Can brown noise turn off your brain?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/23/well/mind/brown-noise.html

by tintinnabula • 4 years ago

196 205 4 years ago

nytimes.com

almog• 4 years ago

Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/6QTJB

darepublic• 4 years ago

Nice but I believe the handler to turn on sound didn't get brought over.

astro19238_• 4 years ago

Noise is not behind the paywall tho

imdsm• 4 years ago

Anecdote: have found brown noise great — same effect as white noise but not grating on the ear

rob74• 4 years ago

For more elaborate noise generators (I think it also has a brown noise generator hidden somewhere) you can always go to https://mynoise.net/ - I used to use that site a lot when I was still working from the office, and since my company now also has a "return to office" policy, I guess I will be using it more again in the future...

selfhoster11• 4 years ago

Another vote for mynoise.net.

That site gives off strong "small web" vibes (good thing), and is clearly a product of passion (or at least, a product of competence in the field of sound/signal processing). My donation to get access to the full range of generators was worth every penny.

mod4• 4 years ago

I keep this in my .bashrc

alias brownnoise='play -n synth brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth sine amod 0.3 10'

It sounds like waves gently coming ashore.

I'm sure I collected it somewhere here on HN, because I don't know anything about how the command works.

Edit: I have these, too, and I like them all:

alias whitenoise='play -q -c 2 -n synth brownnoise band -n 1600 1500 tremolo .1 30'

alias pinknoise='play -t sl -r48000 -c2 -n synth -1 pinknoise .1 80'

ineedasername• 4 years ago

Not in front of my Linux box right now, are these tools built in or part of stand repository?

philshem• 4 years ago

MacOS users can get get "play" by installing SoX (Sound eXchange)

    brew install sox

duncancarroll• 4 years ago

Wow these are great, thank you

f1shy2• 4 years ago

I discovered mynoise.net some years ago. As I lived near a church where the bells would be active every 15 minutes... It really helped to not listen to them.

The downside: the alarm clock was also less audible in the morning! :D

mikepurvis• 4 years ago

I'm surprised there's any churches left still doing that frequency. Is it a touristy thing or something? Definitely would have thought most at this point are down to hourly or even just once at noon, with an awful lot more silent but for special occasions like weddings.

dekhn2• 4 years ago

I really like https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/pureBinauralBrainwaveGener... which I can listen to for hours to mask external sound.

LegitShady• 4 years ago

I used this enough that years ago I paid them money just because I got so much use out of it. Haven't used it in a few years though, as lately I've been listening to more music than noise.

varispeed• 4 years ago

I have this problem that when I know that the such ambient noise is synthesised in any way, then my brain simply rejects it as if I knew it is a placebo so it no longer works.

Similarly if I listed authentic recorded ambient noise, once I recognise a loop point, it becomes extremely annoying.

That's why I can't use tools like mynoise.net.

I had a couple of solid 8 hour recordings from a cafe or office, but after a couple of listens I kind of learned it is a recording and they no longer work. Basically rather than focusing on doing work etc. my brain is listening for faint phrases, whether I heard it before etc.

The workaround I found is that I just have a window open so I can hear street noises, but this is going to be troublesome during the winter.

I am planning to start making recordings so maybe if I have a solid month worth of ambient noise, I will be able to trick myself it is not a repeat if it takes a month for a full rotation.

JKCalhoun4• 4 years ago

I can hear Shepard tones [1] in songs now. I remember the first time I heard it in a song, I was blown away, confused as to what I was hearing.

Later when it was pointed out to me that is is "a thing" I started to recognize them in other songs. I sort of miss being naive.

There's a line from one of Feynman's books where he is arguing with an artist friend who dislikes how Feynman (science generally) dissect a rose rather than just admiring its beauty. Feynman is incredulous as to how knowing more about a thing can take away from its beauty. (I may be slightly mis-remembering this exchange.)

That always bothered me because I felt that naïveté is a thing you lose with knowledge and that is not always a good thing.

Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer" [2] instead resonated with me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone

[2] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45479/when-i-heard-th...

cal85• 4 years ago

Your case sounds a bit extreme (perhaps it has an element of nocebo through overthinking it?), but I do share this problem to an extent.

If you like ambient music, I love Brian Eno’s ‘Reflection’ album and use it for a similar purpose as noise. But I eventually got sick of hearing it again and again, recognising the same bits... Then I found he has also released the original endless generator (from which the album is just an hour-long recording) as an iOS app. It’s wonderful. It’s just endless Reflection, never repeating, always sounding new, but always sounding like Reflection. Expensive but worth it, if you liked the hour-long recording.

zalo• 4 years ago

There are mechanical ambient noise generators that generate sound via fans and rushing air in a special cavity; a popular one is the Marpac Dohm.

I've considered 3D printing custom shells for it to further tune the sound profile to achieve the brown noise ideal.

dreamcompiler2• 4 years ago

If street noise worked for me I'd mount a weatherproof microphone outside the window, run a cable from it inside (maybe around the edge of the window) to a preamp driving a cheap Class D power amp, and drive one good speaker with it. Maybe put a graphic EQ in the chain after the preamp if I wanted to fiddle with the sound.

Winter problem solved. No bluetooth or batteries needed; just a wall wart or maybe USB-C.

Running the cable would be the trickiest part if I had close tolerance metal window frames. In that case maybe a bluetooth mic would be best, but I'd have to figure out how to weatherproof it.

civilized• 4 years ago

I use a baby sleep sounds app to help my kid sleep (and soothe myself in the long process).

It has many options, most of them worse than nothing.

The only good one is airplane, which sounds exactly like brown noise.

mellavora3• 4 years ago

best "baby sleep sounds" is when their head is curled up against your chest. And you both drift off. Bliss.

aidenn0• 4 years ago

I am too heavy a sleeper to co-sleep with an infant. I will not wake-up if I roll on top of one.

adwi• 4 years ago

Recently discovered iOS has implemented built-in background sounds: Settings-> Accessibility-> Audio/Visual-> Background Sounds.

“Dark Noise” sounds a lot like brown noise to me. Super useful.

mft_• 4 years ago

OT, but almost every time I learn of a new feature of iOS these days, it seems to be hidden away in 'accessibility'; most recently the 'double tap' feature (which sadly doesn't work well).

arcturus172• 4 years ago

Yea I don't understand why this is so hidden. It also has a really bad UX - you need to go into different submenus and activate different permutations of toggles to get it working...

RankingMember• 4 years ago

It's so unreliable I just ended up turning it back off

teejmya• 4 years ago

I recently found this as well, via the Control Center item called Hearing.

There are some other interesting features behind this icon in Control Center as well: Live Listen, and noise levels for headphones, to name a few.

omnicognate5• 4 years ago

I've been sleeping with exponentially-smoothed brown noise for years. I use a raspberry pi with its hardware random number generator because with pseudorandom numbers or compressed samples I hear all sorts of artifacts - no doubt at least partially psychological, but psychology matters when you're trying to get to sleep. Uncompressed samples are fine and can be looped without a gap, but that's less fun.

I'm currently looking at building an analogue circuit to generate this noise, because electronics is fun and because sampling thermal noise (which is brown) inside the rPi's hardware rng, having it massaged to white noise and then converting it back to brown noise (with a bit of pseudorandom mixed in as the rate isn't quite high enough) and back to analogue to go to a speaker all seems a bit daft.

mellavora3• 4 years ago

Highly recomend https://syntherjack.net/make-some-pink-noise-generator/

which gives four different circuits, they each have their own sound.

yes, they are pink, not brown, but pipe the output through a spare opamp configured as a low-pass filter and you can have "any color you like".

Then pipe that through a low-pass gate and you start to get some interesting bloops, and before you know it you are full-time building Eurorack modules.

omnicognate5• 4 years ago

Nice, thanks!

BatteryMountain2• 4 years ago

Keen to blog about it or upload your scripts somewhere?

omnicognate5• 4 years ago

The code is a horrifyingly awful bit of C++ and the whole thing is horrendously inefficient (rpi heating the room up doing arithmetic). I wouldn't want to publish it in its current form, and the next thing will be an analogue circuit. I might blog about that, though.

dwringer• 4 years ago

Interested to know more about your experience with uncompressed audio generated from pseudorandom numbers. Do you know what PRNG you were using? I would think the simplest common ones would indeed be terrible but it could be very interesting to study if something like the Mersenne Twister or better could be detected as "not truly random" in this way.

xani_2• 4 years ago

I've been sleeping with exponentially-smoothed brown noise for years. I use a raspberry pi with its hardware random number generator because with pseudorandom numbers or compressed samples I hear all sorts of artifacts - no doubt at least partially psychological, but psychology matters when you're trying to get to sleep. Uncompressed samples are fine and can be looped without a gap, but that's less fun.

Well, there have certainly been a plenty of bad RNGs in use.

because sampling thermal noise (which is brown)

It's not. You need a filter to get pink/brown noise out of it

omnicognate5• 4 years ago

You're right. I assumed it was brown because it comes from a form of Brownian motion, but apparently it's white.

AbrahamParangi• 4 years ago

Any cryptographic pseudorandom number generator (or hash function, equivalently) should be completely indistinguishable from random noise. Although, frankly I don’t think you should need to go that far. Almost any PRNG should do it, it’s really only the simplest ones that have noticeable periodicity.

omnicognate5• 4 years ago

As I say, it's likely to be at least partially psychological but that doesn't really matter. The real test is whether I can get to sleep to it.

fortran77• 4 years ago

There’s a related trend of listening to key brain wave frequencies, with the claim it can push the brain into more focused states. And there is a small bit of evidence it might work.

tgv• 4 years ago

I doubt it. Like noise, it might reduce sensitivity to stimuli, though, which can reduce distraction and thus make it easier to focus your attention as a side effect.

mellavora3• 4 years ago

I used to play with binaural beats. I knew I had the right frequency when I could almost hear what the voices inside the brown noise were saying :)

BatteryMountain2• 4 years ago

Haven't played with them for a couple of years but can remember my "sweet spot" was when it sounded like the sound is coming from the center of my brain, not from from a left or right ear, not from the environment. It's a weird physical feeling, almost the same feeling I get from a small dose of psilocybin. Head feels slightly heavier too, esp near the backside. Eventually I stopped playing with binaural beats because I felt it does affect my brain in some way but I didn't know if it was good or bad, but my instinct at the time told me to stop.

motohagiography• 4 years ago

While I can't say I've done serious research, I have hacked around with synthesizing different noise types using a synth, and there is a concept called "entrainment," which I understood as getting your brain to focus on reconciling and cohering related sound or light stimuli. There are triggers for it, where there are just enough sensory cribs to imply coherence that you think you can interpret it, but of course since it's random, you can't, and that state of expectation absorbs your attention, distracting it from obsessive thoughts.

For some people, listening to Bach is like hearing another conversation where it becomes hard to form responses to someone actually trying to talk to them over the music. That's probably true for any music they like, but there may be a level of complexity that "entrains" the mind by submitting its buffering and cohering mechanisms to rhythmic boundaries that prevent it from focusing on other stimuli.

The woo around "binaural beats," is related, where by playing a different tone in each ear that is only offset by a few Hz, the ability of our brain to tell the difference between them (or not) oscillates and we apparently "hear" low frequency beats and harmonics as artifacts of this clipping or that do not appear on a spectrograph. The relationship of the frequency of this clipping or beats is has a sort of backfit horoscopyness about how different frequencies "activate" different cognitive abilities. However, it's surprisingly less bullshitty than it sounds. Since the frequency of the beats resembles natural electrical impulse rhythms in the brain during sleep, (owing to the beats being literal artifacts of gaps in the brain's processing and not of the sounds themselves) there has been some very interesting art and research into what messing with what are essentially just signal processing limits might mean.

Max Richter's "Sleep" concert was designed using similar principles, but instead of synthesized tones, the sounds are composed and performed live in music over 8.5 hours. (https://www.maxrichtermusic.com/albums/sleep/) Once it clicks that you can create these massive washing harmonic effects that overwhelm the senses with classical instruments and live musicians, the cult of Wagner starts to make sense. (e.g. the Das Rheingold Prelude).

People use white noise generator programs to put babies to sleep, and I think there is a lot of interesting art to be made using the entrainment concept that runs through brownian and 1/f noise, to wall of sound music.

c_o_n_v_e_x2• 4 years ago

Rain On A Tent • If you have trouble falling asleep, try spending a night under a tarp tent listening to the sound of the rain.

As someone who spent a lot of time camping while growing up, I could not think of a worse sound for trying to fall asleep... namely the large drops that come off trees at just a slow enough "rhythm" to be torturous.

bamboozled3• 4 years ago

Same, also flapping tarp in the wind. I go to great efforts to stop this happening.

dekhn2• 4 years ago

Also with the implication you're going to end up waking up in a wet sleeping bag!

Tronno• 4 years ago

The whole point of tents is to protect you from the elements. Sounds like you had a poor quality tent, or it was set up in a low spot that pools water.

pigsinzen• 4 years ago

As someone who has also spent a lot of time camping, rain hitting the tent of a roof, a metal roof, or even a tarp over a hammock is hypnotic and I love sleeping to it.

It’s one of my favorite sounds and puts me in an amazing headspace.

Maybe there were circumstances which led to us each experiencing the same type of soundscape completely different?

afandian2• 4 years ago

I used to live in a canal boat, 3mm steel roof. The sound of rain on that, so long as you had a fire going, was very cozy and enjoyable. But I think on a psychological level a large part of the comfort is the relief of being sheltered.

olyjohn• 4 years ago

It depends on the rain for me. A nice steady rain with small, well-dispersed droplets makes a wonderful sound.

Giant droplets accumulated on branches, falling off of a tree onto the roof of your truck, falling at random intervals, something like 5-30 seconds apart. Sounds more like someone tapping on the roof. That will keep you up all night.

jollyllama• 4 years ago

The worst are tracks that have "nature sounds" aka bird calls. Those make me very wakeful.

stinos• 4 years ago

Yeah camping in areas where female Tawny Owls are screaming through the night quite isn't my favorite thing to do.

burntwater• 4 years ago

Considering that bird noises are most associated with morning, the sun rising, and when you should becoming awake and alert, having bird sounds in tracks meant to be "relaxing" has always seemed backwards to me.

hinkley• 4 years ago

I think literally only Totoro finds 'big rain splat' to be enjoyable.

qwerty4561272• 4 years ago

I've read using noises to aid sleep systematically leads to some sort of damage. Does it?

greymalik• 4 years ago

From TFA: “ There isn’t likely to be any danger in listening to BROWN NOISE for, say, eight hours at a time, Dr. Berlau said, unless someone plays the sound at unsafe volumes (listening to noise above 70 decibels over a long period of time can damage your hearing).”

qwerty4561272• 4 years ago

But what if I listen to them every single night for years (although just for half an hour at a time)?

kypro2• 4 years ago

I think this what's behind the appeal of Shoegaze music and why some people get it and others don't. There's something very comforting to me about the fuzzy evolving sounds you hear in Shoegaze music. As someone with a loud anxious mind who's also prone to auditory sensory overload I find certain sounds such as those found in Shoegaze music shuts this all off.

If I'm out in public and I'm feeling anxious there's really nothing that makes me feel at ease quicker. My mind kind of melts away with the music. I guess it sounds like how putting a blanket over my brain might feel.

RugnirViking• 4 years ago

Do you recommend any songs or artists? I've never heard of Shoegaze music, but I might have a listen over the next week. Always nice to find new stuff

resputin• 4 years ago

Here's a great flowchart that I saved years ago as I was first exploring the genre. https://i.redd.it/rxrtulf0m5631.jpg

The three classic albums of the genre

Loveless - My Bloody Valentine

Souvlaki - Slowdive

Nowhere - Ride

dvschnitz• 4 years ago

Not op but my favorites are Slowdive, My Bloody Valantine and Ride.

52-6F-62• 4 years ago

The Canadian sweethearts Alvvays are excellent. There’s more to PEI than potatoes!

https://youtu.be/eH5mqLjwg6U

Paul’s Boutique represent.

kypro2• 4 years ago

Bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive is probably a good place to start.

If you're asking for my recommendations though, when I'm anxious this song is probably my favourite, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ4Mn2X-Wm4

Put some good earphones on, turn it up, and just let your mind shut off as the fuzz and noise slowly builds. The part around ~3.45 is almost orgasmic to my ear, but I'm on the spectrum and I'm quite sensitive to audible sounds so perhaps others don't hear it quite like I do.

FumblingBear• 4 years ago

A general starting place will be My Bloody Valentine's album Loveless which is usually agreed to be the album that kickstarted the genre.

There are a lot of different directions you could go from there, but personally, one of my favorite releases is Guilty of Everything by Nothing as a more modern take on shoegaze. (mid 2010's vs 90's)

Additionally, there are some critically acclaimed releases in extensions of the genre like post-metal with Deafheaven's album Sunbather being a great entry into that particular sub-genre.

Hope that gives you a bit of a starting off point!

trentearl• 4 years ago

Spacemen 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWhH8NPtQlI

bilekas• 4 years ago

kinoko teikoku long goodbye

Is a top choice and rare enough - you can find it on spotify now though !

nkozyra• 4 years ago

Two pre-shoegaze recommendations:

Cocteau Twins

Talk Talk (Laughing Stock and Spirit of Eden, post-synthwave)

This all falls under dream pop and while I don't think it has much in common with noise's effect on the brain, it can be a little disorienting due to the depth and variance in sound.

dr-smooth2• 4 years ago

There are some great recommendations here for classic 90s shoegaze. I recently found a more current band that is playing some great shoegaze: Deserta. Love these guys!

rsolva• 4 years ago

The lovely "Simon Says No!" from Norway is a hidden shoegaze gem!

replwoacause4• 4 years ago

I haven't heard of this genre before. Are there a few tracks or artists you could recommend I start with?

mckirk2• 4 years ago

Every Noise[1] has you covered: https://open.spotify.com/user/particledetector/playlist/330i...

(Though it's just an algorithm and sometimes can have opinions on what constitutes a genre that active listeners of the genre might disagree with.)

[1] https://everynoise.com/engenremap-shoegaze.html

jerry1979• 4 years ago

I came across this Nothing album the other day, and it seems on point to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHtCSu_P_Ow

somedude895• 4 years ago

Mazzy Star - Fade into You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4m5jQy5A2U

The live version serves well to show you why it's called Shoegaze :)

My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyYMzEplnfU

Quintessential shoegaze song

Ringo Deathstarr - Sweet Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0Mgv2mn-Lg

One of my personal favorites

__david__• 4 years ago

My first intro was The Jesus And Mary Chain's Psychocandy. The mix on "Taste the Floor"[1] is so crazy—the guitar is so loud it begs you to turn up the volume to "hurt your ears" levels (phone/laptop speakers will not do this justice). I swear I've lost hearing due to my love of shoegaze…

A more recent version of this kind of noise rock is The Raveonettes [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCtPz-guwO8

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa7JfWsMxgs

icelancer• 4 years ago

My intro was Airiel - The Release.

boringg• 4 years ago

Is shoegaze just another term for drone music?

CollinEMac• 4 years ago

They're different genres but have some similarities.

https://www.last.fm/tag/shoegaze

https://www.last.fm/tag/drone

fipar2• 4 years ago

I agree completely.

While not Shoegaze, the first time I realized my inner dialogue had stopped completely for a few seconds was after the first time I listened to Washing Machine (the song, not the album, though I was listening to the album in full) by Sonic Youth. Up until then I had never though that'd be possible: I always assumed we all had an inner dialogue going on all the time (I later learned some people don't have this at all, which I find intriguing, probably as intriguing as they find that some people always have one!).

themaninthedark• 4 years ago

I have an inner dialogue, or at least I think I do. When I picked up meditation, I think I learned how to have it stop. Or at least so I don't notice it is occurring. It feels like instead of some of my brain resources being devoted to thinking or analyzing all my focus is shifted on the state of me, skin temperature, wind feel, sounds.

titoasty• 4 years ago

This. Exactly this.

I'm more into post-rock (gy!be <3) but I totally relate to your feeling. This massive/overload wall of sound blanketing your brain.

Even if there's nearly no lyrics in post-rock, it is strictly impossible for me to work while listening to it.

And shoegaze/postrock are something you have to enjoy with headphones. The work on stereo is always phenomenal. (I wonder if some bands used binaural beats to go further this way. kinda reminds me I-doser ;) )

MisterTea• 4 years ago

As someone with a loud anxious mind who's also prone to auditory sensory overload I find certain sounds such as those found in Shoegaze music shuts this all off.

This is one of the main reasons for my love of extreme metal and other abrasive, noisy or drone genres. There are even shoegaze black metal bands (blackgaze) such as Andavald. The cacophony of the music drowns out the mental noise and I can focus on what I'm doing. Happy, up beat stuff, or clear vocals, seal focus and becomes an annoying distraction. Though classical music or certain instrumental music is soothing to me as well.

I remember reading that von Neumann was a fan of turning on the TV or radio to very loud volumes when he was working at home. Likely to achieve the same effect.

pizza• 4 years ago

I remember reading that von Neumann was a fan of turning on the TV or radio to very loud volumes when he was working at home. Likely to achieve the same effect.

There is a whole genre of YouTube videos that is just somebody walking in the rain in a cityscape for 3+ hours. I put the video on on my TV, to get both a sense of calm and also a sense of exploration/movement. Something about the coffee shop ambience videos just no longer tickles my mind. It’s best to pair with reeally slow, long music, such as Subaeris - The City in Rain (56 minute long ambient “dreampunk” song). There’s typically a moment in this process that I feel my mind de-tense.. allowing the real work to begin

laurex2• 4 years ago

Putting aside the troll vocals and terrible underlying philosophies, some Black Metal has similarly lovely guitar soundwashes as well. It's an interesting paradox.

z9znz2• 4 years ago

Not black metal, in the past I found it easiest to take an afternoon nap with Metallica, Iron Maiden, or Yngwie Malmsteen.

Later, djent style metal did the trick (preferably with the least amount of "troll" vocals). - such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyBrxxUWO28

ycombinete• 4 years ago

I definitely get this with guys like Alcest, Summoning, Insomnium, Lustre and (to a lesser extent) Agalloch.

mckirk2• 4 years ago

For productivity I've also tried binaural sound, and found it can help me focus (or at least make me imagine it helps me focus, which is close enough for me).

There's a great website that allows you to customize quite a few parameters and also adjust the 'wave' frequency for different scenarios (from 'sleep' to 'focus'), it's interesting to play around with if you have headphones: https://brainaural.com/

jcfrei2• 4 years ago

I know this isn't very professional but Trey Parker and Matt Stone co-opted the term Brown Noise back in 2000 in the South Park episode "World Wide Recorder Concert". Maybe Brownian Noise would be a better and more accurate description?

briankelly• 4 years ago

Brown note, actually, not noise.

jcfrei2• 4 years ago

They refer to it as Brown noise: https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/World_Wide_Recorder_Concer...

CharlesW• 4 years ago

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_noise

https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Brown_Note

georgyo• 4 years ago

Parker and Stone were just making fun of it and did not coin the term Brown Note.

The term is from the 1970s military research.

As with many South Park episodes, the topic they are making fun of is usually based on exaggerated facts. It's what makes their show still funny even after several decades.

rewgs• 4 years ago

Brown Noise is a technical term, along with Pink Noise, White Noise, etc.

hot_gril5• 4 years ago

The South Park episode is the first thing I thought of reading this title, honestly.

ceravis3• 4 years ago

As a complement to the adjacent comment thread on Shoegaze music, I find a similarly dense, soothing, blanketing effect from some recent noise/drone music genres (especially on good headphones, or out loud with a subwoofer), for example:

The pulsing deep noise of Tim Hecker's Piano Drop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlfwZDR_1Hg

The gradual crescendo to a wall of noise in Abul Mogard's Like Water:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4taaOwvzDMY

Conflicting tension + blanket of sound in Siavash Amini's The Wind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Fut9yEYgQ

NB: All of the above have a significant low frequency component that may be missed on desktop speakers or low quality headphones...

ceravis3• 4 years ago

For those wanting to generate some sounds like the above, I made what is effectively a noisy synthesizer / visual demo a while back that can be played note by note on a PC keyboard (or will play itself if left untouched, see attached readme). But to get it into "wall of sound" territory you need to hold down the up arrow and/or space bar for quite a while to speed up the bike until the visuals start distorting:

https://acatalept.itch.io/eternalapex

prox• 4 years ago

Everything by Carbon Based Lifeforms is also very soothing, albums like Interloper, World of Sleepers, Hydroponic garden also really give me that feeling and with just a bit more beat and melody that I love.

The first track of Interloper just soothes me real quickly:

https://youtu.be/-9pgIVcB3rk

UncleOxidant3• 4 years ago

How about Dream Pop from groups like Still Corners and their song The Trip?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m2Lr_HqCfg

I find it very relaxing. I like how the beat seems to subtly change in different parts of the song - it could be an auditory illusion.

swayvil2• 4 years ago

Is there a visual equivalent of brown noise?

White noise static?

Blinkenlights field?

This? https://vimeo.com/313049496

Smell? Tactile? Thought?

wing-_-nuts• 4 years ago

I was legitimately looking to have major renovation done on my condo (triple glazed windows, sound insulation added elsewhere, etc) before I got a white noise machine. Before, I'd be woken up at 730am (following a 2am prod deployment) by some jackass cranking a leaf blower the very second the noise ordinance allowed. Now I usually sleep peacefully to my alarm. I don't really care whether there's scientific evidence of it working, it's saved my sanity.

Two things to look out for: 1. Make sure it's a non-looping white noise machine. The looping ones drive me crazy 2. Mine can play lower frequencies which really help block out external noise.

dr-smooth2• 4 years ago

Agreed on the looping. I had a cheap white noise machine in the 90s, and once my brain identified the loop, I was locked into it and couldn't fall asleep.

But it's not as bad as hearing somebody in your white noise: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/mehrar

matai_kolila• 4 years ago

Drowning out inconsistent noise with generally predictive noise seems pretty intuitive to me, and I think the article touches on this simple explanation.

Nothing special or magical is happening in our brains, just not hearing interruptive sounds helps us not get distracted or awakened.

UncleOxidant3• 4 years ago

I like listening to rain or surf (or the combination of the two) - seem to contain a lot of brown noise.

nativespecies• 4 years ago

10000% effective for me in order to sleep. I live in a loud neighborhood with very rude neighbors who play loud bass. Brown noise (albeit cranked very loudly via a Lectrofan brand machine) keeps low frequency nuisance at bay. It can't block out the physical aspects of loud upstairs neighbors stomping or loud cars rumbling past, but it has really saved my sanity and blocked 90% of the noise.

White noise on the other hand doesn't really do it as much for me, but is helpful for blocking out people talking, higher frequency sounds, etc.

theGnuMe• 4 years ago

Same, I live by a busy road. Can't sleep without it.

afandian2• 4 years ago

These 3M 1100 earplus are magic. (You can get them at Screwfix in the UK.)

https://www.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/p/d/b00017649/

I always keep a few spare packets in my bag. On a few occasions (usually conferences) people have been grateful for them.

switch0072• 4 years ago

Agreed. I tried quite a few different ones before settling on these. I've used them for 10 years

You can usually get a box of 200 pairs for ~£20 on Amazon.

drited• 4 years ago

3m Peltor x5a also very good.

levymetal• 4 years ago

After using foam earplugs daily for 5 years my inner ears became very sensitive to the point that plugs caused extreme pain.

After a bit of research I found these https://www.happyearsearplugs.com/

These don’t go into the ear as far so aren’t painful. I feel the reduction in noise isn’t as good, but the frequency response is much more even. I wear these under noise cancelling headphones to watch TV and listen to music in total isolation. You do lose a bit of fidelity but it’s still very liveable.

Also, I get about 6 months to a year out of each pair which is less wasteful than foam earplugs.

mortenjorck• 4 years ago

I'm a big fan of Flents Quiet Contour: https://flents.com/collections/ear-plugs/products/quiet-cont...

I've never tried the 3M 1100s, though.

Ephil012• 4 years ago

There's also some great reusable earplugs which are much better for the environment than foam earplugs. Plus, it saves money long term vs buying a bunch of foam earplugs

https://us.loopearplugs.com/products/quiet

https://www.flareaudio.com/products/sleeep-pro

https://www.happyearsearplugs.com/ (which someone already mentioned on here)

thenobsta• 4 years ago

Both brown noise and shoegaze remind me a lot of the Safe and Sound Protocol by Porges. It's a therapeutic intervention designed to increase cues of safety by filtering common music into the range of human speech. The creator of the protocol has done some research demonstrating efficacy and come up with a plausible theory for why his protocol works[1]. Maybe his work could add color as to why shoegaze and brown noise is so impactful for some people? Not really sure, but seems related.

[1] https://www.emdrwestonsupermare.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/201...

jinder• 4 years ago

I've used SSP and let's just say I think it's nothing short of revolutionary. It seems to be completely changing how my brain works and how quickly it gets activated (in the sense of what state it is in).

calrain• 4 years ago

It sure helps with my tinnitus

ChrisMarshallNY• 4 years ago

At first, I was "of course!"

Then, I noticed it said "noise."

In all seriousness, I like to listen to "ambient techno," which can often be much like brown noise, during my morning walks.

hartator4• 4 years ago

One night ago, I tried a new thing.

I slept with the new Airpods Pro with noise cancellation on. I am trying to escape road noises. E.g., random car noises, sirens, tyres screeching, etc. Noise cancellation on these are crazy good. However, it was actually worse to find peace. I keep trying to guess if I am still hearing noises when it was actually fully quiet. It was a bad night.

Yesterday night, I just make the A/C runs its fans all night. Which I guess is very similar to brown noise. Found peace immediately. And I was able to ignore almost road noises during the full night (despite being the same as the previous night). It was a surprising restful night.

hammock2• 4 years ago

Running Bluetooth through your brain all night probably isn’t great either

hartator4• 4 years ago

Never thought about that. Isn't Bluetooth very low power compared to a cell phone or even if a microwave is running nearby?

kennywinker• 4 years ago

Unclear if airpod pros use bluetooth at all if they are not playing any audio just doing noise cancelling. I suspect they don’t, and just ping the phone at intervals to stay connected.

But either way, the health impact of a bad night’s sleep is going to be so so so much worse than whatever small or nonexistent effect bluetooth has

marktangotango• 4 years ago

It was a bad night
It was a surprising restful night.

Is not a night of bad sleep often followed by a night of good sleep?

hartator4• 4 years ago

Is not a night of bad sleep often followed by a night of good sleep?

For me, usually bad nights are more common than good nights.

r00fus• 4 years ago

Aren't AC/fans/etc considered white noise?

bityard2• 4 years ago

Yesterday night, I just make the A/C runs its fans all night.

If you run it every night, and if you're doing it just for the noise, understand that your next month's electricity bill is going to be quite... shocking.

We used to run box fans at night in our bedroom when we lived in apartments to drown out the sounds of neighbors and traffic noise. We continued the tradition when we bought our first house. One day I decided to get some real data on what our energy spending was and plugged a box fan into a kill-a-watt. I don't remember the exact number but it was high enough that the very next day I bought a "white noise machine" for every bedroom in the house and our monthly electricity bill dropped IN HALF. Basically paid for themselves in the first week.

The best white noise machines are made by "LectroFan". These used to cost $15 on Amazon, now they are $50. Whichever brand you buy, the most important thing is to get one with a good-size speaker so that it can reproduce lower frequencies decently.

hartator4• 4 years ago

If you run it every night, and if you're doing it just for the noise, understand that your next month's electricity bill is going to be quite... shocking.

If it's just the fans, shouldn't be pretty economical? I thought also circulating the air was a net positive anyway.

rjh29• 4 years ago

I got used to running the fan over summer and loved the comfort it provided. I usually wear earplugs to sleep and it was nice to have something just constantly blocking out traffic and neighbour noise without any effort. Now it's getting colder I was looking at buying a LectroFan to do the same thing. Based on your comments even at $50 they seem worth it, so thanks for the recommendation!

kmlben65• 4 years ago

you can soundproof your sleeping room, just need to dampen frequencies that offer direction cues, they are above 1khz. electronics, car sound whooshing, rattling all produce those frequencies. if it's hard to dampen enough - dampen as much as you find economically viable and raise noise floor by running ventilation or big diameter fan, it will mask the rest of them.

also having fresh air ventilation (with soundproofed intake - they use quiet fan) is much more comfortable than having windows opened on busy street.

samson8989• 4 years ago

We should reduce noise controls, because people actually work better with more noise.! Or maybe not.

ypeterholmes• 4 years ago

Glad to see more attention being paid to the psychological impacts of noise. Our cities are full of noise pollution- car alarms, motorcycles with tricked engines, the list goes on. These things are detrimental to health.

cududa2• 4 years ago

I thought I had insomnia for a decade, until the pandemic and moved to a quiet suburb. I now routinely sleep 9 hours a night.

toss1• 4 years ago

Yup, both for me and our cat, who calmed down amazingly moving from a dense houserow on a main-ish street to a house set 50m back from a very quiet road. Almost a different personality, and almost none of the anxiety cats usually show of moving. After one night hiding out, he was like "this is great!".

We also feel like moving again, because the soundscape has gotten so loud from highways 5-10km away. It's just steadily gotten louder in the background, but in the first months of the pandemic shutdown we could hear nature dominant again — it was just bliss! Now, it's all come roaring back louder than ever, Amazon is building a warehouse 7km away... Definitely wanting more quiet . . .

kossTKR• 4 years ago

Interesting and i kind of agree, but what about a girlfriend / wife?

I feel like scuffling about in one's own bed is ultimately what wakes me up sometimes and i haven't really found a solution that isn't sleep in separate rooms.

I already do like to sleep with white noise and earpieces.

bamboozled3• 4 years ago

I moved to country where the o my noise I hear at night is a bubbling stream. Still get insomnia. So YMMV

LocalH• 4 years ago

As long as we allow modern capitalism to be the driving force of society, these harmful things will never go away

jtbayly• 4 years ago

I think you mean to say as long as humans continue to prioritize other things over these things, these things won’t change.

arcturus172• 4 years ago

As opposed to what, a centralized economy? Because that went well for the people who have suffered it...

Maybe when the AGI overlords land they'll know how to plan an economy properly.

tchaffee• 4 years ago

I'm not a fanboy of cut throat capitalism but your take seems poorly thought out. Can you describe in detail how these harmful things would magically disappear if capitalism were no longer the driving force of society? My socialist neighbors can be just as loud and annoying and inconsiderate as my capitalist neighbors.

Gormo• 4 years ago

"Capitalism" is a pattern that emerges from the behavior of humans, who act on the motivations and intentions they already have, and not an independent source of causality.

Reifying post-hoc descriptive models and regarding them as the source of a problem is a sure-fire way to make that problem intractable.

hot_gril5• 4 years ago

Car alarm ban in new models seems like a no-brainer. They create a nuisance and don't even work as intended. There are so many silent ways to notify the owner of potential theft. I don't mean with fancy smartphone stuff necessarily, I mean via the RF key fob everyone already carries. Some vibrate.

What's funny is CA outlawed ICE cars by whatever year but didn't touch car alarms. And a while back they mandated that truck reverse beepers be even louder than elsewhere, which is a trickier situation than car alarms, but I've noticed Amazon vans with white noise reverse sounds that do the job well.

standardUser• 4 years ago

I hope they ban clickers that use the actual car horn instead of a mild beep (or even better, haptic feedback!). The noise we use to say "yes, the door is locked" should not be the same noise we use to say "WATCH OUT OR WE MIGHT DIE!"

BenjiWiebe• 4 years ago

All the keyfobs I've seen are purely one way.

I can believe there are keyfobs with RF receivers for some newer/fancier vehicles. I've just never seen one.

agumonkey• 4 years ago

on the other hand, the subtle noise of nature has a deep calming reach that I still find surprising

BrainVirus• 4 years ago

I think a lot of people here need to read A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century. Too many simplistic "hacks" are being proudly discussed without thinking about higher-levels issues and consequences. Yes, you might trick yourself with a noise generator. However, you should ask yourself why there is a need for trickery in the first place.

switch0072• 4 years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/24/a-hunter-gathe... I stumbled across this scathing review of the book while researching it. They didn’t hold back

squeaky-clean• 4 years ago

However, you should ask yourself why there is a need for trickery in the first place

Because my upstairs neighbors are assholes.

wizofaus• 4 years ago

It sounds like distant highway traffic... isn't there normally a premium on houses where you don't have that sort of background noise all the time?

moffkalast• 4 years ago

Much like an alarm clock, some sounds are best heard only on demand.

steve_john• 4 years ago

It's a bit “rougher” than pink noise and resembles the roar of a river current or strong wind. Common benefits associated with brown noise are relaxation, improved focus, and of course, sleep improvement.

stackola• 4 years ago

Why does your account read like every comment was written by an AI? They are all so gerneric, most of them seem to directly relate to the title but nothing else. You've also never gone into any discussion after leaving your initial comment.

gadflyinyoureye• 4 years ago

I find rife frequencies to be useful for this too. Back ground noise. No music. And hey if they work, better health. Spooky rife on YouTube is good for a whole slew of tones.

10g1k• 4 years ago

Traditionally, the brown noise, or the brown sound, was an indication that you might have gotten more than you bargained for.

tastysandwich• 4 years ago

I love brown noise! I've used it for about 10 years.

I simply cannot read on the train or in public spaces without it, and I don't understand how people can. I find it magical at blocking out all those distractions. If it were socially acceptable/not dangerous I'd totally make some sort of hat that blocks out peripheral vision too :P

But I worry I've become too dependent on it for sleep. I now found I can't sleep without brown noise and ear plugs, and I have to take a speaker with me on holiday.

Btw forget all those fancy "white noise" speakers. A cheap bluetooth speaker with a free app does the trick just fine, and you get access to way more sounds.

Raphaellll• 4 years ago

I get motion sick hearing brown noise. I associate it with being on a plane or train but I am sitting still, so it feels off and I get dizzy.

therealdrag0• 4 years ago

Regarding other peoples recommending their focus music/noise. I’ve been a big fan of brain.fm. Basically the only music I can just turn on and work without thinking about. But also helps me sleep on airplanes which I struggle with.

sixtram• 4 years ago

I usually listen to airplane noise during programming, cabin or outside propeller depending on my mood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tds7Onwz2-U&t=6800s

LoganDark2• 4 years ago

Does anyone know a real-time brown noise generator that doesn't just play an audio file? Like this: https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/

usednet• 4 years ago

wavtones.com has what I believe to be the highest quality stochastic noise generator but there is a $7 paywall to access colors besides pink and white.

Can brown noise turn off your brain?

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