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Comment by sowbug | Hacker News Reader

"Pink noise sounds like a waterfall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise

With some friends we usually go camping near a waterfall and we always try to camp a little further so we don't hear the noise. At least not too much. We always assumed it was related to the fact that you can't hear anything approaching, some kind of primal instinct

Helps me quite a bit to focus when Im in noisy spaces.

This reminds me of an old Wired interview with Danny Hillis when he developed a system called Babble that used unintelligible vocal bits as background sound to help concentration, too bad it never really went anywhere. https://www.wired.com/2005/06/applied-minds-think-remarkably...

A number of noise generators have that sort of nonsensical babble as a component of the sound. For instance

https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/cafeRestaurantNoiseGenerat...

Nothing that your mind has enough edges on to try to interpret, but vaguely human-like.

mynoise's Cafe Restaurant generator got me through years of working in a noisy open office. Can't recommend it enough. I put the cutlery noises on mute though.

For me that would be the worst kind of distraction: always triggered by sounds of communication, never able to recognize what is said.

I suspect not all such statistical results apply uniformly to all people.

Yes I have the opposite. I can focus better when I'm working from a coffee shop and I don't understand what people are saying.

Sounds like my tinnitus.

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