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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> Everyday sounds can be distracting, discomforting, or overwhelming, and in support of neurodiversity, Apple is introducing new background sounds to help minimize distractions and help users focus, stay calm, or rest. Balanced, bright, or dark noise, as well as ocean, rain, or stream sounds continuously play in the background to mask unwanted environmental or external noise, and the sounds mix into or duck under other audio and system sounds.

Wow, I never thought of background sounds as something connected to neurodiversity, but TIL.

I definitely never expected Apple to get into the business of white noise apps, but here they are.

I wonder what the quality of these sounds will be, how long they'll loop for? And if all the background noise apps that already exist will continue to operate as they do now, or if they'll be able to integrate with this in order to take advantage of the new mixing/ducking features.

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A decade ago I remember reading that if you’re in the jungle and an apex predator is spotted, it gets relatively quiet, so from an evolutionary perspective quiet signals danger and induces stress. Sounds reasonable to me, can’t speak to how valid it is though.

> A decade ago I remember reading that if you’re in the jungle and an apex predator is spotted, it gets relatively quiet, so from an evolutionary perspective quiet signals danger and induces stress. Sounds reasonable to me, can’t speak to how valid it is though.

Many animals will make alarm calls [0] when they sense a predator, sometimes in multi-species groups. A few animals have alarm calls specific to different types of predator such as leopards, snakes and eagles [0]. In my own garden, I can often tell when a cat has entered by the alarm calls emitted by blackbirds and sometimes even squirrels.

So I'm not sure about this quiet jungle thing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_signal#Vervet_monkeys

> Many animals will make alarm calls [0] when they sense a predator, sometimes in multi-species groups.

Some animals have learned that other animals will respond to their alarm calls, and they can use this to scare away those other animals. Here's a bird doing that to get meerkats to run away, leaving the food they just dug up for the bird to take [0].

That isn't the only trick animals play on others with sound. Here's a Steller's jay mimicking the sound of a hawk, the scare other birds away from a feeder [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEYCjJqr21A

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_lEBQtW46o

That's the opposite of what happens in video games like Subnautica, the dramatic music starts playing when the big baddy is about to attack!

I'm trying to thing of cases where it gets quieter when there's more danger but the only one I can think of is The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. When you enter the boss chamber in a dungeon the music is stopped until you perform an action to trigger the boss appearance.

Seems like gradually making the game quieter would be far better for building tension.

I find myself both calmer and more productive with deep brown noise pumped into headphones. That used to mean pulling up simplynoise.com until they started monetizing it (and the legacy site died with Flash). Now I go to something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3sWyjDFC5Y

Apple has a great record for sound quality, but not so much for configurability. I'm guessing that I'd be a candidate for their "dark noise" setting, but worry somewhat about their frequency selections. I'd rather have an equalizer interface for the noise options.

Did you try https://mynoise.net ? It has a lot of selections, including some "colored noises" that maybe match the one you want. Most of it is still free, I think, although a small donation towards the author is very welcome (if you use it enough and think it's worth).

I think I might have looked at it. But I just want noise in my ears, not noise in my life, and that website is _very_ noisy. I don't want to wade through a sales pitch or an "as seen in" section or someone's life story or testimonials or recommendations or animations or calibrations. I don't want to have to watch video tutorials to learn how to use it. I don't care how much carbon it offsets.

This is precisely why I have "air_conditioner.mp3", the 10 hour extended version, sitting in a folder on every device I own. I can mess around with other options (ambient sounds are cool to change things up), but if I need a nap in a hurry, I'm always prepared.

As someone with tinnitus (constant ringing in ears), this sounds amazing! :)

Ditto. Well my tinnitus is not constant, but of course it tends to ramp up when trying to do things where it's really inconvenient, like sleeping.

I wonder if these sounds will be available as part of the bedtime application (thereby sherlocking most existing applications) as that's by far my biggest requirement for covering sounds, the combination of insomnia and tinnitus makes it rather hard to fall asleep without some sort of rain sound, but short or glitchy rain loops create extremely recognisable patterns my brain latches on to have something to do, which keeps me from sleeping.

I'm not sure what exactly they mean by neurodiversity here but as a misanthrope I definitely hate background noise. Before the pandemic I would frequently get distracted by getting irritated at other people nearby talking, chewing, walking, just being around me at all. I also found it helpful to listen to things like forest sounds, rain, and so on sometimes. It does get pretty depressing though when you step back and realize you're listening to artificial nature sounds while staring at a screen under office lights.

Do you potentially have Misophonia?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/18/7027840...

I wouldn't rule it out, though I would also be cautious not to self-diagnose things as a non-medical person. I don't generally mind noise in places where I expect it like cafes or clubs.

My colleagues with Misophonia are very sensitive to only specific sounds, and not in all contexts.

I'm not sure there's anything to do even if you were diagnosed with it by a professional. I don't know if there's any treatment, and generally they use the workarounds you alluded to initially in playing noise to mitigate the effects.

Thanks for the info. That's pretty much what I figured. Short of working from home there's not much that could be done, it wouldn't even be fair to ask everyone in the office to be quiet as a mouse just because Joe and Bob have misophonia. Thankfully I love working from home, so hopefully I'll just be able to swing a fully remote situation even if things return to being office-based

> Before the pandemic I would frequently get distracted by getting irritated at other people nearby talking, chewing, walking, just being around me at all.

That sounds like it could point to some form of undiagnosed (possibly mild) sensory processing issues—which are exactly the kind of neurodiversity they are likely referring to.

That could be; as I said in another comment I don't self-diagnose stuff but I could imagine it being the case. Regarding the OP topic, I definitely prefer not to be around, see, or hear other humans unless they're loved ones, so I'll take whatever helps me pretend nobody's around me.

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