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Can brown noise turn off your brain?
- mellavora 4y agoI 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 :)
- BatteryMountain 4y agoHaven'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.
- steve_john 4y agoIt'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 4y agoWhy 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.
- steve_john 4y ago
- almog 4y agoPaywall bypass: https://archive.ph/6QTJB https://archive.ph/6QTJB
- darepublic 4y agoNice but I believe the handler to turn on sound didn't get brought over.
- astro19238_ 4y agoNoise is not behind the paywall tho
- imdsm 4y agoAnecdote: have found brown noise great — same effect as white noise but not grating on the ear
- rob74 4y agoFor more elaborate noise generators (I think it also has a brown noise generator hidden somewhere) you can always go to https://mynoise.net/ 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 4y agoAnother 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.
- mod 4y agoI 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 4y agoNot in front of my Linux box right now, are these tools built in or part of stand repository?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mod 4y agoThese are just using the 'play' command, the aliases are just so I don't have to remember the arguments. Play is a standard package from your package manager
- civilized 4y agoI 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.
- adwi 4y agoRecently 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_ 4y agoOT, 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).
- RankingMember 4y agoIt's so unreliable I just ended up turning it back off
- arcturus17 4y agoYea 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...
- teejmya 4y agoI 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.
- omnicognate 4y agoI'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.
- mellavora 4y agoHighly recomend https://syntherjack.net/make-some-pink-noise-generator/ 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.
- omnicognate 4y agoNice, thanks!
- BatteryMountain 4y agoKeen to blog about it or upload your scripts somewhere?
- omnicognate 4y agoThe 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.
- fortran77 4y agoThere’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 4y agoI 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- motohagiography 4y agoWhile 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/ 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_x 4y 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.
- bamboozled 4y agoSame, also flapping tarp in the wind. I go to great efforts to stop this happening.
- dekhn 4y agoAlso with the implication you're going to end up waking up in a wet sleeping bag!
- pigsinzen 4y agoAs 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?
- afandian 4y agoI 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.
- qwerty456127 4y agoI've read using noises to aid sleep systematically leads to some sort of damage. Does it?
- greymalik 4y agoFrom 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).”
- qwerty456127 4y agoBut what if I listen to them every single night for years (although just for half an hour at a time)?
- NoGravitas 4y agoThe only consequence I can think of is that you might find it harder to go to sleep without them for a while. That was my experience with always using a mechanical background noise generator throughout my childhood, and then not.
- bityard 4y ago> a mechanical background noise generator What is this? A fan?
- NoGravitas 4y agoIt's like a fan in an enclosure with adjustable vents. It's louder than a fan of equivalent size. They've mostly been replaced by electronic background noise generators these days.
- kypro 4y agoI 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 4y agoDo 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 4y agoHere's a great flowchart that I saved years ago as I was first exploring the genre. https://i.redd.it/rxrtulf0m5631.jpg https://i.redd.it/rxrtulf0m5631.jpg The three classic albums of the genre Loveless - My Bloody Valentine Souvlaki - Slowdive Nowhere - Ride
- bamboozled 4y agoIf listening to "Loveless" from My Bloody Valentine, make sure your volume is low, especially if wearing headphones, you've been warned. My ears will never be the same again, thanks. Wow.
- laurex 4y agoThe loudest show I've ever been to (and I've been to metal, noise, and other kinds of loud-oriented shows) was MBV, where you could actually feel the sound almost like a wave against your whole body. So I think Kevin Shields would disagree with this advice. :D
- mckirk 4y agoFor 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/ https://brainaural.com/
- jcfrei 4y agoI 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?
- lamp_book 4y agoBrown note, actually, not noise.
- jcfrei 4y agoThey refer to it as Brown noise: https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/World_Wide_Recorder_Concert/Script https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/World_Wide_Recorder_Concer...
- CharlesW 4y agoYes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_noise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_noise https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Brown_Note https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Brown_Note
- georgyo 4y agoParker 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 4y agoBrown Noise is a technical term, along with Pink Noise, White Noise, etc.
- hot_gril 4y agoThe South Park episode is the first thing I thought of reading this title, honestly.
- ceravis 4y agoAs 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 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 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 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...
- ceravis 4y agoFor 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 https://acatalept.itch.io/eternalapex
- prox 4y agoEverything 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 https://youtu.be/-9pgIVcB3rk
- UncleOxidant 4y agoHow about Dream Pop from groups like Still Corners and their song The Trip? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m2Lr_HqCfg 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.
- swayvil 4y agoIs there a visual equivalent of brown noise? White noise static? Blinkenlights field? This? https://vimeo.com/313049496 https://vimeo.com/313049496 Smell? Tactile? Thought?
- wing-_-nuts 4y agoI 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-smooth 4y agoAgreed 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 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/mehrar
- matai_kolila 4y agoDrowning 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.
- UncleOxidant 4y agoI like listening to rain or surf (or the combination of the two) - seem to contain a lot of brown noise.
- nativespecies 4y ago10000% 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 4y agoSame, I live by a busy road. Can't sleep without it.
- afandian 4y agoThese 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/ 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.
- switch007 4y agoAgreed. 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 4y ago3m Peltor x5a also very good.
- levymetal 4y agoAfter 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/ 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.
- thenobsta 4y agoBoth 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/2019/07/SSPScience.pdf https://www.emdrwestonsupermare.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/201...
- jinder 4y agoI'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 4y agoIt sure helps with my tinnitus
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoAt 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hartator 4y agoOne 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.
- marktangotango 4y 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?
- hartator 4y 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.
- hammock 4y agoRunning Bluetooth through your brain all night probably isn’t great either
- samson8989 4y agoWe should reduce noise controls, because people actually work better with more noise.! Or maybe not.
- ypeterholmes 4y agoGlad 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.
- cududa 4y agoI 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 4y agoYup, 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 4y agoInteresting 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.
- gknoy 4y agoConsider having separate top-sheets + blankets, perhaps with an over-layer blanket over all of it. Then, your partner's tossing and turning will jostle the bed, but won't pull on your cocoon of blankets (and vice versa).
- BrainVirus 4y agoI 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.
- switch007 4y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/24/a-hunter-gatherers-guide-to-the-21st-century-review-sciencey-self-help 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 4y ago> However, you should ask yourself why there is a need for trickery in the first place Because my upstairs neighbors are assholes.
- wizofaus 4y agoIt 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 4y agoMuch like an alarm clock, some sounds are best heard only on demand.
- gadflyinyoureye 4y agoI 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 4y agoTraditionally, the brown noise, or the brown sound, was an indication that you might have gotten more than you bargained for.
- tastysandwich 4y agoI 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 4y agoI 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 4y agoRegarding 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 4y agoI 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tds7Onwz2-U&t=6800s
- LoganDark 4y agoDoes anyone know a real-time brown noise generator that doesn't just play an audio file? Like this: https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
- usednet 4y agowavtones.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.