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Comment by conradev | Hacker News Reader

A lot of folks are talking about the “consistency” of a sound (constant white noise vs random sounds) and its volume, but I feel like the nature of the sound matters a lot more.

I’ll respond much differently to my bedroom door opening or a voice speaking than I do a bus outside.

It reminds me of the anecdote where human researchers rang bells near bears (human sounds) and the bears didn’t care, but if they broke a large bundle of branches (bear sounds), the bears went berserk.

I feel like our subconscious is a lot more involved here than we give it credit for.

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This is especially true for sleep since we can be pretty good at incorporating external sounds into our dreams. It's been shown in controlled experiments. Seems likely that certain noises are generically easier to integrate into dreams than other noises, which could just cause you to wake up or have your sleep otherwise impaired.

The last time I lived in a flat the guy downstairs got up at 6am and used an iPhone. I know that because I could hear his alarm through the floor. Couldn't have been anywhere near 60dB in my room, but it would wake me up every damn time. Oddly, even today I am absurdly sensitive to that awful Apple alarm sound.

Same! I will jump out of my seat if I hear it loud, sleeping or not. If it goes off anywhere on a bus or a plane, I hear it at very low volume. I'm glad they've (since) changed the defaults to less jarring sounds.

why don't more hotels seem to understand this? so often I find that even nice hotels have very minimal background noise but poor soundproofing of the doors. so hallway noise disrupts sleep so much

Because good materials cost more than "fancy" decorations.

When hotels buy doors, they optimize for things like cost, fireproofing, and weight (so guests and housecleaning can open them easily). Noise cancelling is a nice-to-have, but if you're buying and maintaining ~100 room doors (USA average per hotel), then you have to cut costs somewhere. On top of that, hotel hallway environments tend to be noisy in the first place. We're talking long, narrow hallways with hard walls, plus constant streams of holidaymakers who aren't exactly tiptoeing around.

I wake up _super_ easy at many parts of the night, to all kinds of minor sounds. But when I lived directly behind a train, I not only don't recall it waking me up, I distinctly remember that, after getting used to it, it had a kind of calming effect on me. Really interesting. But I wonder if it was still disrupting my sleep and to what degree. I'd mainly like to know in case we have future housing options next to a train because, outside of being near horn / turns, I wouldn't normally worry much about it.

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