• Trashcanman@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m curious about this too. Maybe they are listening with headphones? I have no idea if they make them like this but it seems like an opportunity for white noise machine makers to just add Bluetooth and they would sell more. Maybe?

    • mindbleach@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      White noise is literally random numbers. Your machine can do it using approximately zero percent of its available resources.

      In a very real sense, any single transistor can do it, and computer engineering is an effort to keep them from doing it.

      • bob_wiley@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I got two of them. One is on my nightstand in my bedroom, the other is a portable one for when I travel. I don’t like the idea of having my phone playing something all night, nor so I want to sleep next to a computer playing audio all night. A notification could come in and wake me up, an update could get pushed and the noise would die, the internet tends to go down a lot a night so the noise would cut out, lots of little annoying things. I recognize there are ways to mitigate against some of this, but it easier to just get a white noise maker and be done with it. Just push a button to toggle it on/off. Plus the white noise maker is making actual white noise instead of looping an audio file.

        • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          I’ve never had any of these problems personally. Not that I have anything against white noise machines but that’s why people see them as superfluous. They kind of are.

          But maybe if you have spotty internet that makes sense.

          • bob_wiley@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m also old, so that might have something to do with it. I assume the Spotify user base skews young.

            Apple did add a white noise maker into iOS 15. I assume I’ll end up trying that at some point if I’m looking to pack extra-extra light, or just end up in a situation where I need to sleep somewhere and forgot my white noise maker. They just put it in a really weird spot (Settings > Accessibility > Hearing: Audio/Visual > Background Sounds) so I’m sure most people don’t know it’s there or find it too much trouble to access. I just setup it up so I can tap the back of my phone twice to toggle it on/off, maybe that will lead me to trying it out… we’ll see if it gets annoying enough that I need to find some other way to make it easier to access.

            • OldFartPhil@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Sometimes I play rain/storm sounds I’ve downloaded from YouTube. Other times I use the iPhone white noise generator. I’ve set up 2 Siri shortcuts (one for sound on and one for sound off), but tapping the back sounds like a good way to do it, too.

            • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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              1 year ago

              Wow you are right that is hidden. I have an iPhone and had no idea that was there. I’ll have to try it out.

    • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      There are apps that can make white noise while using 0 network really. If I was Spotify I’d write a library into the app that detected white noise and stopped streaming, and just turned on the local generator in their app.

      • mindbleach@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’d have a Javascript one-liner producing white noise, except web audio is a Gordian knot of inscrutable identical-sounding types and contexts and maps and whateverthefuck. Documentation reads like they forgot to implement it and hoped nobody would notice.

        How do you generate noise? Well you need a sink. How do I get a sink? Well you need an event. How do you get an event? Well you need a processor. How do you get a processor? Well you need a context. How do you get a context? Well you need a node. How do you get a node? Well you need a sink. I’m going to stab you now. Understandable.

        • mindbleach@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Anyway it’s something like data:text/html,{script} ac = new AudioContext(); wn = ac.createScriptProcessor( 4096, 1, 1 ); wn.onaudioprocess = (e) => e.outputBuffer.getChannelData(0).forEach( (v,i,a) => a[i] = Math.random() ); wn.connect( ac.destination ); {/script} except with whatever dark wizardry makes output reach a speaker.

          Also I’m not sure .forEach works on whichever array-like type was chosen for audio channels. This stupid language has so many incompatible and incomplete array implementations.

          edit: And angle brackets on script and /script, because this stupid website fucked up its Markdown. Preventing random HTML strings in comments: excellent, necessary, obvious; it is not 1999 anymore. Doing so by deleting the entire goddamn thing as if you parsed it before removing it: DEEPLY TROUBLING.