I have started listening to random American city council meetings lately for white noise. Since they’re all bureaucratic-flavored boredom anyway.

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
    1·
    8 months ago

    That’s just noise. White noise is a specific kind of noise.

    My weird way of using white noise is I have a set of scripts to precisely control my volume. I turn on a video of white noise on youtube, then I run my script to slowly, steadily raise the volume up to whatever level I want.

    The entire point of the script is to avoid a clear moment when the noise starts or stops. To further hide the transition from consciousness, I have delay built in, and I recently added randomized delay between volume increments.

    I run the script, and an hour later brown noise is blasting in my room, but I never have to be conscious of it.

    • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      8 months ago

      So “background ambience” would be a better term to describe the city council meetings?

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 months ago

        Words have more than one meaning and your use of it is completely fine imo.

        White noise can also mean:

        meaningless or distracting commotion, hubbub, or chatter

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
          0·
          8 months ago

          I agree we get to map definitions as we see fit. I propose we use the word “noise” for what you mentioned, and when the term gets longer it should refer to something more specific.

          In the term “white noise”, the “white” refers to equal energy output in each wavelength, I believe. It’s distinguished from pink noise, brown noise, etc.

          Of course, it should also refer to white nationalist propaganda, because there’s no way that could cause any confusion.

          “I put a little white noise so I can go so sleep easier”

          😬

      • verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        8 months ago

        No. There is occasional some yelling, both from and at the commissioners, I don’t want anyone to be startled out of relaxation.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        0·
        8 months ago

        I think literal noise is a good term for it.

        Well, if you’re using it to isolate yourself, then I think noise is good for it. Like if you don’t want to hear the neighbors or roommates, noise is good because noise obstructs signals.

        And more generally, noise refers to sounds that are not explicitly wanted or requested. Which is also what background is.

        It’s a good question. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to instruct a chatbot to write a 20000 word essay on the question of what exactly the best term is, and then pipe that into the “say” command in mac os terminal and use my volume control scripts to make it sort of softly murmur in the background as I go to sleep tonight. I don’t think that would make me a crazy person. At least not right away.

        Ambiance. I like that.

  • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
    1·
    8 months ago

    Not too weird, but I found this accidentally: a subwoofer under my bed (the speakers that came with it broke)

    I found a ten hour long brown noise mp3 that is set to loop indefinitely on an old burner phone. Through the subwoofer it sounds exactly like the warp engines from Star Trek TNG. Incredibly comforting, and hard to sleep without

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
      0·
      8 months ago

      There are actually videos of warp engine noise.

      Have you found a way to loop that MP3 with crossfade? My current problem is there’s a small noticeable gap of silence between repeated tracks.

      • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 months ago

        Man I know, and I tried them. None of them were quite right, they didn’t accomplish what I wanted. Like the sound on the show is just a little different in real life. Part of it I think, is the treble (insert tribble joke)

        It really all clicked when I fucked up and broke the speakers so it’s all coming from the subwoofer

    • june@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Ok that’s actually really rad. I’m gonna have to fuck around a bit and see if I can do smth similar.

      • acid_falcon@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 months ago

        Logitech z313 is what I got, I just checked my order history and it was like $57. I’m going to try to track down a link for the audio file I use. I have the file, but I don’t remember the source

        • june@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          I was thinking I could grab one from goodwill. It just needs to be the subwoofer that has the input and it’s g2g.

  • Cagi@lemmy.ca
    1·
    3 months ago

    Lately my external HDD making old school hard drive clicky groans as it downloads overnight. I had forgotten computers used to sound like this until I bought it; it’s nostalgic and soothing.

  • LoganNineFingers@lemmy.ca
    0·
    8 months ago
    • Late Night with Seth Meyers
    • Last Week Tonight With John Oliver
    • The Daily Show

    I usually watch monologue / opening segments and pass out during the boring guest interviews.

  • Uwu_im_toxic@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 months ago

    Without fail, the planet scanning part of Mass Effect 2 makes me incredibly sleepy, so in moments of infuriating insomnia, I’ve put on a video of that

  • proctonaut@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 months ago

    I have a recording of the big machines where I work. Rhythmic clunking and whirring motors puts me right to sleep.

  • writeblankspace@lemm.ee
    0·
    8 months ago

    a recording of my classes when the teacher isn’t talking

    it helps because it’s just random people talking… I just have to make sure I don’t talk while recording

  • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    I watch my city council meetings attentively. Local politics has an enormous impact on your day-to-day life and it’s also an area where being informed and engaged is most easily able to actually effect the outcome you want. City councillors are more likely to have their view swayed by a modest letter-writing campaign than your Member of Parliament/Representative.

    For white noise, I often use Age of Empires games. I’ve got Survivalist’s Twitch stream open as I type this, but I couldn’t even tell you if he’s winning or losing at the moment because it’s mostly there as background noise.

    • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      8 months ago

      Yeah, but the city council meeting I’m listening to is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean (Filipino here), so I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. And given the geographical distance, the impact on my day-to-day life is… zero.

      But still, the stories I hear during the meetings are entertaining and they really do help me understand America just that little bit more. Curiosity for the win!

        • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          Interesting. It looks quite dull from the thumbnails indeed. At the moment my current source of city council white noise is Spokane, Washington - the stories that people tell during open forum are entertaining and I sometimes hate how an amazing story gets cut off by the 2-minute limit.

            • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
              0·
              8 months ago

              Well, Spokane enforces a 2 minute limit. What city do you recommend I listen to if I want to hear longer open forum stories?

              EDIT: Oh wait, I replied from the inbox, nevermind. Fort Scott, Kansas is definitely the place.

                • Lemuria@lemmy.mlOP
                  0·
                  8 months ago

                  So… if I have the money to fly down to Fort Scott do I get to ramble on for 3 hours about how their city council has been such a great source of white noise, generating additional white noise for me in the process that I can use once I return to Manila?