I can't answer that one because the sound doesn't appear very often, thank goodness. But everybody's phone does it so you can hear it coming from other apartments. Then if you turn on the TV, there is an earthquake report immediately. On the day of the Fukushima quake, all trains stopped for the rest of the day so we had to walk home. After about ten miles we found a bar that was still open and ordered a couple of large tokkuris of sake. While slurping that down we watched a bank of six TVs and all of them had maps of Japan with red flashing all over indicating possible tsumami. It was a bit surrealistic. We walked about thirty miles that night and kept stopping at bars more and more frequently. Usually, if you're outside you can't feel the quake and aftershocks but that day the ground was moving under our feet. The worst part was the aftershocks that went on every day for about two months. No joke. After a while, it starts to get on your nerves. REM fan? Me too.