Whoosh!

When I sleep, I like to drown out outside sounds with something akin to "white noise". Technically, "white noise" is something quite harsh to listen to; the "White noise" setting on sleeping machines is actually "pink noise", or a filtered noise which is much more mellow. My wife and I had a nice machine made by Sharper Image in the 80's that worked really well, but it died. We looked around for a replacement, but never found one we thought was satisfactory. Usually, the speakers were too small to get the pleasing low end that is soothing and that masks the noises from outside. Second, the sound choices often didn't include just a simple "Static" or constant white noise sound. Third, most of these were hideously expensive for what they did.

So I came up with what I think is a better solution. I put a stereo in the bedroom, with inputs for an iPod. Using a synthesizer, I recorded a pleasing "whoosh" sound in stereo, for about a minute. This can be loaded into the iPod, and played on repeat. The newer iPods, and probably other brands of mp3 players, can play the mp3 without gaps, so you can let it run all night without interruption.

I've done some careful editing so that there are no clicks or pops when the file repeats. This was tricky since white noise (and similar things) are non-periodic and so there are no obvious splice points. I encoded the file at 320 kbps, so it is small (about 4 MB) and shouldn't take up much room on your iPod.

You can download it from the Tea With Warriors website here:
Whoosh!