White, pink & brown noise on tap.

Yes, at a sensible volume. The concern isn't the noise itself but the level: keep it around the loudness of a quiet shower or softer — roughly 50 dB — and place the source across the room rather than next to your head. If you'd need to raise your voice to be heard over it, it's too loud for eight hours. Use the sleep timer if you only want it while you drift off; it fades out gently over the final ten seconds so it never stops with a jolt.

Either can help an infant settle, and many parents find pink or brown gentler than hissy white noise. The critical rule is volume and distance: pediatric guidance suggests keeping infant sound machines well below the levels of loud machines, at a low setting, and at least a couple of feet from the crib — not right beside the baby's ear. Use it to get to sleep rather than blasting it all night, and turn it down if in doubt.

There's no universal winner — it's personal. White noise masks the widest range of distractions but can feel harsh over long sessions. Many people prefer pink or brown for deep work because the softer high end is less fatiguing while still covering background chatter. Try each for ten minutes and keep whichever fades into the background fastest; the best masking noise is the one you stop noticing.

Noise is often used for headphone and speaker "burn-in", and broadband noise does exercise a driver across its whole range. In practice the measurable change from burn-in is small — most of the difference people report is their ears adjusting rather than the driver physically loosening. It won't harm your headphones at moderate volume, so if you enjoy the ritual it's harmless; just don't expect a night of noise to transform how they sound.

Because brown noise puts far more energy into the low frequencies and rolls off the highs — its power drops 6 dB per octave versus white noise's flat spectrum. The result is a rumbly, waterfall-like sound with none of the sharp hiss, which most people find warmer and less irritating. If white noise sounds like static and pink like rain, brown is the low, enveloping roar of heavy surf — a common reason it's the go-to for sleep and sensitive ears.

It's the spectral slope — how energy is distributed across frequency. White noise is flat: equal power at every frequency. Pink noise falls 3 dB per octave, so each octave carries equal energy and it sounds balanced. Brown noise falls 6 dB per octave, concentrating power in the bass for a deep rumble. Same randomness, different tone: brighter to darker as you go white → pink → brown.

For many people, yes — as masking. A steady background noise can cover or soften the ringing so it's less intrusive, which is the principle behind clinical tinnitus sound therapy. It's a comfort tool, not a cure: it can make tinnitus easier to ignore, especially in quiet rooms and at bedtime, but it doesn't treat the underlying cause. Pink and brown are often more soothing than white for this. Persistent or sudden tinnitus is worth discussing with an audiologist.

As a rule of thumb, sound around 70 dB (normal conversation) is safe essentially all day. Risk to hearing starts to accumulate above about 85 dB, where safe exposure is roughly eight hours and halves for every 3 dB louder. For background noise you should be sitting well under that — comfortable, not intrusive. If the noise is the loudest thing in the room, turn it down; you get all the masking benefit at gentle levels.

It's generated from random samples in your browser, not a downloaded clip. The engine builds a couple of seconds of noise and loops the buffer, but because noise has no melody or rhythm there's nothing for your ear to latch onto as a repeat — it sounds like an endless, seamless wash. Nothing is streamed or stored, so it works offline once the page has loaded and uses no bandwidth while it plays.