[Brown Noise]
What do you hear? If you said “white noise,” you’re only half right. The clip you just listened to is actually called brown noise. This new kind of noise has been popping up as an alternative to the more familiar white noise, but what is brown noise and why do people use it?
[White noise]
Well, white noise, which you’re hearing now, has equal power across all frequencies, meaning that you’re hearing all of those frequencies equally. Meanwhile, brown noise is more intense on the lower end of those frequencies, giving it a slightly different sound, more similar to rushing water as opposed to radio static-esque white noise.
MARGARET SPRIGG-DUDLEY: I mean it does honestly sound brown to me, but maybe that’s just because it’s called that. I think to me it sounds like…like the dirt, you know, like it’s more of a, like a deeper tone, it’s just a baseline sort of thing.
That’s Northwestern sophomore Margaret Sprigg-Dudley, who started using “steady sounds” like white and brown noise to drown out distractors in noisy environments.
SPRIGG-DUDLEY: What I use it for is if I’m in like a public area and I’m trying to do like reading specifically I’ll like pop in the earbuds and put it on.
When I got to college is when I started doing like white noise when it was loud and I would go and find a white noise playlist on Spotify and I would play that and, but I didn’t like how I was like, always switching songs because that was like, distracting me and I found one that I really liked that was brown noise and it was like, I guess I liked it because it was like deeper, I guess.
Sprigg-Dudley is not the only one who experiences improved focus from brown noise. Audiologist Grace Szatkowski says that there is a scientific reason why “steady sounds” like brown noise help.
GRACE SZATKOWSKI: With steady sounds, over time, the brain can do something called habituate to the sound, and so what that does is it basically suppresses the brain’s response to the sound so that you’re not so aware of it and that you can pay more attention to more important things in your surroundings, theoretically.
Like Sprigg-Dudley, Northwestern freshman Julia Price uses brown noise to focus. But, she doesn’t just use it to shut out external distractions.
JULIA PRICE: Somehow, it just turns off my brain. Like I will have the brown noise playing and I’ll be like, usually it’s like when I’m reading like on an airplane or if I’m trying to, like, if I really need to crack down and do work, for me like that’s so unheard of because I am like, I’m thinking things all the time, but like for some reason I listen to the brown noise and it’s just like quiet.
Listening to brown noise is said to have a variety of benefits, like improved focus and concentration, better sleep, and stress and anxiety relief. It’s even been used as a treatment to help relieve symptoms of tinnitus. However, some research suggests that, while steady sounds are useful for drowning out external noises, non-steady sounds like ocean noises might be better at distracting your brain while you fall asleep.
SZATKOWSKI: The more recent studies have shown that noises that aren’t steady, such as ocean noise,
[Ocean sounds]
is actually more helpful than steady-state noise to distract your brain, to get you sleeping, to get you relaxing. And it’s likely related to that process of habituation, so you’re not trying to suppress that sound and put in the background because that noise is more unpredictable, it’s not steady, so your brain is paying attention to it more.
As research continues about the benefits and uses of sound, it’s important to keep in mind that its impacts can vary from person to person. At the end of the day, it’s whatever works for you.
SZATKOWSKI: You know, everyone has their own individual preferences as what they like, too, so not only that aspect of the brain of like saturating the sound potentially could influence it, but also like what some sounds do you enjoy? Cause you know there’s that aspect of like, what just makes you feels good?
So, whether you like to study and sleep in silence, with classical music, or in the company of white, brown, or even pink noise, happy listening.
[Classical music]
From Evanston, I’m Juliet Allan, WNUR News
