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Identify a London Underground Line just by listening to it

161 pointsby nelson687today at 10:08 AM51 commentsview on HN

Comments

walthamstowtoday at 11:13 AM

Incredible fun. I got every one wrong except the line I live on and use all the time. I couldn't tell any of the others apart much, but I knew my line instantly, without any doubt. Fascinating.

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KaiserProtoday at 7:29 PM

7/9, Met because I don't ever use it, and confused the circle for northern, which when I heard the northern line was a rookie mistake.

allegrettotoday at 4:33 PM

Got the Northern line wrong despite doing this quiz on a Northern line train. :(

«The screeches in the audio are not that bad, it can’t be the Northern» was my thinking.

spuztoday at 11:54 AM

It seems a little unfair to include the circle and metropolitan lines as they use the same rolling stock and run on the same tracks in the centre of the city.

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ssss11today at 11:39 AM

I got 6 out of 9 and haven’t lived there in 10 years. Felt some nostalgia hearing some of them though!!!

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player_pianotoday at 3:26 PM

Oh Northern line, I would recognize that ear-splitting screech anywhere.

virtyaluktoday at 6:53 PM

Got the Northern and Jubilee right as I use them the most.

dudefelicianotoday at 11:55 AM

love this kind of games, if we ever get consumer grade smell-o-vision i will make the same to identify berlin underground lines by smell

dmdtoday at 4:08 PM

Never been to London, got 6/9. Presumably anyone who did this and got a poor score isn't posting, so only people like me who got good scores by chance are represented.

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joshuafullertoday at 3:49 PM

I spent a single day in the London tube about 3 weeks ago on travel. Have never been on the tube before. Was a cool experience. Somehow I got 7/9 on the quiz.

MrsPeachestoday at 11:22 AM

Loved this!

A bit deep to put district and circle as options on the same question. Don’t they use the same rolling stock and cover very similar stations?

I found Bakerloo was the easiest to identify.

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hobofantoday at 2:39 PM

From the title I had assumed this would be about the "old" classic "Conductor" Google Experiment by Alexander Chen[0] or a recreation of it.

[0]: http://mta.me

CamouflagedKiwitoday at 1:52 PM

5 / 9

Found much of it pretty hard - I'd be confident of telling a modern subsurface line from a deep one, or the Jubilee (which to me at least has a very distinct motor sound), but for lots of the others I was guessing - sometimes with luck though, apparently.

bb123today at 11:00 AM

Nice! It would be fun to include some of the other sounds on the tube like the door closing chimes or the sounds the doors make when opening and closing.

ricardobayestoday at 3:22 PM

Hah, I just thought of this randomly the other day that London metro lines have such distinct soundscapes.

tgulacsitoday at 3:50 PM

5/9 - I've never been in London and never heard these sounds before :)

jeffwasstoday at 12:52 PM

Somehow I got a 7 out of 9, even though I felt like I was mostly guessing. Surface vs deep lines have more rumble but that’s about it that I consciously knew of.

mpascale00today at 11:47 AM

It was fun to guess these without being familiar. I sort of guessed based on vague knowledge of age and name familiarity. Maybe I was lucky.

doletoday at 1:44 PM

As a Yank, first thought that came to mind was using geolocation by mains hum because you can.

OPBoottoday at 11:21 AM

Enjoyed that. Not lived in London for 30 years, but some sounds never leave you...

I got 5/9 on the Tube Sound Quiz!

(better than random!)

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vishkktoday at 2:18 PM

Pretty cool —- should do it for NYC subways!

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basiswordtoday at 6:06 PM

The ones I knew I got instantly. I think it's a mix of the speed + frequency that gives it away (rather than the various screeches people associate with various lines).

manojldstoday at 11:43 AM

Elizabeth is the only one I use frequently so I got them mostly wrong.

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totalmarkdowntoday at 3:47 PM

haha - brilliant. did you use elevenlabs to generate the sounds?

personalitysontoday at 1:25 PM

Never been to London, 3 out of 9 correct.

tremarleytoday at 4:03 PM

I got 7/9

Markofftoday at 1:26 PM

I'd like this for subway escalator sounds, I loved one somewhere in Prague city center which made exactly Sicario soundtrack rhytm.

IshKebabtoday at 1:21 PM

Quite fun. It doesn't make sense to have it as a list of multiple choice questions though since by the end you know the answers by a process of elimination. I'd change it so you see all the sounds and lines and have to match them up.

fennecfoxytoday at 12:59 PM

Eh they all sound like SCREEEEEHEEEEECHCCCCHEEEEEE now anyway because TFL are incapable of doing basic maintenance overnight (such as grinding the rails) without using expensive contractors that eat money up.

After being in Paris over the weekend the state of the underground cleanliness/noise is just absolutely shameful.

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