Quiet your Home with Ambient Noise
Are you driven to distraction by noise? A lot of people are, but I didn't count myself as one of them until fairly recently. It all started over the Thanksgiving holiday…
My wife and I were visiting friends who live in the mountains of Colorado, high above Denver. Our first night in their guest room, I had a hard time falling asleep. But I knew exactly why; I was totally engaged by listening to, well, nothing at all. Total, complete, silence. Their home is so far removed from civilization that aside from the occasional sound of the house settling, there was nothing to hear. The "roar" of the silence, as the saying goes, was deafening to me.
It was a (lack of) noise that I quickly got used to. A few days later, back at home, I was newly-aware of what it sounds like where I live; most which I had previously shut-out from my consciousness. I live in a 1920s factory loft-conversion located in a bustling, urban neighborhood. There are neighbors on two sides, an expressway, commuter rail, elevated electric rail, taxis, buses, a dog park across the street, and approximately 150,000 people within a three mile radius. And for 24 hours after returning home from Colorado, I felt like I could hear all of it. I've since re-acclimated, but the experience left me thinking about ways that I could block out some of the distraction when I felt like I needed a break.
Which led me to discover ChatterBlocker. This $20 application for Mac OS X and Windows offers an amazing variety of ambient sounds that you can combine, and loop, to create an aural screen that works well for you. You can incorporate non-distinct voices, music, and sound effects in a variety of ways. It's interesting to play with, even if you're not in dire need of distraction-suppressing technology. There are settings that would be appropriate for office environments, too.
Earlier this week, NPR had a story on using pink noise to drown-out construction sounds, but I find that ChatterBlocker's variety is more flexible. It's easy to set up different presets so you can adjust the settings to fit different situations. (And pink noise, by the way, is just one of 14 different sound effects you can utilize.)
Another alternative is SonicMood, which promises to not only block noise, but lift your spirits as well. I haven't really used it, the user interface is daunting, but it does offer a huge variety of sounds and options. Of particular interest is the ability to schedule on-and-off times, which might be useful if you want to use it to help you fall asleep. There are other ways to automate this sort of thing, of course, but SonicMood would be a good way to experiment with the idea and see if suits you.
Lately, I've experimented with using Audio Hijack Pro to capture ChatterBlocker's output, so I can carry a noise-blocking track on an iPod shuffle. On my next trip, I plan on taking it along and seeing how well it helps with hotel room noise. I'll add a comment here with the results.
If you have techniques that help you around the home or office, please feel free to share. I'm listening.
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Mac
Comments (8)
Read More Entries by Gordon Meyer.
I use Atmosphere Lite in my office. It's a freeware app from Vectormedia Software and generates ever changing natural environment soundscapes. Works a treat and let's me choose the sounds according to my mood :)
I liked your blog.What you have said is correct.There is a need to stop the vibrations from travelling through the desk floor and the remedy you have said is also interesting.Every one need to follow "quiet feet" method
What about Noise? It only has one noise profile, but it is free.
A couple of years ago, I looked into the options on Linux systems -- http://www.linux.com/articles/55061 ... far and away the most interesting was Boodler, a Python-based sound generator that can construct never-repeating 'soundscapes' from samples. It's undergoing a rewrite as we speak, although the existing version still works well.
Simple room fans are surprisingly effective at masking background noise -- since they generate a moderate 'white-noise'.
Air-Conditioners too, since they always have a fan.
I discovered the benefits years ago with an old window air-conditioner in my city dorm room. The fan's low hum blocked out routine street noise ... making it much easier to sleep & study. It was so effective, I even ran the A/C fan (fan-only switch position) in the cold of winter.
It works great in hotel rooms also, depending on the type of A/C system.
Inexpensive room fans are easy to find, and they work.
Another hotel trick is to tune the AM radio or TV to an empty frequency/channel -- you get white-noise that you can adjust with the volume controls.
Earplugs are the old standby -- cost almost nothing and work very well. But many people can't stand having them in their ears.
I use a simple electronic sound-masker nowadays at home, but you can usually improvise effectively when traveling.
Thanks for mentioning SonicMood :) But I don't see why you think its interface is "daunting." To start playing a Mood, just double-click on it in the list of Moods - just like you'd do to start playing a song in iTunes. What's daunting about that?
It's true that modifying Moods or creating custom Moods requires more work using the edit window, but lots of people will be very happy with the pre-defined Moods already available.
Of course it may just be that I'm biased since I wrote it ;-)
Cheers,
John
I've been using a little $6 Mac app called Ocean Waves, by:
http://www.katsurashareware.com/
for years. Unlike so many other sound makers, it never repeats itself. I used to live on the ocean, and the sound this makes is undetectable from the real thing. Has some nice settings, too, that allow you to customize. I will often run it for hours and hours, just in the background while I work. A brilliant, underrated app.
I use a Marpac sound conditioner to block out urban noises at night. It works extremely well for me and is essentially a large box fan in a small configurable package.
Thanks for the post. The Chatter Blocker site has some fascinating background. I especially liked the bit about humans needing 15 minutes to return to a state of flow after an interruption. Perhaps that's why I seem to get most of my work done late at night.
Even in middle school, I remember jamming my hands over my ears so I could concentrate while reading a textbook. (Sadly, my school was based on an early "open classroom" design, with only bookcases between adjacent classrooms. The district finally had to retrofit the space with interior walls at a cost of untold thousands of dollars. Several years after that, it stopped using the building as a school at all.)
Are you playing the masking sounds over speakers or headphones? I've been experimenting with pairing earbuds with over-the-ear hearing protectors. There's a company that sells integrated units under the brand name Extreme Isolation.