Some people focus best in a chaotic environment, like a coffeehouse. Other people need absolute quiet, such as in a library. But sometimes you don't have an option.
And even people who usually prefer chaos might need more quiet when reading and studying. When noise-cancelling headphones aren't enough, we'll show you how to create an audio concoction that drowns out everything.
White noise has its name because it's the combination of all noise, just like how the color white is the combination of all colors. Of course, it's impossible to combine all sounds, but when enough sounds combine, they blend together to become white noise.
If you're in a group of two or three people, you can hear what individuals are saying. But if you're in a group of 1,000 people, it's much harder to tune in to a single individual. The background drone of a large number of people is white noise.
White noise is also the sound of static. It's the sound TVs used to make when there was no reception. As it turns out, white noise has been found to help tune out other noises and help with focus.
It's also used to help people fall asleep and become less startled by sudden noises at night. If you want a better night's sleep, take a look at the best white noise machines for drowning out distractions.
However, some people find the higher-pitched sound of most white noise generators annoying. They might thus prefer deeper or mid-range tones. For those people, there's brown and pink noise. Pink noise is more mid-range, while brown noise is deeper.
The color doesn't affect focus, though. It's only a matter of preference.
The first element in our cocktail is a noise generator. The best one is the White Noise Generator by mynoise.net.
It allows you to fine-tune the white noise to your exact tastes, featuring a large variety of presets that let you choose noise by tone or color.
The service also gives you the ability to animate the frequency of the noise. You can choose from a number of animation settings---for example, it lets you make the animations more or less subtle. And you can change the animation speed.
It even has timed bells for meditation and the ability to automatically shut down after a certain time, if you're using it for sleep.
A white noise generator can be enough to get you started. But if you're somewhere noisy, it may not be enough. You can also use sound to take yourself somewhere else.
Imagine working by a babbling brook in a forest full of bird songs and the sounds of the wind as it rustles through the trees. Or maybe you'd prefer working in a busy spaceport with the rumble of ships taking off and landing in the distance.
Perhaps you'd rather be at a beach with the soothing roar of waves rolling in and out.
There are a few great apps that play multiple sounds to create soundscapes like that. They're customizable, so you can tailor them to your exact mood.
The first such service is Noises Online. It's a simple tool with near-infinite variety. There are a large selection of nature sounds, such as thunder, waterfalls, and birds. And it has a collection of white noise-type sounds, like a busy coffeehouse, a campfire, and fan noise.
It also features straight brown, pink, and white noise if you prefer something more straightforward.
Each sound in Noises Online offers individual volume adjustment, and you can adjust the overall tone to suit your ears. Once you find a favorite setting or mix, you can save and share it with friends.
If Noises Online doesn't provide enough options for you, there's also Ambient Mixer, with a truly limitless variety of soundscapes. Ambient Mixer is a socially powered soundscape generator, offering a massive collection of mixes created by the community.
Each mix consists of eight tracks played at different intervals. The service lets you adjust the individual tracks by volume and frequency, as well as choosing whether to play tracks from the left or right speaker to make the sounds more immersive.
If the hundreds of sessions in dozens of categories aren't enough for you, you can also make your own.
The makers of the white noise generator mentioned above, myNoise, also have a massive selection of other offerings. They all use the same system of sliders as the white noise generator, but adjust the sounds being played instead.
Binaural beats are an effect created by playing sounds with differing frequencies in each ear. Individually, they sound like a single tone. But when you hear one in each ear, they create a warbling sound, or "beat."
The sound they produce is supposed to change the frequency of your brain. We experience higher frequencies when we're awake and alert, and lower frequencies when we're relaxed or asleep. A low frequency of 4-8Hz is called Theta, which is optimal for relaxing and studying.
Binaural beats have been credited with helping you sleep, focus, and meditate. Some people even claim they can release chemicals like serotonin in the brain. The science of binaural beats has mixed results, but many people swear by them.
Beats used specifically for focus and sleep are more widely accepted as effective than others. If you're looking for beats to help you unwind or sleep, we've looked at the best binaural beats apps for Android.
In order to make binaural beats a part of your cocktail, it's best to use a pure source. Most sources have background noises or music added. This video plays only pure tones designed to put your brain into a Theta state of 7Hz:
You'll need headphones to make this all come together. For best results, you should have one of each of the three above categories open and playing in three different browser tabs.
First, play with the white noise generator a little bit. Find a sound that feels the most comfortable to your ears.
Once you have that situated, pick a soundscape. There are so many to choose from that this can become a rabbit hole. It's best to just pick one and try it for a couple of hours. If you like it, save it for later. Then try another one, and repeat.
Finally, go through your three open tabs and adjust the volume settings. Binaural beats should be barely audible. The white noise should disappear into the background. And the soundscape should be loud enough to block out outside sound while still being able to tune it out.
Combined with the existing background noise, these sounds create an overall white noise that should tune out anything short of a construction site.
