White noise machine for adults how to#

ThatвЂ™s inefficient and unkind to your ears. In contrast, white noise, whose sound graph is a straight, horizontal line, wonвЂ™t block the high-intensity low frequencies of a garbage truck until you ramp up the volume. For instance, the rumble of garbage trucks, the sound graph for which looks like a downward slope (as long as the X axis is linear), is handily masked by brown noise even at a relatively low volume, because brown noise is characterized by a lot of low frequencies and a similar downward-sloping sound graph. But a smarter way to mask noise is to choose the color with higher intensity in the frequencies matching that of the noise youвЂ™re trying to block, explained sound engineer StГ©phane Pigeon.

The white, pink, and brown noises you tend to find in sound generators can all mask annoying sounds to varying degrees, if you turn the volume up enough. To understand how noises mask each other, we spent hours talking on the phone and emailing with StГ©phane Pigeon, PhD, a sound engineer specializing in white noise and the creator of myNoise, our favorite white noise app. (ASTI), the maker of two of our picks, the LectroFan EVO and the Sound+Sleep.

White noise machine for adults how to#

We also interviewed UPenn scientist Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, a professor of sleep and chronobiology in the department of psychiatry who co-authored a clinical review of studies on the use of white noise as a sleep aid, as well as Stanford University sleep researcher Rafael Pelayo, MD, author of How to Sleep: The New Science-Based Solutions for Sleeping Through the Night and a medical consultant to Adaptive Sound Technologies Inc. To learn what features to look for in white noise machines, we spoke with Michael Perlis, PhD, director of the behavioral sleep medicine program at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine whose work includes studying the use of white noise machines in treating insomnia.