Drowning Out the Night

In today’s fast-paced world, it can be hard enough to sleep without having to worry about background noises that keep you awake. The backfiring car down the road can wake you up with a start, and the cat’s yowling at each other outside can keep you from falling asleep in the first place. You could sleep with earplugs, which can be annoying since you will either lose them halfway through the night or won’t be able to hear your alarm clock in the morning, or you could check you some sound machines to give you relief from the nighttime sounds that are keeping you awake.

Sound machines come in many different varieties, shapes, and sizes, but they all use soft background noises to drown out the more disturbing noises of the night. These types of machines usually use several different sound frequencies, which allows them to drown out different types of noises.

When you’re choosing a sound machine, you should think about your personal preferences in white noise. If you don’t want to be distracted at all, you might want to choose a machine that masks sounds with a radio-static-like noise, which won’t be distracting since it doesn’t bring any particular pictures to mind. If you want to calm yourself down with visions of a soothing environment, try sound machines that use waterfall noises or ocean wave noises to both soothe your mind and drown out background noises throughout the night.

If you just have trouble falling asleep, you might want to look at sound machines with automatic shut off functions. They’ll run for a couple of hours until you’re deeply asleep, and then they’ll turn themselves off so as not to waste electricity. If you’re a very light sleeper who is constantly waking up to small noises, though, you might want to check out the sound machines that run all night so that the noises that wake you are drowned out even after you’re asleep.

Check out these popular white noise sound machines:

• SleepMate 980a by Marpac
• S-550 by Sound Oasis
• Sound Spa by Homedics