I have started listening to random American city council meetings lately for white noise. Since they’re all bureaucratic-flavored boredom anyway.

  • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
    81·
    10 months ago

    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

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
      11·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
        2·
        10 months ago

        Man I know, and I tried them. None of them were quite right, they didn’t accomplish what I wanted. Like the sound on the show is just a little different in real life. Part of it I think, is the treble (insert tribble joke)

        It really all clicked when I fucked up and broke the speakers so it’s all coming from the subwoofer

      • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 months ago

        Also no I didn’t solve that problem, I’m using an app called blackplayer, every ten hours it fades in and out for like a three second period. That’s on my to-do list to fix, but not a priority because it doesn’t bother me too much

    • june@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      10 months ago

      Ok that’s actually really rad. I’m gonna have to fuck around a bit and see if I can do smth similar.

      • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
        2·
        10 months ago

        Logitech z313 is what I got, I just checked my order history and it was like $57. I’m going to try to track down a link for the audio file I use. I have the file, but I don’t remember the source

        • june@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          I was thinking I could grab one from goodwill. It just needs to be the subwoofer that has the input and it’s g2g.

          • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
            1·
            10 months ago

            That’d probably be fine. I mean I haven’t tested it a lot, but I think the secret sauce is just that it’s all bass from the subwoofer. Let me know how it goes

      • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
        15·
        10 months ago

        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.

        • No_@lemm.ee
          01·
          10 months ago

          It was recently discovered that the reason tinnitus is a thing is not psychological at all, it’s a degeneration/damage of the nerve endings in the ear. So since they found that, don’t give up hope that they’ll find a treatment for it.

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    41·
    10 months ago

    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

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
        17·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
        12·
        10 months ago

        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)

        • neidu2@feddit.nl
          6·
          10 months ago

          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.

    • The Giant Korean@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
      6·
      10 months ago

      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 😬

    • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      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)

    • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      This app was fully offline previously. Now with premium thing they removed it and i cannot turn of my mobile data to sleep. So this ruined the whole experience for me.

      • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
        6·
        10 months ago

        On one hand, yea, on the other, #worth. They were great overall - Sometimes you gotta take some losses and some wins.

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
    23·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
      7·
      10 months ago

      So “background ambience” would be a better term to describe the city council meetings?

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        5·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
        4·
        10 months ago

        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

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
          2·
          10 months ago

          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”

          😬

      • verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        10 months ago

        No. There is occasional some yelling, both from and at the commissioners, I don’t want anyone to be startled out of relaxation.

  • maynarkh@feddit.nl
    22·
    10 months ago

    LiveATC streams. If you are not listening it’s a constant stream of radio-garbled jargon. Just pick a busy airport.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
    17·
    10 months ago

    I watch my city council meetings attentively. Local politics has an enormous impact on your day-to-day life and it’s also an area where being informed and engaged is most easily able to actually effect the outcome you want. City councillors are more likely to have their view swayed by a modest letter-writing campaign than your Member of Parliament/Representative.

    For white noise, I often use Age of Empires games. I’ve got Survivalist’s Twitch stream open as I type this, but I couldn’t even tell you if he’s winning or losing at the moment because it’s mostly there as background noise.

    • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
      18·
      10 months ago

      Yeah, but the city council meeting I’m listening to is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean (Filipino here), so I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. And given the geographical distance, the impact on my day-to-day life is… zero.

      But still, the stories I hear during the meetings are entertaining and they really do help me understand America just that little bit more. Curiosity for the win!

        • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          3·
          10 months ago

          Interesting. It looks quite dull from the thumbnails indeed. At the moment my current source of city council white noise is Spokane, Washington - the stories that people tell during open forum are entertaining and I sometimes hate how an amazing story gets cut off by the 2-minute limit.

            • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
              2·
              10 months ago

              Well, Spokane enforces a 2 minute limit. What city do you recommend I listen to if I want to hear longer open forum stories?

              EDIT: Oh wait, I replied from the inbox, nevermind. Fort Scott, Kansas is definitely the place.

                • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
                  2·
                  10 months ago

                  So… if I have the money to fly down to Fort Scott do I get to ramble on for 3 hours about how their city council has been such a great source of white noise, generating additional white noise for me in the process that I can use once I return to Manila?

  • proctonaut@lemmy.world
    171·
    10 months ago

    I have a recording of the big machines where I work. Rhythmic clunking and whirring motors puts me right to sleep.

  • ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social
    13·
    10 months ago

    My partner likes to listen to lofi music. Lately she’s been obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3 so she plays a youtube video that’s 10 hours of the “down by the river” song and a campfire sound from BG3. We’ve also done a 10 hour Star Trek TNG bridge noises video before for awhile lol

  • Cagi@lemmy.ca
    11·
    5 months ago

    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.

  • Teon@kbin.social
    10·
    10 months ago

    If you have an actual Radio, find an AM station that is just static. This works quite well.

      • lingh0e@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        10 months ago

        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.

    • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      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)

  • schroedingerskoala@kbin.social
    9·
    10 months ago

    B17 bomber engine drone, gets me into the zone in no time. (Youtube > dl, cut to 2hr MP3).
    Mixed that with a 2 hr refrigerator drone and it is perfect.

  • Trent@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    10 months ago

    Either SoX running in Termux on my phone with:

    play -n synth brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth 0 0 0 10 10 40 trapezium amod 0.1 30

    (originally yoinked from I can’t remember who, in the early days of Mastodon)

    or more recently, a 10-hour loop of the Sardukar chant from Dune. It’s right about the right frequency to block a lot of the noise around here and it isn’t anything intelligible for my brain to keep me awake thinking about.

    If I just want some noise-blocking sound while I’m trying to code or something then myNoise has a vast array of sound generators. It was well worth kicking them $5 a while back.