I have started listening to random American city council meetings lately for white noise. Since they’re all bureaucratic-flavored boredom anyway.

  • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Not too weird, but I found this accidentally: a subwoofer under my bed (the speakers that came with it broke)

    I found a ten hour long brown noise mp3 that is set to loop indefinitely on an old burner phone. Through the subwoofer it sounds exactly like the warp engines from Star Trek TNG. Incredibly comforting, and hard to sleep without

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    That’s just noise. White noise is a specific kind of noise.

    My weird way of using white noise is I have a set of scripts to precisely control my volume. I turn on a video of white noise on youtube, then I run my script to slowly, steadily raise the volume up to whatever level I want.

    The entire point of the script is to avoid a clear moment when the noise starts or stops. To further hide the transition from consciousness, I have delay built in, and I recently added randomized delay between volume increments.

    I run the script, and an hour later brown noise is blasting in my room, but I never have to be conscious of it.

  • proctonaut@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I have a recording of the big machines where I work. Rhythmic clunking and whirring motors puts me right to sleep.

  • Cagi@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Lately my external HDD making old school hard drive clicky groans as it downloads overnight. I had forgotten computers used to sound like this until I bought it; it’s nostalgic and soothing.

  • ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    My partner likes to listen to lofi music. Lately she’s been obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3 so she plays a youtube video that’s 10 hours of the “down by the river” song and a campfire sound from BG3. We’ve also done a 10 hour Star Trek TNG bridge noises video before for awhile lol

  • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I like listening to crickets or cicadas when I’m falling asleep. Helps drown out my tinnitus

      • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Tinnitus is a constant whine. Other actual noise helps prevent having to constantly be thinking and feeling the whine because the “white noise” has your ear dealing with other things.

        It isn’t the reason everyone listens to white noise but people with Tinnitus could help themselves go less crazy if they listen to white noise.

        • No_@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          It was recently discovered that the reason tinnitus is a thing is not psychological at all, it’s a degeneration/damage of the nerve endings in the ear. So since they found that, don’t give up hope that they’ll find a treatment for it.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    11 months ago

    I watch my city council meetings attentively. Local politics has an enormous impact on your day-to-day life and it’s also an area where being informed and engaged is most easily able to actually effect the outcome you want. City councillors are more likely to have their view swayed by a modest letter-writing campaign than your Member of Parliament/Representative.

    For white noise, I often use Age of Empires games. I’ve got Survivalist’s Twitch stream open as I type this, but I couldn’t even tell you if he’s winning or losing at the moment because it’s mostly there as background noise.

    • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, but the city council meeting I’m listening to is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean (Filipino here), so I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. And given the geographical distance, the impact on my day-to-day life is… zero.

      But still, the stories I hear during the meetings are entertaining and they really do help me understand America just that little bit more. Curiosity for the win!

        • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
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          11 months ago

          Interesting. It looks quite dull from the thumbnails indeed. At the moment my current source of city council white noise is Spokane, Washington - the stories that people tell during open forum are entertaining and I sometimes hate how an amazing story gets cut off by the 2-minute limit.

            • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
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              11 months ago

              Well, Spokane enforces a 2 minute limit. What city do you recommend I listen to if I want to hear longer open forum stories?

              EDIT: Oh wait, I replied from the inbox, nevermind. Fort Scott, Kansas is definitely the place.

                • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
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                  11 months ago

                  So… if I have the money to fly down to Fort Scott do I get to ramble on for 3 hours about how their city council has been such a great source of white noise, generating additional white noise for me in the process that I can use once I return to Manila?

    • StarManta@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Some people don’t like when it’s too quiet. For some it’s uneasy, for some it makes it too hard to stop your mind from wandering. That can make it hard to sleep or hard to focus on a task. White noise is noise that makes it not quiet, but isn’t so loud or too full of meaning to be a distraction on its own. Most people use something like ocean waves, running water, rain, wind noises, the warp core noise from Star Trek, etc.

    • brianorca@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      There are many kind of noise. But white noise has all frequencies of sound at about the same volume. (Just like white light is a mix of many colors in equal portions.) Think of an old TV on a blank channel, a rainstorm, or a waterfall.

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    BTW - For anyone with F-Droid, I highly (highly) highly recommend Noice

    It has:

    • White noise
    • Brown noise and pink noise
    • Various background noise like cafe chatter, waves, rain, or birds
    • Further improved my sleep ❤️

    Back in University I used it to sleep right through a massive party my roommates threw when I had a midterm the next day. 10/10 app

    • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      This app was fully offline previously. Now with premium thing they removed it and i cannot turn of my mobile data to sleep. So this ruined the whole experience for me.