Comments on: The good kind of Noise. And the non-racist kind of White.

The good kind of Noise. And the non-racist kind of White.

wendell — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:16:17 -0800

Streaming white noise for your auditory zen needs. That is all. That is enough.

By: yort

yort — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:29:52 -0800

Pink noise is where it's at, man

By: Tube

Tube — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:31:04 -0800

This is old school, and will soon be replaced by a blank blue screen with no sound.

By: wendell

wendell — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:38:05 -0800

Pink noise for Macs only? Sounds about right.

By: 2or3whiskeysodas

2or3whiskeysodas — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:47:13 -0800

ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

By: 2or3whiskeysodas

2or3whiskeysodas — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:47:38 -0800

(that was in advance of the inevitable request for lyrics)

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:48:05 -0800

They're cheating. I totally hear the loop.

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:56:31 -0800

It even comes with a little window so you can watch the ant races, just like old times.

By: never used baby shoes

never used baby shoes — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:59:11 -0800

I was all set to come in and give you static for this, but it's a pretty neat thing.

By: neustile

neustile — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:07:24 -0800

Yeah, the gap in the loop makes this "web application" go from ridiculous to absolutely pathetically useless. How can I "zen" to this? It's just a 30.8 second mp3 they are playing -- http://www.simplynoise.com/white.mp3 - and it's non-trivial (e.g. out of the range of possibility for these "let me buy the black Macbook before we drive to BarCamp in Peoria" saddlesores to loop an mp3 without a small sub-1152 sample skip. Let's ignore that most perceptual codecs try to optimize away this stuff when we ask why these with-high-probability-Digg-gamers didn't just loop a PCM file. If these too-bad-we-can't-buy-toplevels-in-sweden sub-SEO types waited a month they could have synthesized the white noise using Flash 10. But I really overestimate their knowledge of what "noise" is let alone how to properly synthesize it. My simple noise is the delicious popular page, if you take the std. deviation of the number of "Top N" things posted up on there (TOP 14 MISTAKES YOUR GARBAGEMAN MAKES WITH JQUERY) and regress it against the # of votes, that's some fucking noise. And oh, look, who's on first today

By: Fuzzy Skinner

Fuzzy Skinner — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:10:04 -0800

turnmeondeadman

By: carsonb

carsonb — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:32:31 -0800

Not a loop, but still oddly soothing: The sound of jelly (jello) wobbling .

By: Dizzy

Dizzy — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:32:41 -0800

I can't slide my frigging orb. Stressing. Please advise.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:35:33 -0800

You could always tune the radio between stations, but I guess that would be too obvious.

By: sexyrobot

sexyrobot — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:45:47 -0800

a great activity while listening to this? tune your tv to a station thats all static all the time (the visual equivalent of white noise). now, breathe deeply and, using your thumb and forefinger, 'grab' a circle of static and 'move' it around on the screen...trippy, right?

By: Garak

Garak — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:51:02 -0800

Yort wins. As for the site: At the spa, Marge and Homer lie in mud baths. A woman's voice intones soothingly, "All is well...all is well." Suddenly, a man's voice cuts in: "Turn tape over!" The tape rewinds, then resumes its gentle chanting. The Simpson parents sink blissfully into the mud. →

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:53:53 -0800

My TV only makes blue in between stations.

By: schyler523

schyler523 — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:02:13 -0800

I just tormented my gf with this...She does radio telemetry research and listens to static for hours and hours, so obviously this was sort of a nightmare.

By: BeerFilter

BeerFilter — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:12:12 -0800

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel..."

By: forallmankind

forallmankind — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:14:57 -0800

I can't slide my frigging orb. IANAD

By: rlk

rlk — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:38:09 -0800

Only 30 seconds looped? Phooey. I was hoping if I recorded enough of this then I'd eventually have a copy of every song ever produced.

By: Senator

Senator — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:43:45 -0800

I can listen to this for free? What happens?

By: RobotVoodooPower

RobotVoodooPower — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:07:04 -0800

1. cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp 2. ... 3. Profit!

By: subgear

subgear — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:11:02 -0800

WHAT?

By: treepour

treepour — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:17:02 -0800

Slick design, not-bad idea, horrible technical implementation. First, the loop glitch -- then, as yort pointed out, a poor understanding of the acoustics of noise. White noise is to between-station static as pink noise is to crashing ocean waves. The former tends to be as irritating as the latter tends to be soothing.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:38:20 -0800

cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp Catting weird things to /dev/audio. In plainer words for people who don't use unix or linux: You can "cat" or "concatenate" any data file to "standard output" in Unix/Linux. It basically spews the contents of the "file" as raw data. So, for the command "cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp", /dev/urandom is the "file", and the output of that data is being sent to /dev/dsp, which is part of the audio functionality in most modern unix/linux systems. That simple single command is calling up the pseudorandom noise generator built into most unix/linux systems as a "file" to be read and output to the audio subsystem, outputting the random data stream as sound - generating white or pink noise. It's a clever, yet dramatic demonstration of a real-world example of how unix-like systems differ greatly from something like MS Windows. Since unix-like systems treat all "devices" and/or "objects" in the system as "files", it means that you can even output the raw data stream of your processor, or your system bus, or your mouse to /dev/dsp or /dev/audio. Or your entire harddrive. If you have any raw WAV audio files on your drive, they'll be played as normal, but the rest of it will be interesting gibberish.

By: hal9k

hal9k — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:16:37 -0800

1. Breathe deep 2. Loop noise 3. Read loquacious explanation (Repeat till zen achieved)

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:54:32 -0800

A discernible (audible) loop point will make this pretty much worthless for a lot of people. Did these folks think no one would notice, or something? Folks who really need white noise for a good night's sleep are still advised to spring for a proper white noise generator that does not loop.

By: /\/\/\/

/\/\/\/ — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:09:06 -0800

Linux users can also fire up whitenoise and/or gnome-whitenoise for this sort of thing done right.

By: wendell

wendell — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:23:46 -0800

The site itself says "Check back soon for improved noise" so I remain hopeful the SimplyNoisers will follow up with something that can provide a much more near-perfect white noise experience even for us poor slobs on Windows. They obviously should've slapped a big "BETA" label on it. Still, it is especially relaxing when used together with Instant Crickets. Instant Rimshot

By: oxford blue

oxford blue — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:11:17 -0800

What does white noise do, and how does it do it? Wikipedia just gives me math type things. That sound of wobbling jelly is very disturbing.

By: Dreama

Dreama — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:56:23 -0800

That sound of wobbling jelly is like the sound of cunnilingus performed in a wading pool on the back of a moving truck. It is in no way soothing. Seriously.

By: oxford blue

oxford blue — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:15:38 -0800

A familiar sound Dreama?

By: Dreama

Dreama — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:09:20 -0800

No, just a thought I had.

By: marcelm

marcelm — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:08:02 -0800

oxford blue: take a look at http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/ for an explanation about white noise. This piece of software can generate white noise with a kind of soothing beat which you can use to study or relax, or to blend out sounds while trying to sleep..

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:44:49 -0800

gnaural's an incredible piece of software. thanks for pointing it out.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:27:32 -0800

No, just a thought I had. Or-a, maybe just a dreama he- had-a.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:28:20 -0800

Whoops, left out an "a".

By: bwg

bwg — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:42:11 -0800

Big deal, our TV did this in the 60s.

By: bwg

bwg — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:27:10 -0800

Ahhh... this is probably going to be seem a little strange. We hear better on this channel. Don't ask me why. Well... ah... I guess I will call her. Carol Anne. Ah... it's mommy, sweetheart. Ah, we want to talk to you. Please answer me baby. Please answer me. Please talk to me, bunny.

By: Fuzzy Monster

Fuzzy Monster — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:15:39 -0800

That sound of wobbling jelly is like the sound of cunnilingus performed in a wading pool on the back of a moving truck. Sold! *downloads*