I guess my point was that consuming bandwidth to stream white noise from a phone that’s on for other reasons is a rather efficient use of resources. My assumption was that using running water wouldn’t be the retort because A) it’s more valuable than electricity & B) there’s a pump involved somewhere in the process. I assumed wrong, but we played the game & no harm was done.
Compression algorithms generally rely on sensing patterns in the data to allow you to store just one example of that data and where it repeats, instead of storing it all fully. This is extremely visible in H264 and H265 for video, where the first is easily 1% the size of the raw video data, and the second is easily 1/10th the size of that, since it can detect more patterns to compress.
White noise means your mp3 is basically the size of the uncompressed data, instead of being 5-25% that size (stat from Wikipedia on compression ratio of mp3). This costs Spotify more for storage and streaming bandwidth.
The paychoacoustic models just do their best for the given Bitstream and it’s not true white noise, just the most audible parts, you end up with the lowest 30 Harmonics or so that it can find (random numbers have a lot of harmonics.
White noise means your mp3 is basically the size of the uncompressed data
You’re forgetting that mp3 is a very lossy compression algorithm that’ll happily discard much of the frequency spectrum, which in the case of white noise actually would be a pretty significant amount of data.
I assume the Siri and Google assistant white noise just download the 20 min file when you ask and just repeat that. Whereas an 8h podcast of a 20 minute repeated sound will use 8h of bandwidth
Edit: I read the article and it’s not the subject I thought it was.
I thought it was about artist/band/podcast making silent tracks to put on repeat while you sleep to boost revenue for the artist
Original comment:
I don’t think they all want to listen to white noise, it’s a way to support whichever creator you want to support with your spotify subscription.
I’m curious about this too. Maybe they are listening with headphones? I have no idea if they make them like this but it seems like an opportunity for white noise machine makers to just add Bluetooth and they would sell more. Maybe?
I got two of them. One is on my nightstand in my bedroom, the other is a portable one for when I travel. I don’t like the idea of having my phone playing something all night, nor so I want to sleep next to a computer playing audio all night. A notification could come in and wake me up, an update could get pushed and the noise would die, the internet tends to go down a lot a night so the noise would cut out, lots of little annoying things. I recognize there are ways to mitigate against some of this, but it easier to just get a white noise maker and be done with it. Just push a button to toggle it on/off. Plus the white noise maker is making actual white noise instead of looping an audio file.
I’ve never had any of these problems personally. Not that I have anything against white noise machines but that’s why people see them as superfluous. They kind of are.
But maybe if you have spotty internet that makes sense.
I’m also old, so that might have something to do with it. I assume the Spotify user base skews young.
Apple did add a white noise maker into iOS 15. I assume I’ll end up trying that at some point if I’m looking to pack extra-extra light, or just end up in a situation where I need to sleep somewhere and forgot my white noise maker. They just put it in a really weird spot (Settings > Accessibility > Hearing: Audio/Visual > Background Sounds) so I’m sure most people don’t know it’s there or find it too much trouble to access. I just setup it up so I can tap the back of my phone twice to toggle it on/off, maybe that will lead me to trying it out… we’ll see if it gets annoying enough that I need to find some other way to make it easier to access.
Sometimes I play rain/storm sounds I’ve downloaded from YouTube. Other times I use the iPhone white noise generator. I’ve set up 2 Siri shortcuts (one for sound on and one for sound off), but tapping the back sounds like a good way to do it, too.
There are apps that can make white noise while using 0 network really. If I was Spotify I’d write a library into the app that detected white noise and stopped streaming, and just turned on the local generator in their app.
I’d have a Javascript one-liner producing white noise, except web audio is a Gordian knot of inscrutable identical-sounding types and contexts and maps and whateverthefuck. Documentation reads like they forgot to implement it and hoped nobody would notice.
How do you generate noise? Well you need a sink. How do I get a sink? Well you need an event. How do you get an event? Well you need a processor. How do you get a processor? Well you need a context. How do you get a context? Well you need a node. How do you get a node? Well you need a sink. I’m going to stab you now. Understandable.
Anyway it’s something like data:text/html,{script} ac = newAudioContext(); wn = ac.createScriptProcessor( 4096, 1, 1 ); wn.onaudioprocess = (e) => e.outputBuffer.getChannelData(0).forEach( (v,i,a) => a[i] = Math.random() ); wn.connect( ac.destination ); {/script} except with whatever dark wizardry makes output reach a speaker.
Also I’m not sure .forEach works on whichever array-like type was chosen for audio channels. This stupid language has so many incompatible and incomplete array implementations.
edit: And angle brackets on script and /script, because this stupid website fucked up its Markdown. Preventing random HTML strings in comments: excellent, necessary, obvious; it is not 1999 anymore. Doing so by deleting the entire goddamn thing as if you parsed it before removing it: DEEPLY TROUBLING.
It seems like headphones with active noise cancelling are basically creating intelligent white noise. ANC works by listening to the should outside, then playing the opposite of that, to try and net out to something that sounds like nothing.
Actually not white noise. I find it harsher than brown noise which is more soothing to my ears.
I use Amazon Prime though. I used to just run an app which generated the noise on my phone. Except that my phone is right next to me on my nightstand. It was annoying because one ear would hear it much louder than the other. So I started using the built in background noises that Amazon offers on my Alexa device which was across the room from the bed.
Now I agree with you that it seems like it’s a waste of bandwidth. But when I run it at night I’m not really using the internet for anything else. More importantly, if it was a problem for Amazon serving those noises, then let me install an app or something that would simply generate the noises. The mathematical formula to generate the noises with some sine waves is probably like a 1MB of data (if that) and I’d only need it once. But since I don’t think you can just install apps on Alexa devices then too bad for them. I’ll continue doing what I’m doing.
I didn’t realize that you could stream it. There are tons of apps and downloads that you can use for it. I sleep to white noise cast to my TV from an MP4 that I have on my computer. It does seem like a huge waste of bandwidth.
You know I’d get the whole bandwidth argument IF PEOPLE WERENT PAYING FOR IT VIA THEIR SUB/ADS. Also every argument everyone has presented can be used for actual music too. You can buy the cd/mp3s and play them locally.
You seem to not have the slightest understanding of what I was referring to. I’ll try to break it down into something easier to understand.
Imagine that Spotify is a stream (a real stream of water, not an internet stream). To get to the ocean it has to pass through a concrete tunnel. There are millions of little fish that pass through that tunnel all the time. Suddenly several crocodiles decide that they want to pass through at the same time. The tunnel wasn’t designed for crocodiles. Sure, they can get through, but they fill the tunnel and the little fish get bunched up, slow down, and take longer to get to the other side. If you just gave the crocodiles a road to walk down that was over the tunnel, then they could get to the ocean without slowing down the little fish.
For this analogy, the little fish are songs, the crocodiles are white noise, the tunnel is the internet stream, the road is an FTP server, and the slowing down of the stream is buffering and increased cost.
You say you’re paying for bandwidth. You’re paying for access. Spotify is paying for the bandwidth, and it increases in cost the more it has to be increased in size to accommodate the service. If the company can reduce the demand on the bandwidth, then they can continue to offer the service without having to increase what you pay, while also using that savings to better their services.
The biggest issue with streaming services right now is that they are realizing that what they are charging is not covering the expensive cost of the bandwidth they are using. That’s why most of them are increasing what they charge. If Spotify can find a away to eleviate that issue, then that’s a good business practice.
No I quite understand how bandwidth works, you are paying for it because you’re paying Spotify lol, if Spotify get no monies from ads/subs they have no internet, they have no audio library, they have no technicians, they have no developers, your sub PAYS FOR ALL OF THAT. What even is this word salad of corporate boot licking nonsense? Especially in an age where fiber optics bandwidth is more than enough to push those itty bitty 1s and 0s through their lines to their customers.
You’re literally trying to argue the same as when Comcast and Time Warner intentionally slowed Netflix and other video games because “bandwidth”. Here’s again the issue, you pay for your internet, you pay for Spotify, which pays for access AND their internet. If Spotify can’t survive then they should raise their prices not try to hide behind “bandwidth” when we ve been streaming god damn audio since the 90s on copper dial up.
You’ve obviously never tried to stream multiple things from your own server. It’s not as simple as you make it sound. Why do you think nobody can compete with YouTube? It’s because the cost is so expensive to stream. You can post the same videos to an FTP server with no huge bandwidth issue, but streaming takes a lot more.
Only people with a T1 line could stream in the 90s. Either you’re too young or you’ve forgotten that it wasn’t possible for 99% of people to stream until cable internet started being introduced in the early 2000s.
Lolololololol I’ve had 23 files playing from a Plex server before on my home network. YouTube level? Nope, but what the hell are you talking about? Dailymotion has existed for forever, twitch is a YouTube competitor and has existed forever. you also clearly have forgotten about midi files, those annoying instrumental songs that played on people’s websites? All the rage in the mid 90s. Before you try to condescend you should maybe actually know what you’re talking about.
Not to mention, Spotify is putting ads in white noise content? Kinda…destroys the entire concept, no?
There is so much about this story that makes me hate modern society. How is more of this content still being created? Why are there ads? Spotify can destroy peoples livelihood on a whim?
Although, I did find the part where someone with podcast “didn’t want to call attention to their show” pretty funny.
I find it so weird that some people stream white noise over the internet. It seems like a huge waste of bandwidth.
You mean that magical unlimited thing that just flows freely from the walls?
People don’t think about the energy wasted to do that
It costs fractions of pennies to transfer data across the internet, especially something as small as a white noise audio file.
Famously compressible white noise.
If only there was a way to locally generate white noise in real time, but alas…
Do you know a good way to do it w/o electricity?
Running water from a faucet with an aerator
I love the malicious compliance of this
I guess my point was that consuming bandwidth to stream white noise from a phone that’s on for other reasons is a rather efficient use of resources. My assumption was that using running water wouldn’t be the retort because A) it’s more valuable than electricity & B) there’s a pump involved somewhere in the process. I assumed wrong, but we played the game & no harm was done.
deleted by creator
Hot water, obviously.
Sure! For 12 hours overnight? Probably not. Maybe would need to use some OLD-school kinetic/potential energy capture like a hand crank or something.
Light a campfire in your bedroom
deleted by creator
Maybe a pegboard with tens of thousands of tuning forks on it?
Audio size is based on the quality of the recording, not what the recording is.
If the white noise is for some reason recorded in high quality, it’s going to use as much data as music.
Compression algorithms generally rely on sensing patterns in the data to allow you to store just one example of that data and where it repeats, instead of storing it all fully. This is extremely visible in H264 and H265 for video, where the first is easily 1% the size of the raw video data, and the second is easily 1/10th the size of that, since it can detect more patterns to compress.
White noise means your mp3 is basically the size of the uncompressed data, instead of being 5-25% that size (stat from Wikipedia on compression ratio of mp3). This costs Spotify more for storage and streaming bandwidth.
It really doesn’t, not at all.
The paychoacoustic models just do their best for the given Bitstream and it’s not true white noise, just the most audible parts, you end up with the lowest 30 Harmonics or so that it can find (random numbers have a lot of harmonics.
Brain can’t tell, brain is dumb.
You’re forgetting that mp3 is a very lossy compression algorithm that’ll happily discard much of the frequency spectrum, which in the case of white noise actually would be a pretty significant amount of data.
That’s only true for constant rate compression, not for variable bitrate compression
People could buy an analog radio and “tune” into the cosmic noise.
I just ask my HomePod to do it.
I guess that it might be streaming it?
Which sorta highlights a large portion of the people doing it you’re likely missing: people who don’t even think about it.
I assume the Siri and Google assistant white noise just download the 20 min file when you ask and just repeat that. Whereas an 8h podcast of a 20 minute repeated sound will use 8h of bandwidth
Edit: I read the article and it’s not the subject I thought it was. I thought it was about artist/band/podcast making silent tracks to put on repeat while you sleep to boost revenue for the artist
Original comment: I don’t think they all want to listen to white noise, it’s a way to support whichever creator you want to support with your spotify subscription.
I’m curious about this too. Maybe they are listening with headphones? I have no idea if they make them like this but it seems like an opportunity for white noise machine makers to just add Bluetooth and they would sell more. Maybe?
White noise is literally random numbers. Your machine can do it using approximately zero percent of its available resources.
In a very real sense, any single transistor can do it, and computer engineering is an effort to keep them from doing it.
But why would I buy a machine for that when I already have a machine that can make any noise?
I got two of them. One is on my nightstand in my bedroom, the other is a portable one for when I travel. I don’t like the idea of having my phone playing something all night, nor so I want to sleep next to a computer playing audio all night. A notification could come in and wake me up, an update could get pushed and the noise would die, the internet tends to go down a lot a night so the noise would cut out, lots of little annoying things. I recognize there are ways to mitigate against some of this, but it easier to just get a white noise maker and be done with it. Just push a button to toggle it on/off. Plus the white noise maker is making actual white noise instead of looping an audio file.
I’ve never had any of these problems personally. Not that I have anything against white noise machines but that’s why people see them as superfluous. They kind of are.
But maybe if you have spotty internet that makes sense.
I’m also old, so that might have something to do with it. I assume the Spotify user base skews young.
Apple did add a white noise maker into iOS 15. I assume I’ll end up trying that at some point if I’m looking to pack extra-extra light, or just end up in a situation where I need to sleep somewhere and forgot my white noise maker. They just put it in a really weird spot (Settings > Accessibility > Hearing: Audio/Visual > Background Sounds) so I’m sure most people don’t know it’s there or find it too much trouble to access. I just setup it up so I can tap the back of my phone twice to toggle it on/off, maybe that will lead me to trying it out… we’ll see if it gets annoying enough that I need to find some other way to make it easier to access.
Sometimes I play rain/storm sounds I’ve downloaded from YouTube. Other times I use the iPhone white noise generator. I’ve set up 2 Siri shortcuts (one for sound on and one for sound off), but tapping the back sounds like a good way to do it, too.
Maybe iOS 17 interactive widgets can bring a widget for background sounds.
Wow you are right that is hidden. I have an iPhone and had no idea that was there. I’ll have to try it out.
There are apps that can make white noise while using 0 network really. If I was Spotify I’d write a library into the app that detected white noise and stopped streaming, and just turned on the local generator in their app.
I’d have a Javascript one-liner producing white noise, except web audio is a Gordian knot of inscrutable identical-sounding types and contexts and maps and whateverthefuck. Documentation reads like they forgot to implement it and hoped nobody would notice.
How do you generate noise? Well you need a sink. How do I get a sink? Well you need an event. How do you get an event? Well you need a processor. How do you get a processor? Well you need a context. How do you get a context? Well you need a node. How do you get a node? Well you need a sink. I’m going to stab you now. Understandable.
Anyway it’s something like
data:text/html,{script} ac = new AudioContext(); wn = ac.createScriptProcessor( 4096, 1, 1 ); wn.onaudioprocess = (e) => e.outputBuffer.getChannelData(0).forEach( (v,i,a) => a[i] = Math.random() ); wn.connect( ac.destination ); {/script}except with whatever dark wizardry makes output reach a speaker.Also I’m not sure .forEach works on whichever array-like type was chosen for audio channels. This stupid language has so many incompatible and incomplete array implementations.
edit: And angle brackets on script and /script, because this stupid website fucked up its Markdown. Preventing random HTML strings in comments: excellent, necessary, obvious; it is not 1999 anymore. Doing so by deleting the entire goddamn thing as if you parsed it before removing it: DEEPLY TROUBLING.
It seems like headphones with active noise cancelling are basically creating intelligent white noise. ANC works by listening to the should outside, then playing the opposite of that, to try and net out to something that sounds like nothing.
It looks like there are little white noise makers with headphones as well. https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Oasis-Continuous-Non-looping-Tones-high/dp/B06XSQ3WWR/ref=sr_1_3
I always download my white noise or sleep music and place them into Playlist.
I do!
Actually not white noise. I find it harsher than brown noise which is more soothing to my ears.
I use Amazon Prime though. I used to just run an app which generated the noise on my phone. Except that my phone is right next to me on my nightstand. It was annoying because one ear would hear it much louder than the other. So I started using the built in background noises that Amazon offers on my Alexa device which was across the room from the bed.
Now I agree with you that it seems like it’s a waste of bandwidth. But when I run it at night I’m not really using the internet for anything else. More importantly, if it was a problem for Amazon serving those noises, then let me install an app or something that would simply generate the noises. The mathematical formula to generate the noises with some sine waves is probably like a 1MB of data (if that) and I’d only need it once. But since I don’t think you can just install apps on Alexa devices then too bad for them. I’ll continue doing what I’m doing.
I didn’t realize that you could stream it. There are tons of apps and downloads that you can use for it. I sleep to white noise cast to my TV from an MP4 that I have on my computer. It does seem like a huge waste of bandwidth.
You know I’d get the whole bandwidth argument IF PEOPLE WERENT PAYING FOR IT VIA THEIR SUB/ADS. Also every argument everyone has presented can be used for actual music too. You can buy the cd/mp3s and play them locally.
You seem to not have the slightest understanding of what I was referring to. I’ll try to break it down into something easier to understand.
Imagine that Spotify is a stream (a real stream of water, not an internet stream). To get to the ocean it has to pass through a concrete tunnel. There are millions of little fish that pass through that tunnel all the time. Suddenly several crocodiles decide that they want to pass through at the same time. The tunnel wasn’t designed for crocodiles. Sure, they can get through, but they fill the tunnel and the little fish get bunched up, slow down, and take longer to get to the other side. If you just gave the crocodiles a road to walk down that was over the tunnel, then they could get to the ocean without slowing down the little fish.
For this analogy, the little fish are songs, the crocodiles are white noise, the tunnel is the internet stream, the road is an FTP server, and the slowing down of the stream is buffering and increased cost.
You say you’re paying for bandwidth. You’re paying for access. Spotify is paying for the bandwidth, and it increases in cost the more it has to be increased in size to accommodate the service. If the company can reduce the demand on the bandwidth, then they can continue to offer the service without having to increase what you pay, while also using that savings to better their services.
The biggest issue with streaming services right now is that they are realizing that what they are charging is not covering the expensive cost of the bandwidth they are using. That’s why most of them are increasing what they charge. If Spotify can find a away to eleviate that issue, then that’s a good business practice.
No I quite understand how bandwidth works, you are paying for it because you’re paying Spotify lol, if Spotify get no monies from ads/subs they have no internet, they have no audio library, they have no technicians, they have no developers, your sub PAYS FOR ALL OF THAT. What even is this word salad of corporate boot licking nonsense? Especially in an age where fiber optics bandwidth is more than enough to push those itty bitty 1s and 0s through their lines to their customers.
You’re literally trying to argue the same as when Comcast and Time Warner intentionally slowed Netflix and other video games because “bandwidth”. Here’s again the issue, you pay for your internet, you pay for Spotify, which pays for access AND their internet. If Spotify can’t survive then they should raise their prices not try to hide behind “bandwidth” when we ve been streaming god damn audio since the 90s on copper dial up.
You’ve obviously never tried to stream multiple things from your own server. It’s not as simple as you make it sound. Why do you think nobody can compete with YouTube? It’s because the cost is so expensive to stream. You can post the same videos to an FTP server with no huge bandwidth issue, but streaming takes a lot more.
Only people with a T1 line could stream in the 90s. Either you’re too young or you’ve forgotten that it wasn’t possible for 99% of people to stream until cable internet started being introduced in the early 2000s.
Lolololololol I’ve had 23 files playing from a Plex server before on my home network. YouTube level? Nope, but what the hell are you talking about? Dailymotion has existed for forever, twitch is a YouTube competitor and has existed forever. you also clearly have forgotten about midi files, those annoying instrumental songs that played on people’s websites? All the rage in the mid 90s. Before you try to condescend you should maybe actually know what you’re talking about.
https://youtu.be/I0118mIUwkQ
Not to mention, Spotify is putting ads in white noise content? Kinda…destroys the entire concept, no?
There is so much about this story that makes me hate modern society. How is more of this content still being created? Why are there ads? Spotify can destroy peoples livelihood on a whim?
Although, I did find the part where someone with podcast “didn’t want to call attention to their show” pretty funny.