Hacker News Reader

Comment by gingerlime | Hacker News Reader

Slightly OT, but any recommendations for an alternative to music with headphones?

The reason I'm asking is because I don't think I could concentrate with any form of music. I tried some "fake cafe sound" and I still felt distracted (more than I do in a real cafe). White noise? Ear plugs? Binaural beats?

I actually work from home with my wife across the desk. We have a relatively quiet environment, with no or very low volume music playing. I'm not hyper sensitive to noise at all. But I would still like to be able to isolate myself completely some time to focus. So just wondering if there are any tips.

View on HN

I've tried so many things. Many styles are out of the question because I focus on the words too much.

As far as music goes electronic like Daft Punk or Neelix is my favorite but it also has its drawbacks.

So finally I think asoftmurmur.com is best.

But even with the perfect noise, or lack of noise with active noise cancelling headphones, not everyone can wear headphones 4 hours in a row. Some people hurt from being built differently around the ears.

And this article focuses a lot on noise level but that's not the problem for me. The office could be totally quiet but if one person is having a phone conversation I focus on everything they say. Depending on the person my mind might even start to wander and think about what the person on the other end might be saying.

So for me working from home has been a god send. And we didn't have an acceptable culture of working from home. I simply forced it and said damn to the consequences.

But I have no kids and live alone. When I'm at my gfs place her daughter and her friends are too much for me. I can only work 3-4 hour sprints because wearing headphones longer than that is uncomfortable.

I've found the in-ear headphones to be better in that case.

Thanks for that. Never tried any noise cancellation headphones before.

I did find that it's not so much the pressure, but rather that my ears get really hot with those big headphones. So I can't wear them for longer than 20 minutes or so.

Are there / can anyone recommend in-ear headphones with noise cancellation?

No, but I can recommend in-ear phones with excellent noise reduction: Etymotic HF5, on discount until the end of June for $99. These have noise reduction on par with good earplugs (another thing that Etymotic makes).

I got a recommendation from a friend that his Bose in-ear active noise-cancelling phones were really good. Haven't tried them myself, can only forward his recommendation.

The thing I can't work with is human voices. If a song has words or voice at all, my concentration is gone. Low volume white noise is the only thing I can work with at this point.

mynoise.net has a whole bunch of carefully-crafted sonic environments. Fake cafes, all colors of noise, binaural beats, spaceship control consoles, ever-shifting chords, gardens, forests, desert caravans... those plus noise cancelling headphones/earbuds can put you in a tranquil world of Shit Getting Done.

This is highly subjective stuff, but I like the ship's engine noise videos, like this one: https://youtu.be/vuZ4uP279oc

I also used the generation and effects features in Audacity to make my own tracks, a few years back. I quickly ended up with some things I liked. Mix in some recordings from Freesound and you can arrive at professional results quickly.

Finally there are some apps that function like mixers of existing sounds, and you can mix up your favorite combinations. I have used the Ambient Mixer app as well as some others and they offer a great range of sounds.

Edit: And if your neighbors are partying too loudly, any of this stuff plus a reasonable pair of speakers will often immediately cancel the sound.

I've found myself using myNoise (https://mynoise.net) more than music lately. It has a lot of very high quality natural sound recordings as well as a bunch of synthetic options.

I listen to techno with a lot of polyrhythms, gets me in the zone. An example: https://soundcloud.com/erraticnyc/erratic-podcast-152-gotshe...

Or same genre but a little chiller: https://soundcloud.com/erraticnyc/erratic-podcast-128-hydran...

Not sure if it'll work for you but worth a shot. :)

Active noise cancellation headphones (without playing music). Bought ones recently and can't be happier. Works both in office and when working from home, and are great in cancelling the background noise (like HVAC) and lowering the overall volume of speech to the extent it doesn't bother.

I do, however, usually combine noise cancellation with a — now pretty quiet — background electronic music with no voice, which I've found helps me concentrate.

I use http://listentothe.cloud/, the mix of ambient electronic-y music and barely intelligible airport radio chatter is very pleasant to me. Also, I use http://rainymood.com/ for writing.

I've been using brain.fm[1] when I need to focus.

[1] https://www.brain.fm/

You can buy tons of classical music off iTunes super cheap (like 99 songs by mozart for $5), most has no singing so I believe it's less distracting. I can turn it on and forget about it for hours.

Rain noise helps me sleep and it helps me focus. ASMR is strangely helpful sometimes too. I've found it's never a silver bullet, but trying different white noise sounds to fit the moment.

http://mtcb.pwop.com/

Low volume brown noise + rainymood is perfect for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com