I’m with you, the looping of standard “white noise” machines drives me batty. I tried my mum’s once, and I could very clearly hear the “break” where the loop ended and began again. So I spent 15 minutes anticipating the break in the loop, before giving up and turning it off. (The annoyingness/effect gets magnified in a quiet room with no other noise, too.)
I have this. It doesn’t have looped sound samples, it literally just makes continuous audio static. Unfortunately at the price and the fact that you don’t indicate wanting a sunrise clock might make it overkill, but the white noise feature is the best thing ever. I didn’t regularly use white noise before getting this, now I can’t do without it.
I’ve used a fan for many, many years, and I have trouble sleeping without the fan. The last time I stayed in a hotel I had my laptop with me and went to one of the white noise websites and had that on all night. I can’t sleep very well with nothing but silence.
I think there are two versions of it, one which has the white noise feature and one that doesn’t. (Don’t quote me on this, it’s been years since I’ve looked at these.)
When you hit the settings button, cycle through alarm, time, etc. and if you have the white noise feature you should get to an option that displays “NOISE OFF”, “NOISE 30”, or “NOISE PERM” (what I use – the white noise stays on until morning when the light is up full).
If you don’t get a “NOISE” option, you probably have the less expensive version of the clock.
I have a Conair SU2 (battery or AC option, no lights, no alarms, auto-shut-off) and I will attest to the fact that you can hear the loop on every sound EXCEPT the “white noise” sound. They don’t make the model I have anymore, but I suspect that their current white noise machines are probably just as bad.
I don’t need white noise to sleep, I just have it for when it’s too cold to have the fan on and my roommate and his GF are being, uh, noisy in the basement.
We’ve used these things (homedics cheapo ones mostly, we’re on our 3rd one now, from target) since my son was born, so almost 6 years now, in his room. He really likes it to sleep. The white noise one sounded generated to me – I could never hear the loop on it if there was one (his room is close enough I can hear it when I go to sleep). The ‘ocean’ one he got into for a while and that had a predictable sequence which bugged me. But lately he’s been insisting on one of the ‘rainforest’ ones complete with cawing birds. It’s horrible. I end up turning it down after he falls asleep, and making sure my daughter’s (white noise) is up louder
The worst is when he gets up early in the morning, and leaves his door open and forgets to turn off the blasted thing. If I wake up to fake rainforest squawking birds, I’m on the warpath!
The “Brown Noise” on simplynoise.com is the most sleep-inducing noise I’ve heard. You could always record it onto a CD and then play it back to go to sleep to. I don’t do well with the waterfalls or thunderstorms as the variations in sounds catches my ear. I have one of the cheapest sound machines around and there is no audible looping sound.If you do decide on a particular model, check out eBay prices.
I tried “brown noise” and it sounds awesome. Good call. It’s what I would imagine to be the nice dull roar of a waterfall, but the “watefall sound” produced by most machines disappoints me as being too sizzling and sharp for my tastes.
1963’s The Raven is quite a success—mostly as it features Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff speaking in conversational tones for most of the movie. Better than bird songs.
A snoring animal/spouse/whatever. Yeah, right, I’m going to acquire a snoring dog to help me sleep. Not.
Noise loops (like from www.simplynoise.com). The brown and pink noises are great quality for masking, maybe white if you need to mask some higher pitches. HOWEVER the problem with loops is that I can’t find a way to loop them seamlessly, thus there is an interrupt every 30 seconds/10 minutes/1 hour, due to the ipod or CD repositioning itself at the beginning of the track.
Electronic machines… I have yet to find one that doesn’t have loops/artifacts, but I’ve heard they exist.
Marpac machine… I have one of these on order. I suspect this is going to be the best, as it’s essentially a loud fan in a housing that prevents it from actually blowing air anywhere. It will depend on the volume range and the quality of the noise.
Have you thought about getting some recordings of rainfall etc and playing them on a small cd player/mp3 stereo or similar? Someone suggested something like that earlier and its what I do. I find the white noise etc recordings too difficult to loop successfully too and I’ve found that the ‘uneven’ nature of the sounds I chose was more difficult to audibly interrupt with a loop transition noise.
I found a CD of rain/storm recordings and another which was a crackling campfire. Converted them to mp3s and now play them via an iPod stereo/alarm clock. The recordings were split up intro tracks but they were continuous, as in you couldn’t hear the transition between tracks. I just joined the files together as one long track and then looped that. I was pretty sensitive to the transitions of ‘white noise’ style noises but I can’t hear the transition in the rain or campfire recordings at all, and even if I could - they’d be about an hour and forty-five minutes apart.
I like the some of the nature sounds, but my wife won’t tolerate any of them specifically because of their ‘unevenness’.
What’s been working for us for several nights now… I downloaded a 70-minute track called “Brown Noise For Sleep” off iTunes, then created a playlist of 10 tracks of this loop, making sure that ‘part of gapless album’ was not enabled on iTunes (because this disables crossfade between tracks). Then I play this from the iPod on a high-quality portable stereo. It’s like magic.
What I notice more than anything is that it seems like I’m getting the same quantity of sleep, yet the quality seems much better. I’m much more refreshed after a night’s sleep. I suspect that I’ve been excessively disturbed by environmental noise (barking dogs, prowling cats, cars) which has been ruining the quality of my sleep, sort of like mental sleep apnea or something.
