think.
That's what it was like on our old diesel-powered submarine

for several weeks in the Norwegian Sea in the summer of 1970.
The tenors are the AN/SQS-23 sonars on the older destroyers. The bassi are the AN/SQS-26 sonars on the newer destroyers. The sopranos are the sonobuoys dropped by aircraft.

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