Recently I’ve been testing what impact brown noise has on my ability to focus, relax, and fall asleep. It’s still too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but so far I’ve had positive experiences when it comes to enhancing focus. In fact, as I’m writing this blog post I’m listening to a recording of brown noise on my headphones.
There are many “colors” of noise and most people are familiar with white noise. Some of us are old enough to remember falling asleep while watching TV and waking up later to see “snow” accompanied by white noise. Similar to the way white light contains all the wavelengths of the visible spectrum at equal intensity, white noise has equal intensity across all frequencies audible to humans.
I always thought white noise was outright disturbing and many years ago, when my employer installed white noise emitters in the open-plan office I was sitting in, I protested heavily. They thought white noise would improve the mood and performance of employees by masking background office noise. I thought it was simply annoying.
Brown noise is, however, quite different compared to white noise, because it lowers significantly the higher frequencies (even more than what pink noise does). Someone said that brown noise resembles the roar of a river current or a strong wind, and I kind of agree with that description.
Spectrum of Brownian noise, with a slope of –20 dB per decade. Public domain image.
I hadn't heard about brown noise until Lex Fridman mentioned it a few times on his podcast, praising its effects especially on achieving deep focus when executing complex tasks (check out e.g. episode #193). The name brown noise (sometimes called Brownian noise) comes from the botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858), who discovered Brownian motion, i.e. the random motion of particles suspended in a medium.
It seems that while many noise colors (white, pink, brown) are associated with relaxation and focus, different people respond differently depending on the color. For me, brown noise clearly works much better than white (or pink) noise, at least when it comes to achieving focus.
The next step for me is to continue my experimentation especially while trying to fall asleep. Good headphones are a must (you need to hear those low frequencies) and when sitting in front of a computer I’m using a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M40x headphones. Obviously those won’t work when lying in bed, so I’m hoping a pair of Apple AirPods Pro will do the trick, despite the somewhat poorer sound quality.
I’ll be posting an update on my brown noise experimentation in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned!