Ambient Chaos | Hacker News Reader

Ambient Chaos

neal.fun

146 pointsnoname949430 comments

I love these ambient noise machines.

Hope folks don't mind some shameless self promotion, but I made one as well:

https://abetusk.github.io/noixer/

I had a hard time finding one that was open source and used libre/free sounds, so I made one. Code and other digital artifacts can be found at:

https://github.com/abetusk/noixer

This is pretty nice. I really like the sounds, presets, and minimalistic look & feel.

Wow. Thanks for making this. I love that it is open source, and the clips you chose are so relaxing. The passenger car is so chill.

This guy is a genius; https://neal.fun/deep-sea/ is also wonderful

Wow! That was quite the journey!

Hospitals, Casino, and couple arguing really makes the anxiety peak. 10/10.

Okay this is fun.

Some thoughts:

* The volume ramps up a bit too quickly. In trying to blend hese, I don't think I've taken a single one above 10. Finer gradations in volume, if possible, would be great.

* It would be great to set some of the sounds to happen randomly or intermittently pop or fade in and out, and possibly at different intensities. E.g. if you're chilling in a coffee shop that's playing lo-fi beats while it's raining outside, there probably not going to be a constant wind, but occasional gusts, some stronger than others.

For this on steroids (in a good way), see https://mynoise.net/

That's my default when working. I love the coffeeshop: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/cafeRestaurantNoiseGenerat...

Every aspect of the sound can be changed with sliders. Increase the background babble, decrease the silverware, etc. I really do believe that a little hubub of background conversation that I can't make out helps me tune out the rest of the world.

I love OP's for it's silliness, though. Not sure I actually want hospital sounds or zombie invasion while I work, but it's good to know I have that option.

Cool but the controls are almost perfectly hard to use with a mouse. Must be intended for a finger? Being able to just click or tap on the level you want would be a huge improvement, also clicking in the center to mute it entirely.

This is fun! Needs a random button that does something like 20% chance to set a switch to a random value.

A rainy day at a beachside café, lofi beats float on the breeze. Distantly, church bells ring, alien spacecraft hover ominously over a crowd of hungry zombies. The nuclear air-raid sirens sound. Brilliant. So 2021.

need this as background noise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E62iA6KCIQ

I could listen to this all day

Really enjoying "playground on fire".

I really like how the further you scroll the more absurd it gets. Great touch

The one feature I'd like to see out of an ambience mixer app is a post-processor. If you gave me a nice digital reverb running through a compressor into a peak limiter, I think I'd be on cloud 9.

Do you have some example of this? Either an actual app that does this or some Youtube video or music sample that shows what you're talking about?

Reverb is pretty simple, it's the "echo" of a sound without the repetition side of it (also called an impulse response). If you have multiple sounds from different recordings, mixing them together with a single reverb effect creates a sense of space around the sounds.

Then, to control the amplitude of the overlapping recordings, it would be wise to run it into a compressor. It's a little hard to explain how it works, so it's probably a better idea to link to a YouTube video[0] instead. The basic gist is that it brings sounds together, reducing the range between their loudest and quietest points (colloquially known as 'dynamic range').

Finally, a peak limiter is a more extreme version of a compressor that prevents a signal from becoming too loud and risking damage to your audio equipment. It's mostly a safety net, but it's a very necessary one when you start toying with dynamic range.

Hope this was able to help!

[0] https://youtu.be/5pXbd1QcdcU

I was more asking whether you could provide an example of reverb on the ambient sound or some app that actually uses this.

I'm just playing around with adding reverb on some of the clips (using Tone.js) and it doesn't sound all that dramatic to me. Is this really a feature that you think is noticeable and/or that you would want?

if you're on windows, you can load 64-bit VST plugins into Equalizer APO. Can confirm, cloud 9.

I could do the same thing on Linux with Pipewire or Jack, but it feels kinda hack-ish to me. Still though, it's nice to have the option if I need it!

Did not know a train station in a forest could be so pleasant to listen to

The animated rain background absolutely kills Firefox on my machine for some reason.

Same here. Used the inspector to delete that node, and now I can enjoy the site without pegging the cpu.

Missing: thunder, crickets chirping, frog sounds.

I think the sound recordings are great!

I never knew haunted dungeons were so noisy.

Love this. Also really unexpected noise :)

I love this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com