
Stochastic rain generator from the author of myNoise.net - ivank
http://rain.today/?
======
audiosampling
Dev here! What a surprise - and honour - to find my website featured here,
this morning.

I just want to add a comment: because the sounds are drawn randomly, everyone
hears something different! So, comments like "it does sounds more like a
brook" may be right, but just for one particular user, and particular
occurence.

Today, the average visit duration time is about 30s... and it takes my engine
about that same time to evolve from one sound to another. If you think that
you are not hearing something that does sound like rain to you, either reload
the page (it will start all over again with a new draw) or give the generator
a longer listen, like two minutes (I know, this is a lot of time, on the
Internet). Then, you will understand why this rain noise generator is
different from others. It really shines over longer listening sessions.

How it works? Basically, I have sounds in four categories: Light Rain, Heavy
Rain, Thunder, and Water sounds (like those occurring once the rain has
stopped). The generator starts by choosing one of these categories (with
higher probabilities for the rain, but sometimes, it can start with the water
sounds - hence that user comment). For each category, there are dozens of
different recordings. So, even if you keep playing rain from the same
category, it will keep changing. Staying in the same category or switching to
another is governed by a very simple transition probabilities matrix.

Also, you can change the spectrum of the rain (white/pink/brown) by means of
the pencil (this setting affects the next draws, so its effect is not
instantaneous). Being able to change the color of a natural noise, is an
interesting feature, IMHO.

Cheers,

Stéphane

~~~
noir_lord
Big fan of your work, as it's currently hammering it down with rain here (I'm
in the North of England, it's the default state) rain.today is particularly
ironic.

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jrapdx3
The sound of rain is very familiar to us living west of the Cascades in the
Pacific Northwest. When it rains more days than not in a given season, for
many locals the sound of rain is often not exactly "soothing".

As a qualified "rain sound critic", to my ears the generated rainfall didn't
sound convincingly natural. Real rain is somewhat less "white" (lets call it
"gray"), with a steadier, if muffled "thud" as drops hit land.

Of course there are many variables, like wind speed, rate of rain
accumulation, soil conditions, urban vs. rural location among others, that
alter rain's sound qualities. Accounting for these factors would probably be
quite difficult. Too bad the website didn't provide more info about the sound
generation algorithms, I think HN readers would appreciate that.

As far as applications of generated sounds go, I think it's a very individual
matter. In respect to tinnitus, a condition I've had for a long time, it's not
a problem only when things are quiet.

In my case the internally generated high-pitched squeal is constant, loud
enough to interfere with normal conversation. Adding external noise doesn't
decrease or "mask" the tinnitus, just makes it harder to distinguish sounds in
the environment.

One more thing, having known hundreds of adults with ADHD, mileage varies
considerably re: benefit or decrement of background sounds on concentration.
Offhand I don't know of studies documenting effects, but it would be an
interesting study to conduct. My guess is most would do better in a quiet, but
not too quiet environment. The issue is precisely what is "quiet" or "too
quiet" for these individuals.

~~~
CamperBob2
Agreed, there's too much white noise. Rain doesn't sound like that.

A slider to adjust the level of white noise (and maybe some other spectral
properties) could be just the ticket.

~~~
audiosampling
I have just reduced the level of the underlying white noise that plays along
the rain samples. Please try again. Hit the television icon to increase the
level of that white noise.

But please understand this is a white noise machine too. The rain sounds that
have been selected - especially the heavier rain sounds - do include a high
level of white noise, naturally.

~~~
CamperBob2
Sounds better now, thanks! How do I get rid of the bird tweets?

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AceJohnny2
I've been using mynoise.net regularly at home and at work to help me relax or
concentrate. It's surprisingly effective, especially after you've calibrated
it to your hearing/headphones.

The basic concept is surprisingly simple: each generator is actually a
collection of 10 looping sounds, each ostensibly covering a given frequency
range. You can achieve really different resulting sounds my adjusting each
channel. See for example the different presets (on the middle right of the
page) for the Crystal Stream generator. [1]

I'm impressed by the quality of work that Stephane Pigeon put into each of
these, and I'm glad he's marketing it well with rain.today :)

[1]
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/waterSpringStreamNoiseGener...](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/waterSpringStreamNoiseGenerator.php)

~~~
QuadDamaged
*20 sounds ;)

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pdq
Are there command-line apps for these rain and white noise generators? I'd
love to use them without internet access and outside a browser.

Edit: I see discardorama asked the same question.

~~~
notdang
install the sox package and then you can generate some white noise. For
example white noise with Star Trek theme:

    
    
      play -c2 -n synth whitenoise band -n 100 24 band -n 300 100 gain +20

~~~
contingencies
Cool. For the curious, this sounds like the background hum of a starship, or
perhaps a server room with the volume turned down. Not particularly relaxing
to me (I prefer the birds outside!) but each to their own.

~~~
Kudos
For white noise: `play -n synth whitenoise`

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discardorama
Anecdote time. Our cat has gotten into the annoying habit of moaning whenever
things aren't to her liking; even if its 3AM. If she hears other cats playing
outside, she wants to go out. If she thinks we are awake, moan again to demand
breakfast. Heck, if I'm sleeping on the side and she wants to sleep on top of
me, she'll whine about it till I'm on my back. And so on.

It became so bad that I could barely get an hour or two of continuous sleep a
night.

Finally, I found a bunch of videos:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=rain+white+noise&tbm=vid](https://www.google.com/search?q=rain+white+noise&tbm=vid)
and started playing them at night. Boy, what a difference it made. Now, I wake
up at most once a night; I'm sleeping better than ever, and not a zombie
during the day.

I'm wondering if there are any command-line rain generators for Linux? And is
there some research on how to generate the 'best' (most realistic?) rain
sounds.

~~~
edem
Why don't you lock the cat into another room or just put him out of the house?
Who is the boss at home? You or the cat?

~~~
noir_lord
I trained mine from kittens to sleep in the living room, when it gets to bed
time they run in and jump onto their favourite sleeping spots and bed down for
the night.

I think if you don't do this early getting them to accept it later will result
in them singing you the song of their people at 3am.

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praveer13
This really helps me to concentrate. Not sure if it helps others, but I think
ADHD brains find some background white noise helpful to focus.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17683456](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17683456)

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esaym
Cool app. I've never really been able to listen to anything while working
though. If it is too noisy, I'll put in a set of good ear plugs. I'd be more
interested in how they are generating the rain and other sounds, I couldn't
hear them though... have my ear plugs in ..

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versteegen
Running Firefox 38 on Slackware Linux, I hear frequent painful sharp loud
clicks, like an audio buffer full of garbage because a of callback not running
in time. Seems to happen when firefox hits 100% cpu usage for a moment. I
guess this site is just too CPU intensive for my oldish CPU.

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XorNot
It'd be nice to be able to add a muffle to the rain noise - so it sounded like
it was "outside" or on a rooftop. Hearing it sound too natural tends to make
me feel cold.

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rando289
It maxes out my cpu, firefox 39.0+build5-0ubuntu0.14.04.1

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oigursh
Have tinnitus and used to listen to mynoise (now rain.today) every night to
sleep properly. A big thanks to Stéphane.

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leeoniya
would work well with [1]

[1]
[https://maroslaw.github.io/rainyday.js/demo012_3.html](https://maroslaw.github.io/rainyday.js/demo012_3.html)

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suprjami
myNoise.net has the best rain I've ever heard. I've paid for rain recordings
and nothing even comes close to how good myNoise is. This is great!

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tlarkworthy
Doesn't seem to work on my nexus 6 :(

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sdsk8
Any chance of open sourcing this?

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zenocon
strange, the thunder sounded like a train rolling in... was very cyclical.

