The Many Colors of Sound (2016)

Pink noise is also called 1/f noise. I was confused by the article when it said, "The inverse pattern of pink noise, also called 1/f noise . . . " It first seemed to mean that the inverse of pink noise is another noise, called 1/f noise. But no, they are the same thing. The writer meant "Pink noise's pattern, which is an inverse relationship between frequency and power, is also called 1/f noise." It only took me five readings to figure it out. The noise that is the inverse of pink noise is blue noise, mentioned later. An article in Wikipedia is clearer to me, it mentions more colors, and it has more audio examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise

The Atlantic article mentions brown noise, which is named after Brownian Motion. But the Wikipedia article tells you that it's also called red noise, because pink noise is halfway between it and white noise. Red noise falls 6 dB per octave, pink noise falls 3 dB per octave, and white noise changes 0 dB per octave.

This resurrects my lifelong mental block with dB, electricity, etc. It says here that 3 dB is a doubling. But I had always thought it took 6 dB to double something. I know that on my videocamera that if I raise the gain by 6 dB that it is the same change as 1 f-stop, which is a doubling of light. It turns out that it depends on the unit. With sound, 3 dB is a doubling of power, but 6 dB is doubling of volume. With electricity, 3 dB is doubling of power (watts?) but 6 dB is a doubling of voltage. I can do the math all day long (Watts = Volts x Amps) but it's just equations. I can't picture the reality in my head in the way I can other concepts. I suppose part of it is my layman usage of technical terms. To me I would think "sound power" and "sound volume" are the same thing, but to physicists there are distinct. It reminds me of horsepower and torque. Horsepower is "power," but torque is "twisting force" --- which is what I imagined when you told me that horsepower is power.

Oh well, my takeaway is that red noise sounds better than pink or white, to me and others. It sounds like the ocean (if there were no variation).

The office of my current employer has speakers in the ceiling, every 20 feet or so. They play white noise through these at about 40-60 decibels - about the volume of a moderately busy coffee shop or bar. This lets them buy shorter cubicles, so you can look across the entire office building.

The noise they use is maddening to me, despite sounding like air going through the air ducts.

I couldn't live without Chroma Doze when out on business. You can easily tune it to mask out nearly anything. I generally set it to a pink-like spectrum; true white really is too harsh to sleep with.

https://github.com/pmarks-net/chromadoze/blob/master/README....