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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

Install SoX and you can generate noise without using any data at all. Even without internet access. Imagine that.

  play -n synth 60:00 whitenoise
  play -n synth 60:00 pinknoise
  play -n synth 60:00 brownnoise

Or make your own wav files:

  sox -n whitenoise.wav synth 60:00 whitenoise
  # Also works with pinknoise/brownnoise

I wouldn't use lossy compression to compress these. There's no redundant data in noise so lossy compression will just make it less noise-y. I can only imagine that noise on streaming services sounds weird.

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A lot of these white noise thread are not just straight up pink / white / brown noise, some of them vary with time to create more soothing effects like wave sounds or sounding like a vacuum etc.

Speaking from experience of trying anything to try get babies to sleep!

You can totally do that too.

This is a nice synthetic ocean sound, with "waves":

  play -n synth brownnoise synth 0 0 0 10 10 40 trapezium amod 0.1 30

Or with a little more high end, it sounds like gusts of wind:

  play -n synth brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth 0 0 0 10 10 40 trapezium amod 0.1 30

Definitely. It has been my goto for white|brown|pink noise for a year now. Even the animation on the terminal looks a bit like "waves". [1]

Could you please share any other examples of commands?

[1] https://ibb.co/GVG0Rdf

play seems to hang on my macos terminal. Its just stuck on:

        File Size: 10        
        Encoding: n/a           
        Channels: 1 @ 32-bit   
        Samplerate: 48000Hz      
        Replaygain: off         
        Duration: unknown

        In:0.00% 00:00:00.00 [00:00:00.00] Out:0     [      |      ]        Clip:0

That's weird. Works OK on mine.

> sounding like a vacuum

You stumped me there. Then I got it.

Cool trick for when you're at the computer. Not practical for sleeping for most people I'd say.

If you make the wavs you can put them on any playback device you like.

I sometimes use the "chroma doze" and generate colored noise with my phone. Playing it over the phone speaker isn't great, but if you need some noise it will do.

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