How often do you lay awake at night trying to sleep, but unable to drift into peaceful slumber due to the noise around you? Maybe the neighbor's dogs are barking and won't shut up, or perhaps your spouse has rolled onto their back and started to snore very loudly. Perhaps you have rowdy neighbors or live in an apartment complex with paper-thin walls.

We have all experienced these types of situations and wished that there was some way that we could stop all the noise and get some rest. After tossing and turning for what seems like hours, the solution dawns on us. We need to drown out the noise by making our own louder noise. We resort to anything that we can think of to accomplish the deed - fans, air conditioners, heaters even hairdryers.

Fortunately a White Noise Machine is a much better solution

Similar to the sounds of fan motors, waterfalls or the rush of air experienced when traveling on airplanes, White Noise can be specifically generated either electronically or mechanically.

White Noise isn't really a noise, so much as a hissing sound, created by combining all the frequencies of sound in the human range of hearing together. So just as White Light is composed of all of the frequencies in the visible light spectrum, White Noise similarly contains all frequencies of sound. (You can think of White Noise as 20,000 tones playing at the same time).

White Noise Machines do not actually block noise around you but work by creating a distraction for the brain so that you become less aware them. The brain hears and records all frequencies of sound but YOU only really hear what you place your attention upon.

Say you are in a noisy room having a conversation with a group of people. If you are interested in the conversation you will be able to successfully tune-out the background sounds so as not to not miss any of the details. If however, somewhere else in the room there is a distraction, then your attention is diverted away from the conversation to the new stimulus. When you eventually do return to the conversation, then it is likely that you may have missed what was last said and therefore have to ask the person to repeat themselves.

So now, lets think of a White Noise Machine as the people that you are having a conversation with except that rather than talking with only a handful of people, you are interacting with thousands. Your brain is literally hearing all frequencies in the sound spectrum but not allowing YOU the listener to pay attention to any one of them. The noises that you found distracting before become just other voices in a multitude of voices. Sleep comes easily because your brain no longer puts you on alert and you are free to drift into slumber.

Very simply, White Noise Machines come in two basic styles - Those that produce the noise mechanically and those that do so electronically.

Mechanical units produce the sound by means of a whirring internal fan that forces the air out of adjustable slots. By adjusting the size of the aperture the tone of the sound can be modified depending upon the user preference. Some units also have speed controls on the fan that increase the volume and intensity the sound.

Other units produce the sound using electronics and disburse the sound using speaker systems. Some advantages of these models are the ability to better adjust the volume, use with headphones or set on/off times with inbuilt timers. Some of these models can also generate other natural sounds, such as thunderstorms, waterfalls and surf.

White Noise Machines are an excellent way to deal with noise. They produce a calming sound that effectively neutralizes noises in the environment and help a person quickly and easily drift into sleep.