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Comment by culopatin | Hacker News Reader

I tried this but the sound is too… white? Is there a way of making it deeper? I’m not familiar with Sox at all.

EDIT: actually in that short time I got what I needed: play -n -n --combine merge synth brownnoise band -n 550 550

Put it in a .command file, renamed it as .app, dragged it to the dock, renamed it .command, and now I can quickly trigger it from the dock at any time.

Thanks a lot!

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I'm having the same problem. I found this command on a random site[1] which improves it a bit:

    play -n -n --combine merge synth '24:00:00' brownnoise band -n 750 750 tremolo 50 1

If possible I'd like to replicate the brown noise preset used on this[2] site.

If you come up with anything please let us know.

[1] https://www.cloudacm.com/?p=3145

[2] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteNoiseGenerator.php

I've settled on this over the years:

    play -c 2 --null synth brownnoise reverb bass 6 treble -3

It's close to the myNoise brown preset, IMO, if a little bass heavier.

Just tried this, as a longtime ambient electronic fan I totally understand what brought me there. Instant calm for my noisy mind using:

play -c 2 --null synth brownnoise reverb bass 10 treble -6

Diagnosed around 40, concerta helps with focus but does not provide a calming effect.

Thanks for this eye opener!

`Brew install sox` for those wondering how to get this working on macos.

I love all of your variations, thank you so much for this! I combined them into this one, which I really like, but I think I will play around a bit more :)

`play -n -n --combine merge synth brownnoise band -n 550 550 tremolo 50 1 vol -17dB reverb bass 10 treble -6`

That 2nd link in 'b'rown mode immediately makes me feel like I'm standing on the seashore on an overcast day... for some reason it brings memories of Disco Elysium. Exactly what I need today, thanks.

mynoise is the gold standard for generators, for me.

Investigated the characteristics of that page's brown noise preset: https://files.catbox.moe/ptql0b.png

Despite the sliders being a straight line, it's not really brown noise, as the slope starts going down again below 550Hz. (Which is a good thing in terms of being nice to listen to: this sounds more natural, and pure brown noise has too much bass to use with headphones.)

I was able to get pretty close (80% ?) in Audacity with Generate > Noise > Brownian Noise,

followed by Effect > High-Pass Filter > 550Hz (12dB roll-off).

To me, these sounds produce fatigue. When I used to travel frequently by air, I had a habit of wearing noise-cancelling headphones just to try to suppress the background, whether or not I actually played any other media over it. I didn't really like the leftover hiss, but cutting the deeper sounds seemed to reduce my fatigue anyway.

So, I am wondering how brown noise fans find the noises of travel. The different synthesizers posted in this thread overlap a lot with highway and airliner environments for me. Different vehicles had different equalization, of course.

Another sound this reminds me of is the old background rumble they put in the Star Trek Next Generation TV show to represent their shipboard environments.

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