I have started listening to random American city council meetings lately for white noise. Since they’re all bureaucratic-flavored boredom anyway.
Not too weird, but I found this accidentally: a subwoofer under my bed (the speakers that came with it broke)
I found a ten hour long brown noise mp3 that is set to loop indefinitely on an old burner phone. Through the subwoofer it sounds exactly like the warp engines from Star Trek TNG. Incredibly comforting, and hard to sleep without
That’s the most Lemmy response I’ve ever read, I love it.
I’m a reddit refugee who always lurked. Hah I’m trying to be more active on Lemmy so imma take that as a compliment
There are actually videos of warp engine noise.
Have you found a way to loop that MP3 with crossfade? My current problem is there’s a small noticeable gap of silence between repeated tracks.
Ok that’s actually really rad. I’m gonna have to fuck around a bit and see if I can do smth similar.
That’s just noise. White noise is a specific kind of noise.
My weird way of using white noise is I have a set of scripts to precisely control my volume. I turn on a video of white noise on youtube, then I run my script to slowly, steadily raise the volume up to whatever level I want.
The entire point of the script is to avoid a clear moment when the noise starts or stops. To further hide the transition from consciousness, I have delay built in, and I recently added randomized delay between volume increments.
I run the script, and an hour later brown noise is blasting in my room, but I never have to be conscious of it.
So “background ambience” would be a better term to describe the city council meetings?
I think literal noise is a good term for it.
Well, if you’re using it to isolate yourself, then I think noise is good for it. Like if you don’t want to hear the neighbors or roommates, noise is good because noise obstructs signals.
And more generally, noise refers to sounds that are not explicitly wanted or requested. Which is also what background is.
It’s a good question. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to instruct a chatbot to write a 20000 word essay on the question of what exactly the best term is, and then pipe that into the “say” command in mac os terminal and use my volume control scripts to make it sort of softly murmur in the background as I go to sleep tonight. I don’t think that would make me a crazy person. At least not right away.
Ambiance. I like that.
Words have more than one meaning and your use of it is completely fine imo.
White noise can also mean:
meaningless or distracting commotion, hubbub, or chatter
I agree we get to map definitions as we see fit. I propose we use the word “noise” for what you mentioned, and when the term gets longer it should refer to something more specific.
In the term “white noise”, the “white” refers to equal energy output in each wavelength, I believe. It’s distinguished from pink noise, brown noise, etc.
Of course, it should also refer to white nationalist propaganda, because there’s no way that could cause any confusion.
“I put a little white noise so I can go so sleep easier”
😬
Brown noise always makes me think of the brown note
I gave myself tinnitus
It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Is that bit the reason people listen to white noise? Seems counter intuitive
Tinnitus is a constant whine. Other actual noise helps prevent having to constantly be thinking and feeling the whine because the “white noise” has your ear dealing with other things.
It isn’t the reason everyone listens to white noise but people with Tinnitus could help themselves go less crazy if they listen to white noise.
It was a joke.
Lately I’ve been falling asleep to shipping reports
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=CxHa5KaMBcM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
BTW - For anyone with F-Droid, I highly (highly) highly recommend Noice
It has:
- White noise
- Brown noise and pink noise
- Various background noise like cafe chatter, waves, rain, or birds
- Further improved my sleep ❤️
Back in University I used it to sleep right through a massive party my roommates threw when I had a midterm the next day. 10/10 app
Brown noise
Ain’t that the one that makes you shit yaself?
You’re thinking of the brown NOTE, which has not been proven to actually exist.
It goes something like this:
-
White noise is a mixture of all frequencies audible to humans, which sounds quite high pitched. It’s excellent for focus, against tinnitus and just for it not to be too quiet. Helps a lot of people sleep too.
-
Pink noise is the same thing except tweaked to sound lower yet still “crisp”. It’s been shown to generally be even more effective for falling asleep than white noise.
-
Brown noise is the same deal yet deeper still. It’s been shown to be effective against anxiety and, at least in my own anecdotal experience, against anxiety-induced insomnia.
On top of all these benefits, a combination of all three is what headphones and earbuds use for active noise canceling, an effect you can also achieve to some degree yourself.
-
Obligatory https://youtu.be/6ijI4HjTGkw
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/6ijI4HjTGkw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s a lower frequency noise, some people enjoy it more. As a bad analogy, it’s a bit more like hearing a “waterfall” (brown noise) than “wind” (white noise)
I for one prefer brown noise. Could be a result of me working on a ship for a long while. I always found the deep engine hum with the sea against my porthole to be very soothing. Plus, the rocking motion didn’t exactly hurt either.
Not quite, that’s the mythical ‘brown note’.
Yes, it’s one of the Alarm Clock options
It certainly was a little under a month ago when I had Legionaire’s! 😬
What were the French doing to your bowels?
Nothing good, that’s for sure!
Just installed. This is sweet as hell.
I was kind of surprised that Office was one of the noises you could play. I would probably have work nightmares falling asleep to that.
Does it include the 2000s corporate landline phone sound? *shudder*
I think so yeah 😖
How battery intensive is it? I tried sleeping to a brown noise audio file in a normal music player app (Music Player Go) and my phone ran out of battery before my alarm went off, causing me to oversleep 😬
If you’re the kind of person that plays on their phone to fall asleep, get a 10’ cable so it can be plugged in while you’re doing whatever you do before sleeping.
It used to be bad on the battery, but then it became a super big focus and now it’s great.
Yay! Gonna try it out for sure, then!
Seconded.
Does it have creamed spinach noise? (“Creamed spinach” refers to the color used in the DMG Game Boy’s screen, as Sega referred to it in one of its Game Gear commercials)
Shitty roommates. :(
On one hand, yea, on the other, #worth. They were great overall - Sometimes you gotta take some losses and some wins.
Good old hard disc defragmentation https://youtu.be/KR3TbL3Tl6M?si=LlS2vzdNkbcVx7c9
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/KR3TbL3Tl6M?si=LlS2vzdNkbcVx7c9
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
S-tier video with all the details
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I didn’t want to enjoy this but it’s somehow so relaxing
I have a recording of the big machines where I work. Rhythmic clunking and whirring motors puts me right to sleep.
Doesn’t that make you sleepy at work?
Yea, sometimes. There’s usually enough other stuff going on it’s not a problem.
If you have an actual Radio, find an AM station that is just static. This works quite well.
Or just a pop country station. All the white noise you could ever need.
Yeah but then you get a Darius Rucker song and have to start all over.
That reminds me of The Venture Bros. There’s a villain called White Noise who is basically anthropomorphic television static in a humanoid shape.
He was a white supremacist television repair man before his “accident”.
The writing on that show was so goddamn sharp.
In my country, literally all AM stations are just static. We only have FM over here.
So much choice for white noise over here. Noice. (Rhyme time baby)
Lately my external HDD making old school hard drive clicky groans as it downloads overnight. I had forgotten computers used to sound like this until I bought it; it’s nostalgic and soothing.
I like listening to crickets or cicadas when I’m falling asleep. Helps drown out my tinnitus
somafm.com has some good streams.
I found if I listed to upbeat music without lyrics I can generally focus better. LoFi Girl is great for this, and so are video games sound tracks.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=roMWEeV2P4U
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aFbCofgwdXo
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=roMWEeV2P4U
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=aFbCofgwdXo
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=fIY55V0Tblk
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=UE9fPWy1_o4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
As a hobbyist musician and coder: Csound. Cubic spline curves make particularly interesting noise.
LiveATC streams. If you are not listening it’s a constant stream of radio-garbled jargon. Just pick a busy airport.