New sound: park river

This month's sound is a recording of a river at my family's favourite park.  This park has a bridge running over one part of the river, and one day in early September when we were walking over the bridge, I decided to grab a brief recording of the river.  I also took a few pictures of it, one of which can be seen above.

This sound is 51 seconds in length and 1.07 MB in size.  You can download it directly from the Free White Noise Sounds website, or from the mirror at Mediafire.  I hope you enjoy this sound, and I'll be back near the end of next month with another one.

New Sound: rain from inside storage shed

I'm going to try to put up one new sound every month, unless I acquire a severe backlog of new sounds like I had last month (although I believe it was mainly not posting in about 15 months that actually caused that backlog, so it's not likely to happen again if I stick to this).  This month's sound was recorded one day in July.  After I had finished mowing the lawn, it began to rain quite heavily, so when I went to put the lawnmower back in the storage shed, I decided to grab a recording of the rain.  This one sounds a little harsher and louder than the three other rain sounds I've already put up.  If my notes are correct, this is also the last sound from the first White Noise Megamix to be put up separately, so the next sound I put up will be something brand new.

This file is 33 seconds in length and about 710 KB in size.  You can download it directly from the website or from the mirror at Mediafire.  I hope you enjoy it.  I always like to know how my sounds are being used, so please leave a comment or send me an email if you feel like it.

Any requests for what the next sound should be?  Something from inside the house or outside?  Let me know if there's anything you'd like to hear that isn't already up, and I shall do my best to accommodate.

New Sound: rainstorm at night

I have added another new sound to the Free White Noise Sounds site.  "Rainstorm at night" is a one-minute, loopable recording of a rainstorm that I made from my porch about a year ago.  It seems to be quite a bit louder than the other rainstorm sound that has been up there for a while now, which is nice if you want a little bit of variety in your white noise recordings.

You can download the 1.25 MB .wav file directly from the site or from its mirror at Mediafire.  I hope you have been enjoying these new sounds that I've put up recently.  Please let me know how they're working for you, and if you've got any requests for other sounds you'd like to hear, please let me know.

New Sound: waterfall at Toronto Zoo

I recently added another sound to the site: the sound of a waterfall at the Toronto Zoo. This waterfall has a walkway that allows people to walk behind it, and when we were there last summer I decided to grab a brief audio recording of it.

It's about 46 seconds in length and 988 KB in size, and can be downloaded directly from the Free White Noise Sounds website or from its mirror at Mediafire.  This is one of a handful of previously unreleased sounds that I used in the White Noise Megamix that I posted earlier this week; the others will also be up on the site shortly.  Enjoy!

New Mix: White Noise Megamix

One limitation of the white noise recordings I have made is their brevity.  When I needed to use white noise to rock my baby to sleep, I got around this limitation in two ways: simply looping the sounds on my computer's media player, or making CDs with the same sound played back to back numerous times.  I imagine that anyone who uses my recordings uses one or both of these methods as well (if anyone uses them differently, please let me know, as I'd love to know how these sounds are being used).

While this is fine for making a one-minute recording of a rainstorm or a fan last for hours, sometimes a little variety can be nice, too.  To this end, I once tried making a CD with one sound repeated for about ten minutes, followed by another, then another, etc.  However, this made for some very awkward and sometimes startling transitions between sounds, so I never got much use out of that CD.

Recently, I decided to try using some audio editing software (Audacity, to be precise) to combine a number of white noise recordings into a single, continuous megamix.  Most of the sounds are looped two or three times in order to make them last longer.  Also, new sounds are introduced by gradually fading out the current sound while the next one fades in; this helps to avoid abrupt transitions between sounds.  White Noise Megamix can currently be downloaded from Mediafire, and consists of the following sounds, in sequence:

• radio static
• eggs boiling
• Water Feature Wall (with the sound of a cardinal's call mixed in)
• beach waves
• waterfall
• rainstorm at night
• rain from inside storage shed
• rain from inside car
• spring rainstorm
• mixer
• dryer
• aquarium filter (2 recordings)
• eggs boiling
• radio static

The megamix opens and closes with the same radio static sound, with no fades, so the entire thing can be looped very easily; a 3-track CD, for example, could be made for a 70-minute continuous mix.

Most of these sounds are already available on the Free White Noise Sounds website; I'll make sure to get the remaining sounds up soon in case anyone would like to hear them on their own.  The entire megamix clocks in at 23:36 and is a 29.7 MB .wav file.  I hope you enjoy it!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2qzmzommzzy/White Noise Megamix.wav

New Sound: radio static

This is a short recording of radio static.  It's pretty simple, even for white noise.  The only real story I have to share about it is that this is the sound that I used to lull my baby to sleep for many months.  After trying things like burning CDs with loops of white noise or just looping the noise straight from my computer, I found that the radio static worked best of all.

The sound is just over a minute in length and can be downloaded directly from the Free White Noise Sounds website, or from its mirror at Megaupload.

New Sound: Water Feature Wall

Our local library has a reading garden - a little fenced in area outside the library with lots of trees, benches, tables and chairs, and a little "river" flowing through it.  It's quite a tranquil place to spend some time on a sunny day, and our kids love to walk (or run) around it, hide in the trees, and watch the water flowing by.  One day while our youngest son (the one who had colic as a baby, and who was the whole reason I started recording white noise in the first place) was playing quietly in the garden, I decided to grab a recording of the "Water Feature Wall" - a rock wall that has a few water spouts that empty onto a metal grate covered with smooth rocks.  The recording is about 37 seconds long, and at a couple of points you can hear the clack of rocks as my son was playing around with them.

You can download the sound directly from the Free White Noise Sounds site, or use the mirror at Megaupload.  I hope you enjoy the sound and that it works well for whatever you need it for.

New Sound: rain from inside car

This is the sound of another rainstorm, only instead of recording it from my front porch, I recorded this one from inside my car.  It sounds quite different from the rain storm sound I posted last year, so if you're looking for some variety in the white noise sounds that you use, this may be worth checking out.  You can download the sound directly from the Free White Noise Sounds website, or use the mirror at Megaupload.

As always, if there are any problems or if you have any questions or comments, please let me know by leaving a comment here or sending me an email.

New Sound: eggs boiling

It's been a long time since a new sound has appeared on this site, but as I recently promised, here it is.  I was boiling eggs for an egg salad sandwich one day when I noticed that the combination of the bubbling water and the eggs colliding with each other made a rather unique sound.  I recorded it for just over a minute, and the resulting .wav file lends itself very nicely to looping should you want something longer than a minute.

You can hear the sound for yourself right here (or download it from here if the first link is not working).  Enjoy, and I will have another sound up very soon.

File mirrors, take 2

It looks like Skydrive was a poor choice for an alternate hosting site.  Less than 2 days after I made mirrored versions of all of the sound files available via Skydrive, I noticed that none of the mirror links were working at all; furthermore, I was unable to download any of my own files from Skydrive.  So today I made the decision to try Megaupload as the host for my mirrored files.  Hopefully this will turn out to be a better choice; as always, if anything on the site or this blog is giving you problems, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Also, I will try to get a new sound up by the end of the week.  Thank you for your patience!

[UPDATE (2009-08-26)]: The ads on Megaupload were driving me nuts, so as of today I am using Mediafire as a mirror host.

A brief update

Believe it or not, I haven't forgotten about this blog and its sister site.  I've been busy with many other things, but I've still been doing a bit of tweaking to the Free White Noise Sounds site whenever I've gotten a chance.  Earlier this year, I added a Help page that attempts to provide answers to questions I've received via email.  Most recently, I added links to mirrored versions of each sound file after noticing that the bandwidth for some (or possibly all) of the files had been exceeded (for what period of time, I don't know, as Google does not provide details on the exact bandwidth limits for sites hosted by Page Creator); if you have ever tried to download a file from the site and found that its bandwidth had been exceeded, you are welcome to go back and try again.

As for actual sounds, I have recorded a few new ones in recent months, and as soon as I get a chance to give them a proper listen, I'll get as many of them posted as possible.  In the meantime, if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments about the site or this blog, I'd be very happy to hear them.  You can leave a comment after this (or any) post, or you can send me an email.  Thanks for reading, and I'll be back soon!

New Sound: rain storm

I'll try not to wait so long before I upload another sound.

Hehe, easier said than done, I guess. Three months seems to be the standard time between posts for this blog. Although this latest sound is the freshest recording I've ever posted here, so maybe that can make up for the lack of frequent updates.

It started raining very heavily here about an hour ago, so I decided to head out to the front porch and try to record some of it. I think it turned out fairly well, so I'm glad to be able to share this recording of a spring rain storm with you.

Thanks for reading and listening. I have received some very nice comments and emails about this blog (and its companion site), and I am always happy to know that my recordings are helping people to settle their babies (and sometimes even themeslves) to sleep. As always, if there are any particular sounds you are looking for, or if you are having trouble using the sounds that I post here, please let me know, and I will see what I can do.

New Sound: mixer

It's been a while, but I finally have a new white noise sound available. This one is of the mixer in our kitchen, which at the time was hard at work mixing the batter for a batch of brownies. The recording is just over a minute in length and contains no gaps, so it should be very well-suited for looping.

If you manage to use this white noise sound to put your baby to sleep, perhaps you might like to whip up a batch of brownies yourself; the recipe I used can be found here.

I hope you enjoy the sound (and the brownies, if you make them). I'll try not to wait so long before I upload another sound. If you have any requests or anything, please leave a comment below.

New Sound: beach

Last summer when we were at the beach in Grand Bend, Ontario, I decided to try to record some sound whilst walking around on the shoreline. The result of that recording can be found in my beach sound, which is nearly 3 minutes long and consists mainly of the sound of waves. The waves at this beach have always been quite big any time we've been there, so I think they really lend themselves well to being recorded.

Please check the sound out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Welcome to the Free White Noise blog!

Greetings! I guess the first thing to do would be to let you know about the Free White Noise website. That is where all of my free white noise sounds can actually be found.

So why a blog too? I just thought it would be much easier to keep people up to date on the latest changes and additions to the site this way; to that end, you will find links in the sidebar to subscribe to the blog either in a feed reader or by email. A blog also allows for more interactivity, especially in the comments after each post; please use them to let me know what you think of the sounds, and also if there's anything else you'd like to see or hear on these sites.

I've already made a few other recordings, so you can expect to see them show up on the site fairly soon. I'll likely use the blog to provide additional information about each sound as it gets added to the site. In the meantime, please head over to the website to see what's already there; I hope the white noise sounds will provide a soothing listening experience for you or whoever else you play them for.