2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
White noise is a prerequisite for good sleep for some people. Many people cannot plunge into night dreams if the familiar "shhhh" does not sound in the background. But why does the replacement of everyday sounds with other noise have such a bewitching effect on us? And what color can the noise be?
The idea of replacing one noise with another to help you sleep better seems ludicrous. What's the point of this? "I can't sleep because of extraneous sounds, so I'll turn on another extraneous sound." Weird. And yet, many people claim that they are not able to fall asleep normally without white noise. And some companies will even sell you a device that reproduces optimized noises for better sleep. What is wrong with our brains and ears?
Short answer: white noise sounds better. At least for some of us.
And now for a long answer. White noise is stationary noise, the spectral components of which are evenly distributed over the entire range of frequencies involved.
Can not understand anything? Imagine an orchestra with a huge number of musicians, each of whom plays a note. This orchestra simultaneously encompasses all, all sounds available to the human ear. That's what white noise is.
When you wake up from some sound, it is not the sound itself that is to blame. You are woken up by a change in the sound background, an inconsistency that has arisen. White noise blocks such abrupt changes, as if protecting you from unexpected sounds.
“The simplest version is that your hearing is constantly working, even when you sleep,” explains Seth Horowitz, neuroscientist and writer. That is why most people prefer to listen to white noise generated by some kind of device, rather than the crescendo-decrescendo of the spouse's snoring.
Well, it looks like the truth. If you don't like white noise in particular, try listening to noise in other colors.
For example, there is pink noise … It is also called flickering. It looks like white, but its frequencies are higher. It is useful for those who suffer from tinnitus. Pink noise can help people who find white noise uncomfortable to fall asleep.
Red (brown, Brownian) noisealso called the noise of a drunken walk. By ear, it seems warmer than white. The color mixing laws, by the way, do not work when it comes to noise.
There is blue noise.
And further purple noise.
If you mix brown and purple noises, you get Gray … It is perceived to be uniform by the human ear, but in fact its spectrum contains a large dip in the middle frequencies.
Of course, not everyone likes such noises. On the contrary, they make some people more sensitive to background sounds. Apparently, some of us tend to pick out individual notes from the endless noise, while others hear it as a pacifying stream.
What noise is most pleasing to your ear? Do you fall asleep to one of these noises?
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