Easy to learn and fun for all ages. Pickleball has taken local neighborhoods by storm, but at the cost of damaging your eardrums.
Now a Wall Street Journal reporter believes she has solved the cause of the annoying high-pitched ‘tock’ sound emitted during the game.
Pickleball combines elements of tennis, badminton and ping pong and is played with a plastic ball and paddles. And it is this equipment that is the culprit.
After analyzing the sound waves (amplitude, frequency, shape) of the paddle, WSJ reporter Eugenia Cheng explained that pickleball has more high-frequency overtones that some people liken to nails on a chalkboard.
“Pickleball paddles are small and hard, and the balls are plastic with holes in them, while tennis rackets have vibrating strings and the balls are made of felt-covered rubber and filled with air,” she said. ‘So where tennis makes a pleasant tinkling sound, pickleball makes a sharp high ‘tock’.
Easy to learn and fun for all ages, pickleball has taken over the local neighborhoods, but at the expense of your eardrums
Pictured: A TikToker complaining about the sound a pickleball racket makes
Amplitude, Cheng explained, dictated loudness, while frequency determined pitch.
But it was the waveform, and especially the timbre, that revealed that pickleball had a higher concentration of overtones, the high-frequency components that contribute to the quality of a sound.
These overtones, while not necessarily louder, were in a range particularly sensitive to the human ear, around 1000 Hertz – near the top of a soprano’s register.
This explained why the sound seemed to carry well, despite not being particularly loud.
“The sound starts and ends sharply, without much resonance,” Cheng said.
‘This is likely to do with the plastic used for the ball, which has much less give than a tennis ball, and also with the holes, which are designed to reduce the chance of the ball being blown off course by the wind.’
But a solution may be at hand, as some experts are already designing paddles that eliminate these specific frequencies.
It was a similar challenge faced by golfers with new clubs.
In 2007, Nike released a golf driver that offered exceptional control, but many hated the sound it made.
Scientists analyzed the frequency spectrum of the sound to pinpoint the culprit frequencies.
Pickleball combines elements of tennis, badminton and ping pong with paddles and a plastic ball. It is played on a smaller court with a net and has a unique rule where volleying close to the net is prohibited
However, advances in noise-dampening technology are driven by money, and golf generates far more revenue than pickleball.
As a result, there is currently more incentive to invest in creating high-performing golf clubs that also sound nice.
And given the limitations and regulations surrounding the design of a pickleball racket, redesigning the equipment can be quite an undertaking.