Do not waste your money on acoustics for the office when you can have a quieter more confidential office setting and improve employees to focus better on their tasks. Distractions will be less, stress will be less, and privacy will be increased. Did you know that 80% of office employees complain about comfort, noise, and privacy as the worse things in their work environment?
At home, in your apartment, dorm room, children’s rooms, and any place you want solace, peace and quiet, think about white noise machines to solve the problem.
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1. Defining a Sound Conditioner
They are well known as sound, sleep, and white noise units producing a constant, relaxing, and soothing sound, such as a box fan noise or an air conditioner fan. When you turn it on, other sounds will be tuned out.
2. White Noise Sound Conditioners
The noise is not ‘white.’ It is a signal to have a flat spectrum over the widest bandwidth of a device. It blocks out sounds over many sound frequencies. The volume is lower and steady compared to music or noise. A single tone of air is a widespread and favorite used white noise device.
3. Reasons to Have a White Noise Device
Why would I want a sound machine? Many people enjoy the soothing sound of air that provides relaxation and sleep. Daytime sleepers, companions of snorers, travelers in a strange bed with hall noise and banging trays enjoy the relief and solace from noise devices. They are useful in offices where privacy and confidentially is a must, and students studying with a noisy roommate. They are a great aid in therapist offices and all professional settings. Not only does it mask sound, the slight sound it makes is wonderful for those who do not like it when it is too quiet.
4. How White Noise Units Work
The units are basic mechanical devices with a basic setup of an enclosed fan and speed switch (optional). The fan sends air through small slits in the unit’s housing producing the sound you like by opening or closing down the slits.
Digital units do not always produce random sounds. The units use prerecorded sound tracks that repeat continuously at the end of the track similar to a tape recorder when rewound when it hits the end.
5. How White Noise Masks Sound
In simple terms, white noise puts a sound variety around you that is not structured such as speech, music, or anything that is natural in your environment. The white noise will put unstructured noise into your area. An example is when turning on your laptop and the TV is on, you will hear the fan in the laptop whirring around, but after a few minutes, you will only hear the TV and not the laptop fan. Your brain filters the fan noise out and it becomes imperceptible to the brain where noise is perceived as sound via the auditory nerves. The objective of a white noise method is to create a sound that your brain will effortlessly not pay attention to—tune it out. The more consistently the sound masking unit does this the more imperceptible the structured noises are in your environment.
Sound masking does not stop the source of the sound. The system deals with the endpoint of the sound. An example is that you might not want to hear the doctor’s conversation with the patient at another area so you use the device at the other area, such as a waiting room or nurse station. You position the unit at the endpoint—the waiting area or nurse station—and not the doctor’s patient area or office. This means sound is treated at the area it could be heard rather than at the place it comes from.
6. White Noise Machine vs Sound Machine
The words ‘white noise’ and ‘sound’ are sometimes interchangeable.
- White Noise Machine—is simply a fan. This blocks ambient sounds to reduce sound that can keep you awake, helps you concentrate better at work, blocks out unwanted traffic and more.
- Sound Machine—plays a noise to avoid distraction of ambient sounds. Some examples are:
- Ocean Waves
- Wind
- Crickets
- Trickling Water
- Running Water
- Waterfall
- Raw White Noise
- Music
7. Different Sound Colors
First, this must be defined. You are probably wondering how ‘noise’ can help you sleep or remove distracting noise. All ‘noise’ is not the same, as you know from life experiences. Noise has many ‘colors.’ The exact ‘color’ will improve the excellence of your sleep and noises around you.
You have heard about ‘white noise’ and probably know of it without realizing it. For instance, the noise of a cooling fan in the summertime, the noise of an alarm clock with its static type pattern of sound are white noises. There are ‘colors’ to noise with specific benefits. Sound has frequencies the same as light has frequencies. It’s a science that has been studied for decades by Edison and others wanting more knowledge using auditory (hearing) experiments investigating what was going on.
The most common noise colors are white, pink, and brown. You will need to identify which color suits you best. You might like white noise and someone else might perceive the sound as too severe.
- White Noise—is random and uses identical frequencies from the whole sound spectrum. This makes it very applicable to mask almost all external sounds. The auditory nerve can perceive many sound frequencies at one time. You can hear the roar of a jet plane, traffic, conversation, music, the refrigerator, and water running simultaneously. With the white noise unit able to create the same frequency situation, you can mask out unwanted noise to sleep, have privacy, and eliminate unwanted noise whatever it is. If TV static, steam hissing, rain and thunder are for you, then white noise might be just your noise preference for sleeping.
- Benefits of White Noise
- Sound masking, camouflaging, concealing
- Concentration enhancement
- Sleep advancement
- Privacy
- Pink Noise—When white noise is too metallic or harsh, pink might be best for you. It includes all noise from the audio spectrum but at lower deeper frequencies that are perceived as more soft and mild. It can sound more like strong wind rushing through trees and leaves, heavy raindrops, or a rushing stream of water. It is more relaxing yet has the same benefits of white noise that is more muted and eliminates ambient background noise.
- Benefits of Pink Noise
- Focus and concentration
- Headache relief
- Sleep advancement
- Privacy
- Calms and soothes children and infants
- Brown Noise—Not like white or pink noise, brown noise, also known as ‘red’ noise uses a lower sound frequency that sounds like a hum, roar, rushing water, or buzzing such as a furnace fan, clothes dryer or heavy train going by. These deeper tones are wonderful for sleep and relaxing because they are soothing and calming.
- Benefits of Brown Noise
- Focus and concentration
- Meditation, napping, relaxing
- Reading understanding
- Sleep advancement
Visit here to listen to sound colors.
This will help you to determine what colors will help you sleep more soundly and for other sound distracting purposes you have in mind. Any device to cancel out distracting noise from the neighbor’s lawn mowers and weed whackers, construction, traffic, your apartment neighbor’s banging upstairs, or loud music next door, this solution is sure to please.
8. Advantages of White Noise
- White noise is trendy for helping you sleep, for concentrating on whatever and helping college students do their schoolwork and homework. Anyone who hears can benefit from these units.
- Calms toddlers and children, pacifies fussy and crying babies, and travelers finding it difficult to sleep in different places with strange noises, traffic, conversations, and TV, and ticking clocks.
- Relaxes and reduces stress for everyone as a solution to bothersome noise that does add sound to your environment but is useful protecting you from overloud sounds that protects your hearing.
- Masks tinnitus (ringing of the ears) that is the most frustrating and distracting noise in your head that never seems to end. White noise can help this disturbing ringing sound by teaching the neurons in the brain at the auditory place to ignore the sound. Consult an audiologist to help with a treatment program in conjunction with a white noise device.
- Conceals office workers to have speech privacy, masks building noises, a coworker’s radio, and the building’s ventilation system.
FAQs
- White noise machines can be purchased as desktop units or wall mounted units.
- Sound masking systems can cover an entire building or house.
- Units have complete installation kits with instructions to do it yourself.
- Specific units overlap sounds from the ocean lapping at the shore with birds and frog sounds plus many more combinations.
- Sound machines can be purchased from a very low volume to high volume sound.
- Sound devices are used as baby sleep aids, personal stress relief, favorite soothing sounds, and nature’s sounds.
- Masks sounds from office keyboards, fax and copy machines, file cabinet drawers slamming shut, coworker’s telephones ringing; masks sprinkler systems, snow blowers, leaf blowers, lawn edging equipment, hedge trimmers, motor boats when living near a lake, jet planes, sirens, trains, vehicles, and many more disturbing sounds.
Final Thoughts
You have many reasons for using a sound masking white noise unit. We hope this article has shown you the reasons and benefits for the top 5 reasons. They are confidentiality and speech privacy where those conversations are not overheard. Employee productivity goes down by a substantial 40% due to noise distractions from coworkers or your own equipment. Employees make data entry mistakes because of distractions and office sounds. Mental fatigue for office workers and anyone can increase people feeling burned out and irritable. Take time reading about products here and read reviews and do some research yourself. The sounds of silence or no silence can be achieved using a white noise or sound device at home and many other places.
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