Snoring dog, white noise and hearing other house noises?
March 2, 2015 9:01 AM   Subscribe

My wife and I recently rescued a wonderful 15 month to 2 year old 40 lbs. female pitbull. She is a very sweet, great dog and sleeps in the bedroom on her own bed, but she snores like a 300 pound grandpa! I'm going to purchase one of the Marpac's I have read about on here, but my question is this: will this effect our ability to hear if something else is going on in or outside the house (garage break in, etc)?

This is the main concern we have with using earplugs (that and they don't work too well and don't feel really good after 6-8 hours in).
posted by Asbestos McPinto to Home & Garden (6 answers total)
 
Hey happy new dog! I sleep with a variety of noise machines and/or ear plugs often and generally speaking you can hear stuff like fire alarms and knocks on the door. I'm a pretty light sleeper. They basically just overlay a level of sound on top of whatever the other sound is (or deaden the top x db of sound) to smooth out the sound coming in to your ears so it's not jarring. Might want to put an alarm on the garage if you're concerned about not hearing something outside just to make sure it's loud enough.
posted by jessamyn at 9:15 AM on March 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


We live in the city, and the addition of the white noise does make us miss more ambient noise, not so much because the white noise generator covers stuff up, but because we're more deeply asleep.

(However, this question cannot be fully answered without seeing a photo of the offending snorer.)
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:25 AM on March 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: will this effect our ability to hear if something else is going on in or outside the house (garage break in, etc)

Not a whole lot more than a fan, rain, snoring dog, climate control, deep sleep etc would. Because of house layout, I doubt I'd hear a garage break-in* and probably wouldn't hear my own car alarm going off under most conditions either. Put better alarms on things if they are a risk - this goes for earplugs too - because unless you sleep in shifts in order to stand guard, you almost assuredly have too much faith in being woken up just because.

*My dogs would, which will likely eventually be a mitigating factor for you as well. I can occasionally open the garage doors without the dogs hearing, but they go off as soon as I get to the laundry room door.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:33 AM on March 2, 2015


Best answer: If the noise is truly white, that is, broad band (energy at all frequencies, randomly distributed), it will mask any noise that has a lower amplitude. So if your white noise is on at 50 dB, you won't hear anything quieter than 50 dB (measured at your ear). So it's relatively straight forward. Sound follows inverse square law and tends to get quiet pretty quickly (6 dB down for every doubling of distance), so a transient sound in your garage at 80 dB(A) at the source, depending how far you are from your garage (and how many walls are in between) will quite likely be less than the amplitude level of your noise machine, and you won't hear it.

If you want to be sure, the only way is to get alarms and make sure that the sound they make is louder in dB(A) than the level of the noise, measured from your bed.

The other thing to consider is you can use a different type of noise with a different frequency weighting. If you use brown or pink noise, you may be more likely to hear some bits of a transient noise (like a knock, which has all frequencies like a broad band noise).
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:47 AM on March 2, 2015


Response by poster: Thanks for all the replies so far here's a picture of the offender sitting on her sister.
posted by Asbestos McPinto at 10:15 AM on March 2, 2015 [10 favorites]


Another option is this EcoTone Sound Machine . I have mine set to the rainfall and it's awesome for providing background noise that lets my brain calm down enough to sleep. I'd still someone breaking into my house (and my dog would too) but maybe not my garage. It can be adaptive - meaning it increases in volume when it hears louder sounds, but you might not want to activate that feature.
posted by barnone at 11:32 AM on March 2, 2015


« Older Gay erotic writing blogs   |   Styling preschool girl hair Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.