Advice on a white noise machine?

November 7, 2005 8:15 PM

I'd like to purchase a white noise machine as a study and sleep aide, mostly to help drown out some of the ambient sound that comes from neighboring apartments. I'm looking at the MARPAC Sound Screen Sleep Mate 980 which has some pretty good reviews on Amazon. Anyone have experience with either this model or a similar product/solution?
posted by rockstar to Home & Garden (18 answers total)

If a software solution is an option, the demo version of the NCH Tone Generator seemed pretty nice.

It also lets you do pink noise, which I found preferable to white noise.
posted by cloeburner at 8:18 PM on November 7, 2005

I, too, am wondering why you need a hardware solution. Generating white noise / pink noise / binaural beats on a PC is easy - record an hours worth, burn it to a CD, and play it in your bedroom on repeat.
posted by Jimbob at 8:23 PM on November 7, 2005

I would go with a software solution too, if it is an option. Good speakers will be a better source of full range sound than this device (critical for actually reproducing white noise), it is a cheaper solution, and there are more opportunities for adjustment and customization.

I've never used white noise as a sleep aid though, so...
posted by Chuckles at 8:28 PM on November 7, 2005

For that kind of moneys, you might as well get one with a HEPA filter in it and purify your local air at the same time. (That's what I do, anyway.)
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:30 PM on November 7, 2005

I use a fan.
posted by hydrophonic at 8:39 PM on November 7, 2005

That Marpac is the one to get. It's been around forever and is extremely effective. I used to work at a non-profit that dealt with court-ordered counseling for families, and they used them outside the (paper-thin walled) offices. They work like a charm.
posted by wolftrouble at 9:23 PM on November 7, 2005

I sleep with (another kind of) white noise machine and I absolutely adore it, but beware: now I can't sleep without one. If I go to a hotel or something and forget it, I'm up all frigging night.
posted by tristeza at 9:30 PM on November 7, 2005

I have several CDs from SleepMachines. I love the dryer, fan, thunderstorm, the creek, beach.....they are all great! You can sample all the sounds from the site. In fact, here is one of my favorites: The Dryer. Don't ask me why so many people find it so soothing, but it is! Listen to The Dryer. They have "collection discs" as well. Excellent quality.

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posted by Independent Scholarship at 10:30 PM on November 7, 2005

A dedicated white noise or natural noise box may sound better, but the fan trick is a great way to test to see if white noise will in fact help -- and if it helps enough, you might save the money you'd otherwise spent.

The general trick to suppressing external noise -- it either needs to be random, or have a very long cycle time -- anything short, your brain locks onto the pattern to try and decode it, and it can keep you awake. This is one of the reasons slow water drips drive you nuts. The trick if you are in a place that you can't fix the sink is to turn the water on until it isn't dripping in a pattern, then put a washcloth under the drip. I digress.
posted by eriko at 5:45 AM on November 8, 2005

Just go get a really cheap fan. The cheaper they are, the louder they are. Mine completely drowns out 8th Avenue in Manhattan, which is a semi-magical feat.
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:58 AM on November 8, 2005

We have a clock radio with white noise and other synthesized natures sounds. We were using it to drown out the sound of the wind, and found that using a small tabletop humidifier in the winter works better for us.

If you go the PC route, you might want to check out the free Aire Freshener software. It has all kinds of neat environmental sounds.
posted by SteveInMaine at 5:58 AM on November 8, 2005

Sorry, beware of popups on that Aire Freshener link.
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:10 AM on November 8, 2005

I use a fan.

In the summer I use a fan. In the winter I use one of those cheap air filter things that is supposed to protect you from the evils of cat dander, except I remove the filters both so that I don't have to keep replacing them and because I don't want to stress the little engine when I don't.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:38 AM on November 8, 2005

My wife and I live in a small studio apartment, and the wall at the head of our bed is shared with a noisy neighbor. We picked up a white noise machine at Brookstone on the recommendation of something one of us read online (can't even remember where now), and we love it.

It's a little pricey, but Brookstone has a pretty flexible return policy if it doesn't do the trick.
posted by schustafa at 7:41 AM on November 8, 2005

I wouldn't mind having a CD looped of the Enterprise warp engine sound humming in the background, perhaps with the occasional phaser blast, ship rocking sound, drop-out-of-warp, red alert, dead space, then back into warp. Perhaps the emergency part can be its own track with 0sec break between tracks, so I can put it on shuffle and get unexpected interruptions at random times if I want, or just loop the warpage with no interruptions.
posted by vanoakenfold at 10:13 AM on November 8, 2005 [1 favorite]

We have an older version of the machine from Brookstone, and we love it. I've been in an apartment/townhouse living situation for several years, and the machine does a great job of drowning out the neighbors. I find my brain tunes out the white noise, so that, upon awakening, I sometimes think the machine has somehow turned itself off.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:24 AM on November 8, 2005

Second the notion of using a fan for testing; but it's a very poor substitute for the real thing. (Disclosure: I've been using the very earliest model, which I got from Edmund Scientific, since 1983.) The great thing about an actual, electronic machine (and what distances them from those horrible mechanical types) is the volume control -- usually, you only need a little bit of sound masking, so you turn it way down low. The trouble with a fan (or an unused channel on the TV, another handy substitute) is the poor quality of the noise -- and an older fan can develop annoying oscillations in the noise.
posted by Rash at 10:54 AM on November 8, 2005

I came to this question looking for white noise software, something that is better than Boodler. I guess Boodler would work well on a Linux box, but the python code doesn't play well with the shell .DLLs that this Win32 box is stuck with.
posted by Mozai at 4:26 PM on March 22, 2006