Pink noise and white noise (does this belong in general?)

I have heard people talking about the benefits of white noise and pink noise especially when sounds seem magnified... does anyone else know about this and does it work?

depends upon your dx... white noise does help me to a point... for tinnitus but not completely... and if it's too much, then it's TOO MUCH because of my ptsd and too much of anything is just that! Have you googled this? When the pink noise was mentioned, I did google it too... interesting.

WHAT IS PINK NOISE??? I DON'T HAVE TIME TO LOOK IT UP....well OK I do but pls explain?

Pink noise is for girls?

Lol than I need some

OK, my dad was an audio engineer, so I can take this one... not speaking to the medical applications.

White noise is sound that contains every frequency in the human hearing range. It is the noise you hear when you tune a TV or radio between stations. It contains each frequency at an equal energy level... that is, every frequency at the same loudness, all mixed together.

Pink noise is useful for doing testing on audio equipment like speakers. The human hear doesn't hear all frequencies at equal level. It is more sensitive to some frequencies than others. Pink noise is white noise that is filtered so that it better represents human hearing. It is filtered so that it contains an equal energy level in each octave of music... "octave" meaning a range of frequencies, where the next octave starts at twice the frequency of the former, just like in music.

If you heard a comparison between the two, you would tell that one has a different "quality" than the other. Sort of like sound through a slightly muffled speaker.

The Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) has some more technical definitions if you search "pink noise" and "white noise", and if you go to "colors of noise" there is a list of others and some sound samples if you can figure out how to play them (I'm working on that now )

I am only familiar with the "pink" and "white" varieties.

I can't speak for anyone else, and I don't know if I'm having auditory hallucinations or if it's because of my spiritual practices, but... whenever I am exposed to white or pink noise for any length of time, I start hearing voices. Sometimes it's just one voice, sometimes many voices. It's disturbing, and I don't like it at all.

I do have an 'ambient sound' machine w/a couple of different settings - white noise (static), thunder, rain, the ocean... the actual 'nature' noises are soothing, add to my meditations, help me fall asleep. I've also got a CD that's supposed to stimulate the brain's ability to create delta waves for better sleep - it sounds all new-agey with chimes, and I can fall asleep to it, but I don't feel that I get 'better' sleep because of it.

Dave, I always thought that "white noise" was something playing the background, whether TV, radio or music, to just fill the silence to keep it from getting "deafening" or to cover up, say traffic noise.

If I listened to the noise between radio stations, I'd go APESHIT!!! Hubby keeps "listening" to a station even when another one bleeds in or when all he gets is static! YIKES!!!!!! I would call that RED NOISE because it makes me see <font color="red">RED</font>!!!!

Was it in Pink Noise that you explained about the octaves? It's the same sound, but it could be from one octave, which is eight notes, either below or higher than the first one. It could be several octaves (several sets of 8 notes) in difference. I remember that from my days of piano lessons!

I don't know much about the white/pink noises but when I sleep, I leave the TV on so that talking is just going on. It seems like that keeps the thoughts from getting into my brain & seems to eliminate my dreams.....but so does the seroquel I take.

However the other night, I fell asleep with an actual show on the TV & I ended up having a horrible dream....& woke up suddenly....to my surprise, the yelling of the words I was dreaming about was coming from the TV & entered into my mind translated into a horrible dream. I have learned to keep the TV on something like QVC or HSN where nothing emotional is going on & just the drone of talking.

It wasn't until that experience where I realized how much influence the background noise has on my mind. Noise without talking also allows words into my mind.....so have to be careful about the words that enter.

This is a fascinating topic,
Debbie

Thanks all and Dex I get it better now I need something to sleep by..I have a hepa filter in my bedroom and the noise is like a fan but I cannot get a new filter for it...its old...so I need to find something else..WISH I had a fancy wave making machine...HUGS ALL

Noise types

White noise
White noise has equal power density across the entire spectrum (per Hz basis). White Noise has constant energy at all frequencies.

"white noise" was named such because it has an equal amount of power per Hz (or whatever your unit frequency) just like white light. true white noise (with infinite bandwidth) cannot exist since it has infinite power.

White noise is noise in which the intensity of the power spectral density is constant and independent of frequency. It is equivalent to saying that the signal power for a constant bandwidth centred at frequency fo, does not change if fo is varied.

Pink noise
Pink noise has uniform power density for a relative bandwidth (octave, decade, you-name-it). Pink noise has constant energy per constant percentage bandwidth. This equates to a -3dB/octave frequency response.

It's easy to turn white noise into pink noise by running it through a 3 dB/octave filter.

For example, an octave filter centered at 1kHz has half the bandwidth of an octave filter centered at 2kHz. If pink noise is driven into each filter with the same level, the output of each filter would be the same.

At low frequencies, it got the name 1/f noise, especially when we were desperately trying to understand and eliminate it from transistors. We eventually found that it was inherent in the physics of silicon, and that, while we could lower its frequency of onset, it is here to stay. The frequency was eventually pushed so low that it came to be called "popcorn noise". Hook a pair of 3000 ohm heasphones to the output of an opamp running wide open, and you'll hear that the name fits.

Pink noise is the common name given to 1/f noise which crops up in many natural stochastic processes and approximates the power spectrum of music signals too. As the name suggests the intensity of the pink noise power spectral density is proportional to 1/f, the frequency. An interesting characteristic of such a noise signal is that the noise power for exponentially increasing bandwidths is constant. What this means is that given a bandpass filter with a constant Q (ratio of centre frequency and bandwidth) the output power of the filter fed by 1/f noise is constant irrespective of the centre frequency. Hence the use of 1/f (pink noise) sources in combination with audio graphic equalisers and octave band or third octave band real time analysers.

Isn't it also true that white noise is entirely uncorrelated whereas pink noise is correlated over short time scales? the fact that the power spectrum of colored noise is not flat across the entire frequency spectrum automatically implies this. you should recall: autocorrelation in time <-- Fourier --> PSD in frequency therefore if the noise is not white you will not get a delta function in time autocorrelation, therefore there will be some correlation.

Where did pink noise name came from ?
"red noise" got its name after a connection with red light which is on the low end of the visable light spectrum. red noise is white noise run through an integrator (with 1/(jf) frequency response or -6 dB/octave) so low frequencies are emphasized and highs are attenuated. the power spectrum of red noise is proportional to the square of the magnitude of the filter ( 1/(f^2) ).

"pink noise" (a.k.a. "flicker noise" or "1/f noise") is halfway between white noise and red noise. so its rolloff is at a -3 dB/octave rate.

ah yeah... I'm beginning to remember this from my broadcast engineering days...

as someone said I think, pink noise has more bass than white noise... so that would make the difference for whether you prefer white or pink.. if you had any hearing loss. If you have an MP3, you can download either pink or white noise to listen to and use... Hope this helps...

WOW thanks Sky I think white noise would fit me best then cause I am not big on bass...like when kids are driving with their bass up.....I wanna scream......I don't have an mp3 player but have to work on this cause it may be my ticket off sleeping meds and also I can shut my dirty hepa filter off...I never heard of any noise but white