🔒 Every sound is made live on your device — nothing is streamed or uploaded, and it keeps working offline.
Live spectrum: low notes on the left, high notes on the right. White noise looks flat, pink and brown slope down to the right, blue and violet rise.
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Download as a sound file
Plays on any phone, speaker or music app — set it to repeat. Longer files take longer to make and are bigger (about 10 MB a minute).
The colours of noise — what each one does
“Noise” here means a steady sound with no melody or words. Its colour describes how its energy is spread over low and high notes, a bit like light: white light has every colour, white noise has every pitch equally. The little graph on each card shows that spread — low notes on the left, high notes on the right. The evidence badge says how well the claimed effect has been studied.
What does noise “activate” in the brain and body?
🛡️ Masking: it hides the sounds that wake you
You are rarely woken by a noise itself, but by a change: a door, a car, a dog. Your brain keeps listening during sleep and reacts to sudden differences. A steady sound raises the background level, so those changes stand out less and are less likely to trigger the brain’s alarm (the “orienting response”). This is the best-supported reason noise helps.
🧠 Less to notice, less to think about
Steady noise carries no information — no words, no rhythm — so the brain soon treats it as safe and tunes it out. That is why noise can be easier to work to than a busy office or music with lyrics, which keep pulling your attention.
⚡ A little arousal for a busy brain (ADHD)
The “moderate brain arousal” idea says that some under-stimulated brains, such as many with ADHD, work better with a bit of extra background input — like a radio signal that becomes clearer with a little static (stochastic resonance). In studies by Söderlund and colleagues, white noise improved memory and attention in inattentive children but made attentive children slightly worse. It is promising but based on small studies, and the right volume differs from person to person.
🌊 Slow waves in deep sleep
Deep sleep is made of slow brain waves. In lab studies, short bursts of pink noise played exactly in time with those waves made them stronger and improved memory the next morning, including in older adults (for example Ngo 2013, Papalambros 2017). That needs special equipment that reads your brain waves — continuous noise from a speaker does not do the same thing, so treat claims about it with care.
🌿 Nature sounds and the rest-and-digest system
A 2017 brain-scan study from Brighton and Sussex Medical School found that natural sounds, compared with artificial ones, shifted attention outward (away from worrying, inward thinking) and slightly increased “rest-and-digest” (parasympathetic) activity in the heart. Rain, waves and wind are also naturally close to pink or brown noise, which many people find soothing.
👶 Babies and the sound of the womb
Inside the womb it is loud — blood flow and the heartbeat make a steady whoosh. In a classic study (Spencer 1990) 80% of newborns fell asleep within five minutes with white noise, against 25% without it. Heartbeat and brown noise copy the womb most closely.
🔔 Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
A sound close to the pitch of the ringing makes the contrast smaller, so the ringing is less noticeable. Some people use violet or blue noise for high-pitched ringing, others prefer grey or pink. It does not cure tinnitus; sound therapy is used alongside advice from an audiologist.
Quick guide: what to try
| You want to… | Try | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fall asleep in a noisy place | Brown or pink noise + rain | Deep, soft sounds mask traffic and voices without hiss. |
| Focus or study | Pink or brown noise, low volume | Hides voices and small noises; nothing to pay attention to. |
| Help a baby settle | Heartbeat + brown noise, or white noise | Close to the sounds of the womb. Keep it quiet and far from the cot. |
| Block out talking | White or grey noise | Covers the speech frequencies most strongly. |
| Relax after a long day | Ocean, stream, birds or campfire | Natural sounds help many people switch off. |
| Mask high-pitched ringing | Violet, blue or grey noise, very quietly | Covers the pitch range where tinnitus usually is. |
Brainwave (binaural) beats
Each ear gets a slightly different tone — for example 200 Hz on the left and 206 Hz on the right. Your brain hears a slow “beat” at the difference (6 Hz). The idea is that the brain’s own rhythm drifts towards that beat: delta (1–4 Hz) is the rhythm of deep sleep, theta (4–8 Hz) of drowsiness and daydreaming, alpha (8–12 Hz) of relaxed alertness, beta (13–30 Hz) of active thinking and gamma (30–45 Hz) of intense focus.
The evidence is mixed: a 2019 review of many studies (Garcia-Argibay and colleagues) found small to medium effects on anxiety, memory and attention, but the studies differ a lot and some find nothing. Use headphones — without them the beat disappears. If you have epilepsy, ask your doctor first.
Use it safely
- Quiet is enough. Noise works best a little softer than a normal conversation. If you have to raise your voice over it, it is too loud.
- Babies: paediatricians advise keeping a sound machine at least 2 metres (7 feet) from the cot, below about 50 decibels (like a quiet dishwasher) and using a timer — some machines tested at full volume were loud enough to risk hearing damage.
- All night? Use the sleep timer if you only need help falling asleep. Your ears also rest better in quiet.
- Headphones: keep the volume low, especially for long sessions.
- This page explains sounds; it is not medical advice. For tinnitus, sleep problems or ADHD, talk to a doctor or audiologist.