Noise Generator

Play white, pink or brown noise. It's made on your device as it plays, so there's no file to download and you can leave it running as long as you like.

Pink noise

-20 dBFS

Stopped

Look after your ears. Noise has every pitch in it at once, so it packs far more energy than a single tone at the same setting. Start with your volume low and turn it up slowly.

What the three colours mean

White noise has the same energy at every frequency. That sounds like it should be neutral, and to a measuring instrument it is. But our ears don't hear per hertz; they hear per octave. The octave from 10 kHz to 20 kHz spans ten thousand hertz, while the octave from 100 Hz to 200 Hz spans just a hundred. So white noise packs far more energy into the top octaves than the lower ones, which is why it sounds thin and hissy, like a radio between stations. Pink noise fixes that. Its energy drops by 3 dB per octave, which works out as equal energy in every octave, much closer to how we actually hear. It's the one most people describe as sounding "full" or "even", more like rain or a waterfall than static. That's also why it's the standard signal for measuring audio and setting levels. Brown noise drops faster still, by 6 dB per octave, so the bass takes over. It sounds like a distant waterfall, heavy surf, or the rumble inside a plane. On small speakers you'll miss much of it, because most of its energy sits lower than a laptop or phone can play. For more on "per hertz versus per octave", and why pink is the measuring standard rather than white, see white, pink and brown noise: what the colours mean.

Tracking down rattles and buzzes

A pure tone asks your equipment one question at a time, which is precise but slow: a cabinet that rattles at 212 Hz won't react to a 200 Hz tone. Noise asks every question at once. If a speaker grille buzzes, a port chuffs, a loose screw rattles or a laptop case vibrates, noise will usually set it off straight away, where a tone sweep might go right past it.

Here's the trick: play pink noise at a moderate level and walk around the room. Rattles come from a particular spot, and it's often the furniture rather than the speaker: a cupboard door, a window frame, a light fitting. Touch the suspect while the noise plays. If the buzz stops when you rest your hand on it, you've found it, and your speaker is fine.

Matching levels between speakers

Noise is the usual way to match the volume of two speakers, because it's steady. How loud a tone sounds depends a lot on its pitch, on the speaker and on your ears, so two speakers can play the same tone at very different volumes without anything being wrong. Noise evens all that out. If two speakers sound equally loud on pink noise, they're close to matched.

The level here is shown in dBFS, or decibels below full scale. It describes what leaves your browser, not what reaches your ears. How loud it actually is in the room depends on your volume setting, your amplifier and your speakers, and this page can't see any of those. So the number here isn't a measure of loudness in the room.

Using noise to cover other sounds

Lots of people use noise to drown out distractions: traffic, a snoring partner, a busy office, or the ringing of tinnitus. It works because a steady sound makes sudden sounds less noticeable, so they stop grabbing your attention. Pink and brown are usually nicer for long stretches; white can get tiring.

Two honest notes. This is a sound generator, not a treatment. It doesn't claim to treat tinnitus, improve sleep or do anything medical, and if tinnitus is new, sudden or only in one ear, consult a specialist rather than a website. And because masking works by adding sound, it's easy to creep the volume up over a few hours. Long listening at high volume carries the same risk as any other loud sound.

Hearing nothing, or almost nothing?

On laptop and phone speakers, brown noise in particular can sound faint or almost silent. That's expected. Those tiny speakers barely play deep bass, and that's where most of brown noise's energy is. It's not a fault in your speaker or in this tool; it's the physical limit of a speaker a couple of centimetres across. Switch to pink or white to check the speaker is working, and use headphones or bigger speakers if you want to judge the low end.

Not sure where the problem is? Run the full sound check. It's six quick questions, and at the end it tells you which tool to use next.