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What I'm proposing here is simply a hypothetical. Dlish sort of gets what I'm asking, and I'm surprised to learn that even if the room were empty, there's a good chance I wouldn't hear the beeping simply due to the design of the room.
Maybe a better hypothetical would've been that my friend and I are across a crowded cafeteria. The Jazz's answer addresses this somewhat. I'd venture to say that I could readily hear a watch beeping across a cafeteria, as long at it was otherwise totally quiet. For the sake of argument, let's assume that my friend's watch is loud enough to hear under otherwise quiet conditions.
Or, easier still, let's imagine that I have a recording device with a microphone that is tuned to the exact frequency of my friend's watch; say 15000 hertz. In the empty room, my friend's watch beeps twice, and the recorder in my hand picks up the beeps at a barely audible 15 decibels.
Now, if we fill the room with people having lunch, and I again turn on my recorder which only picks up sounds at exactly 15000 hertz, will it hear the watch? Will it be at 15 decibels? What if there are other sounds at nearby frequencies, or at resonant frequencies; will those distort or destroy the sound of the beep? Will the sheer turbulence of the air prevent the sound from reaching across the room, akin to shouting into the wind?
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