White Noise Definition...What is White Noise?

When you were a kid, did you often fall asleep listening to road noise while riding in a car? Does listening to the crowd noise from a sporting event on TV make you want to take a nap? Or, do you like to sleep with a fan running because you like the “hum” of the fan? You are not alone. All three examples above are indicative of the effects of white noise.

White noise, or white sound as it is sometimes called, is a very therapeutic device for relieving stress, masking annoying sounds, and helping you fall asleep. But, it really isn’t noise at all. It’s actually a ton of different sound frequencies all hitting you at once.

In much the same way as white light is a combination of all the colors in the color spectrum, white noise is all the sound frequencies a human ear can hear all playing together in equal parts at the same time. So, you have very low sounds, combined with very high sounds, and all the sounds in between.

Think of it this way. If you were in a room with two people, and they were both talking at once, your brain could pick up either one or the other person’s conversation. That person’s conversation equals one sound frequency. However, if you walk into a crowded restaurant full of people all talking at once, you can’t make out any of the conversations. But what you can make out is a kind of roaring, or whooshing sound. That sound, that whoosh, is the culmination of all the frequencies you can hear. You can’t comprehend a single conversation. So, you simply hear just the result; which is white noise.

White noise, as stated earlier, has many therapeutic uses.

Some people utilize the sound to help them sleep better. White noise has the effect of masking out annoying sounds that might otherwise disturb your sleep. For instance, if you live in the city, and you hear lots of street noise, you could turn on a fan to drown out the street noise. Or, if you live in the suburbs, and your neighbor’s dog barks incessantly, you could play a white noise cd to drown out his barking.

Still others use the sounds to relax. For instance, some people might turn on sounds of the ocean playing to unwind after a long day.

The latest craze is for students. Students who have problems concentrating on homework can download a white noise mp3 directly to their mp3 players to listen to while studying. The white noise will mask out all other sounds and keep them on task.

Parents, too, have found that using white noise has a very calming effect on colicky newborns. The sound of a vacuum cleaner running is a miracle cure for babies with colic. The sound is very close to the whooshing noise a baby hears while in the womb. When a fussy baby hears this whooshing, they immediately calm down. Some parents turn on a fan, or keep a white noise cd on continuous loop while their baby sleeps for the dual effect of drowning out external noise and keeping their baby calm.

So if you need to relax, sleep longer, study better, or even quiet your colicky, crying baby, you might want to check out using some white noise. Get access to vacuum cleaner white noise below.