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.
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