
A Soft Murmur – Ambient sounds to wash away distraction - gabemart
http://asoftmurmur.com
======
Havoc
Best ambient sound site I've encountered so far. I love the DIY mixing
approach. :)

Gabriel - please add wind. It goes well with the rain/thunder thing. The rain
sound track - it sounds realistic, but I think for this specific purpose a bit
less emphasis on high frequencies might make it blend into the background
better. It sounds a little too hissy. Might just be my sound setup though. I'd
also suggest adding a "true" white noise track - I'm guessing much of the tech
crowd would love to use that as a baseline and then add specific noises on
top.

~~~
gabemart
Thanks for the feedback!

Wind would be a great addition I agree. I've had a hard time finding good
audio that has the right feel, but it'll be added at some point.

White noise is on the todo list. What I really need to do is make the audio
loading more modular. At the moment it's very naive and everything buffers at
once. I want to create a system where there's a core set of sounds that load
by default, and then a menu of sounds that expand and load when selected. This
would mean I could support a lot more sounds. At present, to add another
sample I'd have to remove something already there, because performance is a
little flaky even with just the six current samples.

~~~
Havoc
>then a menu of sounds

I really wouldn't change the layout to anything menu like. Its got the clean &
simple thing going for it. Maybe rather add a button that opens "advanced"
options i.e. more sliders coming into view - white noise etc. Seems a bit
artificial but it gives you a way to split off less popular and weird stuff
like artificial white noise. Plus delayed loading of those sounds. Adding a
drop down or similar would kill the clean layout in my view.

Since you reacted positively to the initial feedback:

\- The share mix button at the top looks wildly out of place. Its outside of
the main rectangle and looks weird as a result.

-I'm allergic to the word "share" tbh...consider replacing it with "publish"/"broadcast" or similar. Sounds a bit presumptuous...but "share" has become a seriously craptastic word online - even erotic sites have a "share on facebook" button. If you must have it rather move it as far down as possible - so that users can first toy with the sliders a bit & get a feel for things before being asked to vouch for it to friends.

\- The colour scheme (stark black white) is not conducive to the tranquil vibe
you're trying to convey. Best bet is adding some colour hint to it I think.
Keep the basic idea, but add some faint highlight colour(s). Think earthy warm
colours.

\- The humans track is way too loud. If you set all the sliders to mid then
all you hear is humans. Either lower it as a whole or dampen the 600hz-700hz
frequency range gently (assuming my ears aren't failing me on that freq
guestimate).

>I've had a hard time finding good audio that has the right feel

Yeah. Wind is a bit of a biatch in this regard since most microphones are
engineered to specifically block wind noises. And those that aren't distort
wind sounds like mad. Maybe something like this (bit short):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__O0RRiWcpk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__O0RRiWcpk)

~~~
gabemart
Thanks for sharing (broadcasting?) your thoughts!

I struggled a bit with the positioning of the share button - I'll think about
it some more. I hadn't considered that it's the first thing a new visitor
sees, and I agree that's undesirable.

I used the wrong word when I said "menu". I actually had "palette of sounds"
down before changing it because it sounded too pretentious. I was thinking of
menu in the restaurant sense rather than the UI sense. I agree I don't want to
overload the interface with more options.

I'm not 100% happy with the visuals or the audio samples either, particularly
humans and rain as has been pointed out, so I'm going to look at cleaning them
up.

------
hobo_mark
Another amazing noise generator was featured here a few weeks ago and I've
been using it ever since

[http://mynoise.net/](http://mynoise.net/)

sadly, does not work on mobile either (somewhat on firefox for android which
is too slow on my underpowered phone)

~~~
wylee
I love this site, especially how it goes into some depth explaining the
different sounds. I had no trouble with it on my S3 in Chrome.

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ChrisNorstrom
Nice. I love the minimal approach. Another site like yours is
[http://www.NatureSoundsFor.Me](http://www.NatureSoundsFor.Me) which has a
whole bunch of other sounds like bees, cicadas, sheep, whales, and more. I
like your UI better though, it's super simple and feels like an app. I made
one too a while back [http://TimeforZen.com](http://TimeforZen.com) but it's
in bad need of a redesign.

I LOVE your "Fade to Slient in ___ minutes" feature. Perfect for inducing
sleep.

~~~
gabemart
> I LOVE your "Fade to Silent in ___ minutes" feature. Perfect for inducing
> sleep.

Thanks! It's my favorite feature too. I probably need to tweak the UI a bit to
made it to make it more prominent though.

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gioele
I'd appreciate if the sounds mixture could slowly but constantly change, going
from the "it's going to rain soon" mix to the "it's pouring rain" mix to the
"sunny with hints of birds" mix.

~~~
gabemart
This is a really neat idea and should be easy enough to add. Check back in a
few days!

------
soundscapes
It's a little hard to setup, but the python powered neverending soundscapes
you can get at [http://boodler.org/packages/](http://boodler.org/packages/)
are pretty awesome...

Boodler FTW!

------
DonGateley
Fabulous! Best of breed for creating ambiance that I've heard and the
suggestions here are bound to improve it.

It works from Firefox browser on a phone (sliders don't function with Chrome
and it fades out immediately on Dolphin and Android browsers.) An equalizer
(even Baxendahl 2 knob tone control) would be cool but would probably be a
drag on the server.

FWIW regarding sleeping to ambient sound, I have an extensive collection of
'phones and 'buds of all types for R&D purposes and the hands down winner for
'buds to sleep with is the Sennheiser CX200.

(Irrelevant aside: For $19 at Amazon they are also by far the best bargain
I've encountered for pristine sound.)

------
aaronem
Very nicely done. Bookmarked!

I'm sure it would be a major effort, but it'd be nice to have the tracks
crossfade into one another; right now, when a given track ends, there's a
short and variable, but noticeable, interval between ending and restarting,
whose presence is not a major issue but still less preferable than its
absence.

~~~
gabemart
There's actually a feature built in to mimic cross-fading; it must have not
worked for you, and that worries me a little. What browser and OS are you
using please?

It's not possible to do true seamless looping with HTML5 audio, but the site
tries to achieve it by crossfading, as you say, using two tracks for each
sample. On my setup the transition is imperceptible. I'd like to work out why
it didn't work for you.

~~~
aaronem
Test results:

Safari 6.1, Mac OS X - Listened to "Thunder" track for 10 minutes; no
noticeable break.

Firefox 24.0, Mac OS X - Did likewise; result likewise.

I'll have to try it again from home tonight and see whether it behaves better
in the absence of the latency problem. Sorry for being so vague; I tend to try
to characterize bug reports better than I have this one, but I was in the
middle of too many things when I wrote my original comment and didn't take the
time I should've.

~~~
gabemart
Thanks for following up. The system is quite sensitive to connection issues as
the cross-fading only lasts 5 seconds or so. Glad it seems to be working now.

~~~
aaronem
Thanks to last night's unpredictable behavior on the part of my ISP (thanks,
Comcast!), I can confirm that the gaps I was hearing are latency-bound. Thanks
again for a nifty service!

------
pan69
I love this.

I would be great if you could a) download your mix as an MP3 and/or b) open
your mix in a popup window.

Love the sound of rain and thunder. Makes me want to stay indoors and do
stuff. I understand that this is at the moment not a problem for North
Americans and Europeans but in Australia it's getting pretty hot/sticky at the
moment..

~~~
gabemart
Downloading as an mp3 is an interesting idea. It would be a good excuse for me
to learn some backend stuff. This is the first thing I've ever written but I
enjoyed the process a lot.

The popup window idea is also good and should be much easier to implement.
I'll look into it. Thanks!

~~~
aaronem
> This is the first thing I've ever written

Talk about hitting a home run on your first at-bat. Well done!

~~~
gabemart
Thanks! I think it's really testament to how far web technologies have come.

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croisillon
Two comments:

\- maybe you could add some trees or forest option - coupled with birds it
makes a good spring/summer ambient

\- when decreasing the human option, instead of just decreasing the loudness,
it should decrease the number of people speaking ; so many people in the
background, even if they seem far, doesn't make this too cozy

------
elliottcarlson
Personally I have [http://RainyMood.com](http://RainyMood.com) and
[http://SimplyNoise.com](http://SimplyNoise.com) (on brown noise, medium
oscillation) running 24/7; it helps me concentrate as well as sleep.

------
codequickly
This is great, and I'll use this while working. I love certain sounds, but not
every types of noise, so it's great to be able to choose the combination.

There's a lot of ASMR youtube videos, which I find very relaxing and helps to
get in the zone. However, sometimes it also helps me to fall asleep, which is
bad when I want to work. Anyway, ASMR puts me in a state that is highly
focused and relaxed at the same time.

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arjn
Thank you, I love this. I've been using rain sounds from Youtube on my tablet
at night to help me sleep. This seem better and more configurable.

------
brianbreslin
is there a pandora/spotify/rdio station anyone recommends for this?

any studies on what types of noise actually induce deeper sleep?

------
pgopalan
I've used this one before [http://coffitivity.com](http://coffitivity.com)

~~~
michalstanko
I use it too, and sometimes [http://raining.fm](http://raining.fm) as well.

------
ddoolin
Got a nice little spot on my bookmark bar...heh. Thanks. It's nice. Love the
sliders/customizability.

------
mariocarvalho
I'm addicted to [http://www.noisli.com/](http://www.noisli.com/)

------
dded
The most soothing, easy-to-sleep-to sound for me is the sound of the forced-
hot-air furnace in the house I grew up in. Other furnaces in other houses are
OK, but _nothing_ tops the original.

I assume this is something deep in my psyche, implanted when I was very young.

~~~
MichaelGG
I relax the best when there are other people at my house, doing their own
thing. I remember from being 5 or so when my parents would have company over
and it was a very reassuring feeling of hearing other people carrying on.
Unfortunately, as an "adult", it doesn't seem to be very socially acceptable
to throw parties then stay upstairs and hope your guests enjoy things by
themselves.

This motivation is very deep inside me: I went as far as giving out two free
rooms to benefit from the comings-and-goings of two more people. And for a
while I shared a house with my in-laws (8 people total) and found it quite
enjoyable.

------
wavelander
Best ambience-sound site I've come across which for once really works.

The sound of fire and humans is something new I've seen (or heard) in such a
site.

What about cricket chirps, and to be a little bold, traffic ? Traffic in the
distance ?

------
gabemart
I haven't found a way to make it work on iOS devices, unfortunately. There are
many restrictions on what javascript is allowed to do, and I don't own an iOS
device for testing ways around this.

~~~
james33
Unfortunately limitations on mobile audio will make this next to impossible to
work on mobile for the time being. I wrote howler.js
([http://howlerjs.com](http://howlerjs.com)) to solve this issue, but I'm
guessing your source audio files are too large to use Web Audio reliably on
mobile (this would be the only way to play multiple sounds at the same time).

~~~
wavefunction
There is another way actually, use an HTML5 Audio tag and Base64 encode the
audio files, then load that data via JavaScript into the Audio tag.

I really should probably write this up on my blog... I will - and post it on
HN but here's a quick overview. I'm doing this for a JavaScript library I'm
working on for form-validation for the visually-impaired (coming soon!)

I dynamically create a pool of audio tags via

var audioTag = document.createElement("audio")

then

audioTag.setAttribute("autoplay","autoplay");

then

audioTag.src = strSound;

You don't even have to attach them to the DOM either from my experience so far
(cross-browser!), just maintain the reference in memory.

Then I do some eventing magic for forms and validation stuff, loading the
audio from strings of Base64 encoded mp3s or wavs. This way I can package the
audio I use inside the JavaScript that hooks up all the form events. And make
it easy for others to override my audio samples with their own just by over-
writing the strings in memory via their own .js file include.

~~~
james33
Interesting, I do a lot of audio work in the browser and somehow I've never
come across this trick. Does it work on iOS?

~~~
wavefunction
I'm pretty sure it does as I vaguely remember testing my proof-of-concept via
the iPhone Simulator in xCode, though I haven't touched it in a bit with the
holidays.

 __I 'm working up a simplified example to post right now. My library has a
lot of extraneous stuff related to cross-browser eventing and integrates with
browser extensions, so I think it would be needlessly confusing to illustrate
what we're discussing

------
cupcake-unicorn
[http://mynoise.net](http://mynoise.net) , which I also found on here
originally, is still my favorite. Although I guess you can't mix sounds across
soundscapes.

~~~
audiosampling
You can… by opening different soundsources in different tabs ;-) Very powerful
in combination with the "Animate!" function.

------
ben0x539
Aaaaah, the fire has some irregular loud crackling sounds that are fairly
distracting! This imaginary beach campfire party of mine isn't an ideal
working environment!

------
zapt02
This is awesome.

Please add white, brown and pink noise (Like
[http://simplynoise.com/](http://simplynoise.com/) has).

If you do that, I will be 100% sold!!!!

------
finnw
Thanks. I find some ambient sounds (especially birds & waves) help me focus on
work. (Instead of rain I use pink noise from another site)

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amolsarva
This is real.

It is why airplanes are such great places to concentrate and work.

Also lower light and fewer people "induce the zone" better too.

~~~
Havoc
>It is why airplanes are such great places to concentrate and work.

I think the fact that you really really can't get up and go do something else
also helps. ;)

~~~
sgustard
Also the "occasional terrifying jolt" keeps the mind focused.

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leeoniya
i actually work best in coffee shops.

1\. silence or some monolog/dialog on tv = BAD

2\. lots of people talking & background noise = GOOD

brain is weird.

~~~
Havoc
I get the feeling this varies greatly from person to person. e.g. If I'm in a
coffee shop I pick up fragments of conversation and can't help but try &
isolate specific voices. I've tried - I can't block it out. Fragments of
conversation to me aren't noise...they're fragmented info requiring more brain
power to decipher.

This might just be me though - I think in German, read in English and hear
Afrikaans in coffee shops. So I'm all kinds of messed up anyway when it comes
to spoken language.

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chanux
[http://rainycafe.com](http://rainycafe.com) Just for the record.

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userbinator
I like the sound of computer fans.. the ones I have are a soft hum, which I
find rather pleasant.

------
merraksh
See also [http://www.noisli.com](http://www.noisli.com)

------
edavis
I forgot how relaxing the sound of a roaring fire can be.

Great stuff.

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donebizkit
Bookmarked! Thanks.

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alexbitten
Please, make an app for that.

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tlholaday
SONOS please :-)

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squirejons
why is it that we sleep better with the sounds of a rainstorm going on?

Because we evolved as animals being preyed upon by large predators, big cats,
packs of dogs etc.

When our preyed-upon ancestors heard the sounds of a rainstorm they knew that
they could sleep because the predators don't usually hunt during a rainstorm,
and that the predators could not smell them during a rainstorm.

Evolutionarily, selection wise speaking, those who slept during a rainstorm
got rested and were better rested afterward, and so were more likely to pass
on their genes.

The rainstorm is the friend of the prey animal.

~~~
jpeterson
Sounds vaguely plausible, but do you have any evidence that substantiates
this? In particular, "taking shelter in a rainstorm" seems like a pretty far-
fetched survival trait.

~~~
squirejons
understand this--the fingerprint of every major environmental factor can be
found in our physiology. Rainstorms are a major environmental factor, and they
have been such forever, going back many tens of millions of years. What
happens in a rainstorm? Animals hunker down. Why? It is safe to do so for prey
animals, and it would be unproductive to do otherwise for predators.

That history is written in our physiology, just as every major environmental
factor is written in our physiology.

When I pick up a bug or a leaf or a dog or...any organism, I can see traces of
that natural history written onto shape and curve of that organism's body. The
dog has sharp teeth, the better to bite its prey, my dear. The leaf has a
green skin, the better to turn sunlight into energy, my dear.

Of course the rainstorm has left its mark on your physiology. How could it be
otherwise.

And here is the real mindblower--homo sapiens and american society and all
parts of it are also part of the natural world. Political talking points and
memes are quasi-organic, and their shapes tell you things about their natural
history, too. Mind blown?

------
emocakes
Theres also this one
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/rainNoiseGenerator.php](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/rainNoiseGenerator.php)

