New York Times on the "cult of brown noise" aficionados

Originally published at: New York Times on the "cult of brown noise" aficionados | Boing Boing

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Whew, for a second I thought this story was about people obsessed with the elusive brown note.

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image

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I’m making brown noise right now!

Rumblers, not squeakers. Got it. Easier sound to muffle, but harder to blame on the dog.

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wiki-linky

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It’s always nice to find out that other people share your fondness for something odd and you had no idea of a larger community.

I came across brown noise in my “white noise” app. Like many others have found, actual white noise is far too harsh to be relaxing but when I came across brown (even over other tweaked versions like pink and blue noise) it was a revelation. Immeditately soothing and now my brain is trained to basically shut-off when I turn on the brown noise. For someone who has always struggled falling asleep it’s a life changer.

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I almost read it as ‘brown nose’ - there sure is a cult of brown-nosing [insert derogatory epithet]s

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Oh, so it’s brown because it’s based on Brownian motion.

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It sounds like a waterfall… without the lossy audio compression.

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I’m tempted to correct the spelling but the inclusion of meditate feels right.

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yes.

a foss app I like:
(the link is good but it’s not oneboxing right)

here’s as close to brown noise as I can get it

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It all sounds like rain on different surfaces to me. The brown noise could be rain on the metal roof at the cottage.

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Two of the planet’s coolest music geeks briefly discuss all the colors of noise (edit) plus a primer on modular synthesis:

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This is why the USS Enterprise (D) is suffused with pink noise fed through a low pass filter. TNG might as well have been called The Autism Soothing Hour

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I’m a little chuffed at the lack of other colored noise missing from the NYT article. Brown is okay but Red really achieves what they’re talking about regarding brain state. No mention of Blue, Grey, or Purple! Blue is like a nice whisper of wind.

You can really chill out on Grey.

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No Way Bird GIF

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I’ve used white and pink noise before but I’ve never used other “colors” of noise (or even know what they mean by “colors” of noise). I couldn’t read the article, so figured it was worth hitting youtube. I played the first sample I found and was immediately hit with this strange, relatively mild anxiety and a sort of low-grade smothering panic. I’m not claustrophobic but it struck me as something that might feel like claustrophobia. Very strange and visceral. I want to run away from it.

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It is like the tube train that never arrives.