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White noise

Bright and flat — the most effective of the three at covering speech.

When you need to cover voices

White noise carries equal energy at every frequency, including the range human speech lives in. That is exactly why it is the harshest of the three to listen to and the best at making a nearby conversation unintelligible. If the problem you are solving is people talking — a shared office, a thin wall, a hotel corridor — this is the one that works.

For anything else, the softer colours are easier to live with. Brown noise is the usual choice for sleep and long work sessions, and pink noise sits between the two.

Keep it quiet

White noise tempts people into turning it up, because raising it covers more. Resist that: the goal is to sit just above the sound you are masking, not to drown it. Bright noise at high volume is fatiguing within an hour and is the main reason people give up on it.

The sound is generated by your browser, is CC0, uses no data and does not loop, so it can run as long as you need it to.

Questions

  • Does white noise block out talking?

    It makes speech much harder to follow by masking the same frequency range, which is what stops you being distracted. It does not make a room silent.

  • Is it the same as a fan?

    A fan is close to pink or brown noise, not white — it has far less high-frequency energy. If you like sleeping with a fan on, start with brown noise.

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