Brown Noise
Press to play brown noise
Generated in your browser — nothing is downloaded, then looped from memory.
Brown noise puts almost all of its energy at the bottom of the spectrum: power falls about six decibels per octave as frequency rises. That is why it sounds like distant surf or a waterfall rather than the hiss most people picture when they hear the phrase "noise".
What it is good for
- Covering low-frequency intrusions — traffic, machinery, bass through a wall
- People who find white noise harsh or fatiguing
- Long working sessions, since there is little high-end to tire the ear
- Sleep, where the low end is less alerting
Where it falls down
Poor at masking speech. Conversation lives in the mid and upper range where brown noise has the least energy, so an office of talkers is better served by pink or white.
Sound is not the whole problem
Background audio sets the conditions for concentration and cannot do anything about whether you stayed on the task — it plays the same whether you are working or twenty minutes into something else. If the honest description of your problem is that you put something on and lost the hour anyway, the missing piece is not a better sound. It is something that notices.
Common questions
- What is brown noise?
- A noise colour whose power drops roughly six decibels per octave as frequency goes up, giving it a deep, rumbling character. The name has nothing to do with the colour — it comes from Brownian motion, because the signal is generated the same way a random walk is.
- Is brown noise better than white noise for ADHD?
- A great many people report that it is, and it is worth trying for that reason. The evidence base is much thinner than the popularity suggests, so treat it as a preference to test on yourself rather than a finding — try both for a week and keep whichever one you stop noticing.
- Is this generated or a recording?
- Generated in your browser from a random-walk process rather than downloaded, so no audio file is fetched at all. It is a twenty-second stretch of noise repeating — long enough that there is no period for the ear to find, which is why it is generated at that length rather than the few seconds a smaller buffer would need.
Other sounds
- Focus and sleep sounds
Rain, noise colours, fire and room tone — each playable here, free.
- Rain Sounds
Steady rain on leaves, looping in your browser. No account, no ads, and it keeps playing with the network off once it has loaded.
- Heavy Rain Sounds
Dense night rain in a forest, looping in your browser. Louder and lower than light rain, for when there is more to cover up.
- White Noise
A white noise generator that runs in your browser — equal power at every frequency, generated on your machine rather than downloaded.
- Pink Noise
A pink noise generator that runs in your browser — the balanced noise colour, generated on your machine rather than downloaded.
- Meditation Hall Room Tone
The sound of a large, empty, quiet room. Almost nothing, which for some people is exactly right.