There are times when the space around you is just too loud and you need some kind of a white noise to mask all those distracting sounds, which may come from your noisy neighbors while you are trying to sleep, or from loud collegues when you are trying to focus on your job, or from a TV in the next room while you are trying to study.
This website will help you to find good solutions to these problems.
What is white noise sound?
The precise explanation of this term may not be very easy to understand, but simply speaking it is a noise in which all sound frequencies audible to human ear are in equal intensity (desibels). Due to the fact that human ear is made in a such way that it is more sensitive to sound frequencies between 2-5kHz white noise does not sound very pleasant to most of the people if played loudly. Therefore many listeners prefer pink noise or brown noise (afraid not Southpark Fans :) - brown or Brownian noise will not influence your digestive system!). These noises have more powerful bass frequencies and less powerful higher frequencies (brown noise has even more powerful bass than pink).
Sometimes people by words "white noise" mean any kind of noise which can mask other unwanted sounds. The role of such "white noise" may play a sound of a hair dryer, sound of rain, sound of waterfall etc. There are devices called white noise machines, that can play such sounds, but why would you need one when you can play these sounds for free? :)
White noise mp3 files
It might be the only thing you came here for - a bunch of free mp3 files of various noise types made by white noise generator. Click here for downloads section.
Are you into nature sounds?
If you prefer more natural sounds to synthetic static noises then nature sounds might be your choice when looking for a perfect sound blocker. Click here for downloads section.
Wanna make a custom sound by your liking?
There is a website Go Mix It where you can go on and create your own sound by combining together various nature or non-nature sounds. For example you could combine a sound of beach, seagulls, fireplace and some pink noise and get something like this. After that you can export your sound mix to audio file and download it. And yes - it's free, check it out!
Downloads
- plain white noise sound
- oscilating volume white noise sound
- plain pink noise sound
- oscilating volume pink noise sound
- plain brown noise sound
- oscilating volume brown noise sound
- waterfall and river (downloaded from gomix.it/mywaterfall)
- beach and wind in trees (downloaded from gomix.it/beach-wind)
- rain and thunder (downloaded from gomix.it/rain-thunder)
Tips for better noise masking
Sometimes people use music to mask unwanted sounds. While music is good to influence you mentally - either inspiring when you are working out or relaxing when you listen for some meditation cd, it is not perfect for noise masking and here is why:
- if the music has lyrics, you may tend to sing along and distract yourself from what you tried to focus on whether it is studying, reading or trying to fall asleep
- if the music does not have lyrics, such as classical music, it may have sudden highs and lows in volume. These may make it harder to mask the noises because sometimes the music will be too loud or too quiet
- music as any other sound which has distictive flow from beginning to ending will bore you with time if you keep playing it over and over again
The best sounds to mask surrounding noises are noise-like (random signal) sounds with sufficient volume in lower frequencies. For example waterfall sound combined with a sound of a river like this one works perfectly for most of the people.