Pink Noise
Press to play pink noise
Generated in your browser — nothing is downloaded, then looped from memory.
Pink noise falls about three decibels per octave, which works out to roughly equal energy in each octave rather than each hertz. Human hearing is spaced in octaves too, so pink is the colour that sounds most even to us — the most natural of the three, and the least fatiguing over hours.
What it is good for
- All-day background, where white noise becomes tiring
- A middle ground when brown is too dull and white too harsh
- Sleep, which is where most of its research attention has gone
- Masking a broad mix without a bright hiss
Where it falls down
A compromise by construction. If the specific thing bothering you is bass through a wall or a nearby conversation, the colour tuned for that end — brown or white — will do more.
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 pink noise?
- A signal whose power falls about three decibels per octave as frequency rises, giving roughly equal energy per octave. It occurs widely in nature — rainfall, wind, heartbeats — which is part of why it reads as unremarkable rather than mechanical.
- Is pink noise good for sleep?
- It is the colour with the most sleep research behind it, including small studies on sleep quality and memory consolidation, though the work is early and the effect sizes are modest. As a practical matter it is easy to sleep through, which is most of what a sleep sound needs to be.
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.
- Brown Noise
A brown noise generator that runs in your browser — the deep, low-heavy noise colour, generated on your machine rather than downloaded.
- White Noise
A white noise generator that runs in your browser — equal power at every frequency, 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.