Pink noise generator
Halfway between the hiss of white and the rumble of brown. Pink is the one most people settle on when they try all three.
Pink noise loses 3 dB of power per octave as frequency rises, which means every octave carries the same energy. Because human hearing is roughly logarithmic too, that makes pink the colour that sounds most evenly balanced — closer to rain or a waterfall than to a hiss.
Where pink noise fits
| Compared with | Difference | Choose pink when |
|---|---|---|
| White | Less high-frequency energy | White sounds sharp, tinny or fatiguing |
| Brown | More mid-range | Brown feels muffled or fails to cover voices |
| Green | Wider, less focused on the middle | You want a full bed rather than a nature-like band |
Pink noise and sleep
Pink noise is the colour that turns up most often in sleep research, usually in studies where short bursts are played in time with slow brain waves during deep sleep in a lab. Those experiments are interesting and small, and they are not what you are doing here: continuous pink noise from a browser is a masking sound, and masking is a real, well-understood benefit on its own. We would rather say that plainly than borrow the lab result to sell the tab.
Good settings
- Falling asleep: 50–60%, eight-hour timer, headphones optional.
- Baby in the room: keep it low and place the speaker away from the cot; noise for infants should be quiet and at a distance.
- Open-plan office: 45–60% — enough to blur speech, low enough to talk over.
- Tinnitus comfort: some people find a soft bed easier than silence. That is a comfort measure, not therapy; see safety.
Questions
What is pink noise good for?
Masking a room with a balanced sound: it covers speech better than brown and is easier on the ears than white, which is why it is the most common choice for long sessions.
Is pink noise the same as rain sounds?
They are close relatives. Steady rain is roughly pink in spectrum, which is why the two are so often mistaken for each other. Rain recordings add irregular detail; this is the smooth version.
Can I run pink noise all night?
Yes, at a low volume. Set the timer to eight hours and it fades out at the end rather than stopping abruptly.
Does pink noise improve deep sleep?
Small laboratory studies have tested short bursts timed to slow-wave activity, with mixed results. Continuous pink noise from a browser is not that experiment; treat it as masking.
Running this on a phone? The Brainwave Generator app keeps playing with the screen off, works without a connection, and carries the same engine. Free on iOS and Android.