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I can give some insight to this. If you search for white/brown etc. noise on spotify for songs you won't find longer tracks. I use these while travelling if I'm
by deanc 3y ago
I can give some insight to this. If you search for white/brown etc. noise on spotify for songs you won't find longer tracks. I use these while travelling if I'm having troubles sleeping in a room where there's noise, or on a plane. Airpods in, lie back and it blocks out more noise. The problem with the albums of white noise are they fade between different kinds of noise which usually only lasts a few mins - this is enough to break the effect. I can only presume there is a limit on song length for albums, because there are white noise podcasts which are 10 hours long - which is exactly what I need for my use-case.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoThere are bands with songs over an hour long on Spotify. Distrokid (the most popular service for independent artists to get on Spotify et al) has no maximum length for song uploads. I think the real reason is Spotify pays you per "song played" not per minute played. If I listen to Dopesmoker by Sleep, which is an hour long, then I listen to a 60 second white noise clip, both artists get paid an equal amount.
- Loughla 3y agoI don't use spotify but I wondered how a length limit would work for some esoteric bands. Shpongle is another one with extremely long songs that wouldn't work if they were chopped up.
- boredemployee 3y agoI never thought I'd read about Shpongle in HN.
- Loughla 3y agoHallucinogenics brought me to my current career. Synthesizing DMT got me my first full-time grant writing gig. I believe more hackers experiment with drugs than the nerd stereotype would lead you to believe. Also, the music they make is amazing. So it's always relevant to most music conversations. (Albinoblacksheep flashback is still my go to when I'm feeling nostalgic)
- boredemployee 3y agothat's really cool! I was really addicted to Shpongle and 1200 Mics in the 2000s. btw, Shpongle's song that makes me trip while sober is "DMT" (Divine moments of truth), its fucking amazing (I don't do drugs, I'm really afraid of what can come up). I don't think I've heard them for at least 10 years, I'll put it on for listening! Edit: OMG I just remembered the existence of this masterpiece: Shpongle - Star Shpongled Banner !!!
- bromuro 3y agoWe are here :)
- exsf0859 3y agoShpongle albums are split up into normal-sized tracks. Most CD players, media players, and streaming services support gapless playback of albums, at least for subscribers. When a Shpongle album is played with gapless playback enabled, it sounds like one long song. I don't have a Spotify link handy, but here's a YouTube Music example: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l_K6GgImOp-3JEdDpoIc4-NGMsIf10ZG0 https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l_K6GgImOp-3...
- paradox460 3y agoCan I ask why you don't use a dedicated app to generate the noise on demand?
- deanc 3y agoI can just hit download on a podcast on Spotify and have it ready for trips.
- semiquaver 3y agoiOS has a white noise generator built in with several types of noise as well as nature sounds. https://www.theverge.com/23131327/how-to-iphone-white-noise-background-sounds-ios-15 https://www.theverge.com/23131327/how-to-iphone-white-noise-...
- AYBABTME 3y agoWow I didn't know that, thanks! Now I just need a way to create an app icon for random iOS settings.
- reaperducer 3y agoTry the built-in Shortcuts app. It can create pseudo-apps out of many iOS settings and toggles.
- prepend 3y agoThere is one already, it looks like a little ear. I get to it by swiping up and it’s next to the remote, flashlight, and calculator app icons.
- callalex 3y agoIt is accessible through Control Center (the pull-down screen with radio toggles and brightness and stuff)
- semiquaver 3y ago(From the link I posted) There’s a quick way to access all of this if you’d rather not dive into menus every time you want to turn on white noise. Once you’ve set your preferred sound from the options above, follow these steps: Navigate back to the Accessibility menu. Scroll down to the bottom and tap Accessibility Shortcut (under General). Tap Background Sounds to select it from the list. This will set white noise as your accessibility shortcut so your preferred background sound will play anytime you triple-click the side button, even with the screen locked. You can map this function to Back Tap, too, if you prefer.
- beltsazar 3y ago> If you search for white/brown etc. noise on spotify for songs you won't find longer tracks. I noticed it too recently, but it's not always this way. A few years ago I could find white noise songs with hours of duration.
- murray-buttchin 3y agoIt's stuff like this that resulted in a sort of death by a thousand paper cuts for me with streaming services. I was fed up enough to put a lot of effort into getting my music library onto a NAS and serving it through plexamp. I now have a seamlessly loopable 10 minute long white/pink noise flac file I can play from anywhere and am not beholden to platform lock-in (at least not in the same way as Spotify where my library cannot be taken to another platform, at least not easily). It takes some upfront work and a bit of a hobbyist's attitude towards it but it is extremely rewarding to not be beholden to a platform and to own your own music library.
- mozman 3y agoDo you have your flac posted for download anywhere? I’m not skilled at editing and I can hear the loop restart with every attempt I’ve made thus far.
- rolph 3y agofor a few bucks, you can roll your own: https://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/raqs/raq-issue-154.html https://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/raqs/raq-issue-154... https://circuitdigest.com/electronic-circuits/simple-white-noise-generator-circuit-diagram https://circuitdigest.com/electronic-circuits/simple-white-n...
- nick__m 3y agothe analog link is great. thank you!
- mrob 3y agoTo generate seamlessly looping noise in Audacity: Generate your favorite type of noise. If you want to apply filters/EQ, do it now. If so, trim several seconds from the start and end of the filtered noise to make sure there are no audible boundary effects from the filters acting on the start or end of the noise. Duplicate the noise twice, so you have three copies of it, all on separate tracks. Drag track 3 to the right until the beginning of it snaps into alignment with the end of track 1 (watch for the yellow line; it's very important to align all the edits correctly). Drag track 2 somewhere in the middle. Using the auto-snapping again, select both tracks 1 and 2 in the part where they overlap (drag across both, using the auto-snapping to align the selection. You should see two yellow lines). Use the "Crossfade Tracks" effect with a "Constant Power" fade type to crossfade tracks 1 and 2. Do the same for the part where tracks 2 and 3 overlap. Select the beginning part of track 1 where it plays alone (snapping with the yellow line again) and also the empty space below it (drag down). Delete this. The tracks should all stay in alignment. Select and delete the ending part of track 3 where it plays alone too. Mix all the tracks together using Tracks, Mix, Mix and Render. If you loop the result you get effectively 2 copies of the noise playing simultaneously but out of phase, repeating indefinitely, very slowly crossfading in and out, and with the loop point of each copy set at zero volume so you can't hear it.
- flatline 3y agoI recently found one on Spotify that is 10 hours long. If you find a shorter one just put the track on repeat and up the cross-fade to like 3s.
- bee_rider 3y agoI wonder, what is the cross-fade of two white noise signals? This ought to be doable on pencil and paper I think.
- prepend 3y agoThe iPhone has generated white noise since iOS 2015 [0]. How difference is the effect of the Spotify lists you use vs ios’ white/brown/green noise? [0] https://www.rd.com/article/iphone-white-noise/ https://www.rd.com/article/iphone-white-noise/
- tuatoru 3y agoYou just have to look in the bottom drawer of the locked filing cabinet marked "tax returns", in the sub-basement room with a sign on the door saying "beware of the tiger".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ajmurmann 3y agoSorry, somewhat off-topic, but this article is a great example why LLMs will beat old-school web search. Huge article full of stuff you already known of you got there via search and the entire valuable content is just this: "Here’s how to play white noise on your iPhone, step-by-step: Head to your iPhone’s Settings. Next, tap Accessibility. On the Accessibility page, find Audio/Visual and select it. From there, search for “Background Sounds” and toggle it on."
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoNo more garbage for SEO! What is white noise? Why would you want to play white noise? Who created white noise? When did it become popular? How to play white noise on iPhone. Conclusion.
- kccqzy 3y agoYou don't need a LLM for that. Old-school web search can excerpt only the step-by-step instruction on the search results page. Now of course, you get lawsuits from site owners because a visitor can get the information needed without actually visiting the site which is detrimental to the site owner's ad revenue. Expect this kind of lawsuits to continue as LLMs become popular.
- aio2 3y agoThere's a 10 hour white noise video on Youtube, you can use that.
- jjulius 3y agoSpotify doesn't keep the screen on for ten hours.
- gnicholas 3y agoYou can actually play YouTube videos on iPhones with the screen off. Just start the video, sleep the phone, and then restart it by tapping the screen and then tapping play, or by squeezing your AirPods.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- causality0 3y agoWhy would someone stream ten hours of white noise when they could download a 500KB loop and play it forever?
- copperx 3y agoDownloading 500KB of pseudorandom numbers is insane. Just generate them on the fly.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago500kb isn't even an afterthought for modern computer storage (modern pictures are MB's huge) and doesn't require technical thinking past "download music file".
- sailfast 3y agoBecause many of these tracks do not loop properly and make you wake up from sleep
- causality0 3y agoWell sure, but then you just download the whole ten hour track and play it whenever you need. That's what I do.
- mdasen 3y agoIt might be that Spotify pays per song rather than per minute. Songs have been getting shorter in length because longer songs mean less money for artists. If you have 10 6 minute songs, someone can only listen to 10 songs in an hour. If you have 20 3 minute songs, someone can listen to double the number of songs in an hour. If you're creating an album of white noise and trying to make the most money from Spotify, you don't want to create a long "song".
- jacurtis 3y agoYeah thats the same argument for movies being shorter as well. Thats why a lot of movies have crept down to 80-90 mins. It allows theaters to fit a whole extra showing into the day, which means more box office revenue. Only the big hits are generally allowed by the studios to be longer (like a Christopher Nolan or James Cameron movie for example). Because the same thing is true for movies. A theater ticket is going to be $10 regardless of whether the movie is 75 mins or 180 mins. Might as well squeeze more showings out.
- sailfast 3y agoThat and sometimes you just want a short-@55 movie: https://youtu.be/-UKbwz6s6VY https://youtu.be/-UKbwz6s6VY
- johnnyanmac 3y agoon the other hand: few movie goers are seeing multiple movies a day, and movies make their money on concessions, not ticket sales. They don't necessarily care about many movies a day, as opposed to 2-3 big hits that can get people in. if Nolan can get 100 people in for the 180 minute oppenheimer as opposed to 20 people for the Haunted mansion, the goal is clear.
- iggldiggl 3y ago> Because the same thing is true for movies. A theater ticket is going to be $10 regardless of whether the movie is 75 mins or 180 mins. Might as well squeeze more showings out. Interesting – in Germany a small supplement for "over-length" movies was (or still is?) a commonplace thing.
- n8cpdx 3y agoSet the track to loop and turn on the crossfade setting.
- moltar 3y agoYou can buy perfectly loopable white noise tracks on iTunes for $0.99. Permanently yours. Don’t need internet. Looping feature built in into the music app. As a bonus I have a Shortcuts home icon that plays it in a loop and sets focus mode to sleep.
- copperx 3y agoWhy would anybody buy something that can be substituted with cat /dev/urandom > /dev/audio? There are thousands of free apps that do exactly that. Streaming white noise from Spotify or iTunes seems, to me, incredibly crazy.
- Our_Benefactors 3y agoI’ll answer you seriously: it’s easier to pay $.99 for an mp3 of exactly what you want than spending 30 minutes finangling free software tools.
- copperx 3y agoDownload white noise generator app, press play.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoGet pwnd. Or have your battery drained even faster by yet another ad-infested surveillance "utility" app.
- amlib 3y agoReally? You can't spend 5 minutes to look up software that will generate many different types of noise, perhaps even tuned for the use case? And why the resentment for free software? You are gonna have an easier time finding that kind of stuff as a simple webpage or better yet on f-droid rather then on an ad infested, corpo boot licker laden platforms like google play and the app store. Just the fact you don't have to sweep trough heaps and heaps of garbage is a plus. Sure normies are gonna prefer paying for an mp3 or whatever, but we are on hacker news, we should strive for better. (and maybe help enlighten our fellow clueless users...)
- smegger001 3y agoI have 6 long hour audio track I found online years ago that i use as white noise. its actually a loop of the Star Trek TNG ambient warp engine thrumming sound effect it not actually random but works for my needs. i just keep it on my pones computers or tablet and play it when i need white noise
- 23B1 3y agoI'd love a copy of this! Night-me would too!
- nightpool 3y ago"I can only presume there is a limit on song length for albums," Definitely not, I have plenty of real songs in my Spotify library that are an hour long or longer. My guess is that it has more to do with how Spotify calculates artist payouts and that white noise "creators" found that they could get 20x the number of views if they split all of their tracks up into 3 minute chunks.