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Comment by anotheryou | Hacker News Reader

As long as there is open offices there is a easy fix to lower pollution to 20% by doing home-office.

I used to think my office was quiet until I got noise cancelling headphones. Now every time I take them off I am hit with a deafening ambiant noise which I think is a combination of the fans in peoples computers and the sound of cars making it through the building walls.

Same for a bunch of noise at home (mostly from the fridge).

White noise is a good way to filter out spectral peaks that are more disturbing.

I prefer a pink noise myself.

https://mynoise.net is great for this. There are loads of sound generators for different environments, each of which has sliders for each frequency. I sometimes use it when I have trouble falling asleep (I pin the site to my homepage on Android Chrome).

Thanks. An interesting one: "Neuromodulator • A sound designed to squash down your tinnitus"

frosted flakes mentioned pink noise; i recommend brown and/or grey noise. it really depends on the type of noise you're trying to counter, but these really helped me a lot with various types of road noise and lawnmower-style noise. pink, to my ears, is a bit thin/tinny, and doesn't assist much with my trigger points.

If your office has a significant amount of open space, chances are pretty good they're using white/pink noise generators to try and mask distracting sounds (conversations, etc).

Last place I worked at had one big room that was a couple hundred feet square, and they had the noise generators cranked up so high that you couldn't successfully have a conversation with someone unless they were within about five feet of you. When I'd walk outside, it was a physical relief from the onslaught of white noise.

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