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The Best Sleep Music – Sound Machines for Restful Sleeping

Sleep music and white noise sound machines are used for sound masking, as usual when having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, due to external sounds. There are several manufacturers on the market, with everything from cheapy white noise machines to moderately expensive machines which deliver quality sound, ensuring a restful good nights sleep for even the most light sleeper.

White noise machines are also very conducive to people who struggle with sleep disorders such as insomnia or restlessness. The many sounds which a quality machine can discharge can definitely be helpful in inducing sleep, as well as obstructing nighttime noises that can interrupt sleep.

Another person who would prefer these machines are those who have to sleep with one who snores. Despite many wonderful products on the market today to alleviate snoring, it still occurs regularly with many people. A quality sound machine can mask such burdensome snoring sounds.

Another possible use for a sound machine is in an open concept office, where even low volume talking from co-workers several yards away can be disturbing to your concentration.

So, here are the top selling, and most highest rated sleep music and white noise sound machines on Amazon today.

1. Ecotones Duet Adaptive Therapy Sleep Sound Machine
The Ecotones unit is very well designed. It provides attractive sound with a separate woofer and tweeter mounted on top. .
The sounds provided are of admirable quality. Unlike lesser quality units, which consistently use a recording that keeps repeating and soon proves bothersome, these recordings, which Ecotones calls sound stories, go on for thirty minutes before repeating. It is implicitly impossible to determine when sound story finishes and then starts up again.
There are several different sounds to choose from including something called city… so a city dweller who is away from home can feel right at home! However, the ever familiar meadow, brook, the crackling fireplace, waterfall, ocean, are all extremely comforting. For something different, try the train, or meditation. There also is a plain vanilla white noise setting, if you wish.
The response feature, whereupon the microphone picks up ambient sounds like coughing and snoring and adjusts the volume accordingly, works extremely well.

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A unique feature to Ecotones is the ‘richness’ setting. Adjusting this on your sound story will result in variations of your sleep music. A nice feature allowing you to customize your own personal sound stories.

2. Sound Oasis s3000 Sound Therapy System
This deluxe model features 20 main sounds & 5 mix sounds, which can create 120 sound environment possibilities. It features 3 speakers (including subwoofer), which results in champion sound quality. It also has an AM/FM stereo radio with 3 presets and a backlit, dual 12/24 hour clock with 3 alarm sounds complete with digital calendar.
There’s a timer with 4 positions: continuous, 30 min., 60 min. and 90 min. with gentle-off, plus a nap timer. Most captivating is the proprietary ‘Bio-Sync’ sound, a random jumble of what sounds like musical notes, wind chimes, voices, and more. While it sounds strange, it is incredibly soothing. You can adjust the Bass and Treble. The sound of the speakers are rich and deep without being at max settings but if you turned it all the way up it would be really loud
The “memo” track is unique in the sound machines tested here – it lets you record up to 15 seconds and plays it over and over again. You can use this as an alarm too if you wish. The capabilities are endless as to what you can use that one feature for.

3. Marpac SleepMate 980A
This is the least expensive sound machine, but it is also a white noise machine only… no collection of sounds. There are advantages and disadvantages… the main advantage is, there is zero chance you will hear a sound looping!
There are two rings on the unit which control the tone and to some degree the volume of the white noise:
1. A Top Ring – You can adjust this ring to allow the anywhere from 3 to 8 holes to be exposed, thereby affecting the sound level.
2. A Base Ring – Allowing a larger opening into the unit when adjusting this ring will create a lower tone. Making the opening smaller will create a higher tone. Again, adjust the ring to your liking.
One of the most effective things for a successful use of this machine is where you place it. Marpac recommends putting it away from you, such as on a dresser across the room. This seems to make the sound bounce around the room and give you a fuller feel of the sound. For some, this won’t generate a loud enough sound, so if you wish, you could put it on the nightstand right next to you and enjoy a loud hissing sound.

4. Ecotones Adaptive Sound Therapy Machine
The grand daddy of all sleep therapy machines, this is THE most exquisite of all those we tried. This unit features twelve Sound Stories which include: Soothing Seaside, Calming Waves, Babbling Brook, Gentle Rain, Distant Thunderstorm, Nature’s Meadow, Crackling Fireplace, Warming Campfire, Relaxing Fan, Big City Background, Restful Train Ride and Pure Meditation.
The unit’s speaker pair and a 2.4-liter sound chamber have been tuned to produce a full range of quality sound that is simply amazing.
This unit, like it’s baby brother the Duet, features the adaptive sound technology that will step-up volumes to mask outside (interfering) noise. It works extremely well and is most useful if you live near a noisy street or even if you have a snorer in the room! But this machine also includes a manual mode (stays at user present level) and a background mode which comes on when the room is quiet and automatically dims when conversation is present. This is the “Cadillac” of sleep music sound machines!

5. Marsona TSC-330 White Noise Travel Sound Conditioner
Here’s a small-ish sound machine that you can take on the road with you. Who hasn’t been in a hotel/motel room and been aggravated by noisy guests next door? The Marsona TSC-330 White Noise Travel Sound Conditioner has rain, waterfall, and surf sounds.
This machine is about the size of a thick paperback novel, so is definitely smaller than competitors “non-travel” sound machines. However, it does have a beefy AC adapter with the power brick on the end. It fits fine in a standard suitcase, but if you’re only taking a small overnight bag, then it does take up a bit more room than you’ll probably like. The unit does have a battery pack so you can leave the AC adapter at home, but it too is somewhat massive.
The sound is very good for such a small unit; base is surprisingly healthy and the unit comes with it’s own travel pouch.

So there you have it, the best of the sleep music and white noise sound machines. See detailed specs and prices, along with other owners reviews, at my website.

Source: ArticlesBase.com

The Fundamentals of Sound

All sound comes from vibrations. These vibrations move through the air as waves. Imagine waves in water, ripples moving through a pond. Instead of these waves moving through the water, imagine them being pushed through the air. This is how sound would appear, if we could see it.

Sound waves are longitudinal waves, with alternating levels of compression and rarefaction. We can see these in graphic forms called waveforms.

The movement of sound is called vibration. Sound is pushed and pulled (compression and rarefaction), causing it to vibrate back and forth. The sound vibrates around the place where it initially was before the sound wave arrived. This original place of origin is called the equilibrium.

Sound has the ability to move through any form; gases, liquids or solids. The object which the sound is traveling through is the medium. Sound cannot exist if it has nothing to travel through, no medium. For this reason, sound couldn’t exist in outer space, as this is a vacuum, containing no gases, liquids or solids, therefore nothing to carry sound.

How do we create sound? Sounds are formed by vibrating an object. For example, when we strike a guitar string with a plectrum, it vibrates up and down. The vibration causes a sound by moving the air around it. As the string moves up, the air above it is compressed, and when the string moves down, the air moves with it and expands. The compressing and expanding of the air produces differences in air pressure. The differences in pressure in the air, moving away from the guitar string, create a wave of sound. This is how the guitar produces a sound that we can hear. The sounds we can hear vary as our ears are subject to various characteristics.

Often we are tasked with characterizing sounds. When describing sounds, we often use words like; loud, quiet, soft, harsh, high and low. We characterize sounds in terms of volume and pitch. The scientific equivalent of this is: amplitude or intensity and frequency. There are some characterizations that the human ear cannot detect. For example, the human ear is unable to detect the wavelength of a sound. Despite us not being able to hear the wavelength of a sound, we can see it when the sound is represented as a wave.

The amplitude of the wave is the difference in pressure as the sound wave passes. As we increase the amplitude of a sound, we increase the volume of the sound, making it louder, just as we would increase the volume on a radio. Similarly, as we decrease the amplitude, we are making the sound quieter. Amplitude can be expressed in a visual form. 

Waves carry energy, this is how they move. So it’s logical to assume the higher the energy of the wave, the higher the amplitude, and thus, the louder the sound. Correct! Therefore the lower the energy of the wave, the lower the amplitude, and the quieter the sound. The intensity of the sound dictates the perception of its loudness. Relative sound intensities are often measured in units named decibels (dB).

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As we’ve seen in pictures of waves, a wave is essentially made up of a repeating shape, or cycle. Frequency refers to the number of cycles of a sound in a second. If a sound wave has a high frequency, then the sound will have a high pitch. Conversely, if a sound has a low frequency, it will be low pitched. Just as we measure sound intensity in a unit called decibels, we measure sound frequency in Hertz.

One Hertz refers to the number of cycles per second. Increasing the frequency of a sound, thus increasing the amount of cycles per second, leaves us with a higher pitched sound. As we decrease the frequency, decreasing the amount of cycles per second, we are left with a lower pitched sound. The human ear can only detect sounds within our range. Human hearing is generally limited to frequencies between 12 Hz and 20 kHz (20,000 Hz). The limits, however, are not definite and are subject to variation. The upper limit generally decreases with age, meaning; the older we get, the less likely we are to detect high pitched sound. The limits of human hearing are not shared throughout all species. Dogs are able to detect sound vibrations higher than 20 kHz. This is why humans are unable to hear the sound that a dog whistle produces.

The nearer we are to the source of a sound, the louder we perceive the sound to be. If a sound is to travel a long distance, then the sound needs to start loud. As the sound wave moves through the air, the sound wave gets smaller as it moves away from the origin (equilibrium). The wave gets continuously smaller because the wave is spreading out; this is called spreading loss.

This loss occurs because the total amount of energy in a wave remains the same as the wave spreads from the source. When the wave gets bigger, and the sound increases in volume, the energy of the wave must spread to fill it. Therefore, the energy per unit length of the wave must get smaller. The height of amplitude decreases as the energy per unit length of the wave gets smaller.

Spreading loss isn’t the only reason that sound weakens as it moves. There’s also sound absorption. Just as a sponge can absorb a liquid, sound gets absorbed as it travels through a medium. Sound is caught by the molecules within the medium. The amount of absorption depends on the frequency of the sound. A high frequency sound has many cycles per second, therefore the particles in the medium are vibrating at a more rapid pace.

As we’ve discovered, waves vibrate and sound moves. But how fast does sound move? The answer is relative to the medium of the sound. Sounds travel faster through water than they do through air. Sound travels through water at approximately 1500 metres per seconds, but it travels through air at approximately 344 metres per second. Simple? Unfortunately not. The answer is realistically not that simple. The speed of sound is subject to many variables and is always subject to change.

The temperature affects the movement of sound. Heat, just like sound, is kinetic energy. Molecules at higher temperatures contain more energy and vibrate faster. Because the molecules vibrate faster, they allow sound waves to travel quicker. This means the higher the temperature, the faster sound can travel through it. Theoretically, if you were placed equidistant from a sound source, in the desert, and in the Arctic, you’d hear the sound quicker in the desert.

Temperature isn’t the only variable to affect sound. Humidity also affects the speed of sound. Humidity makes the air denser. When the air is dense, the air particles are tightly packed together. The particles are so tightly packed, that they vibrate more rapidly, allowing sound to be able to travel through the dense air quicker. Again, this is why there is no sound in space; because the air has no density, the sound has nothing to travel through.

In the simplest situations, sound travels in a straight line. However, interactions between sound and medium can make the transmission of sound more complicated, resulting in three effects; reflection, refraction and scattering.

You have experienced sound reflection, commonly attributed to an echo. An echo is simply a reflection of sound. Hard, smooth surfaces can reflect sounds; the reflection we hear is an echo. We are only able to hear an echo in specific environments, for example in a canyon. We hear an echo here because we’re surrounded by hard surfaces to reflect the sound. When in a field we cannot hear an echo, as there’s nothing to reflect the sound.

Sound refraction occurs when a sound wave enters a medium where the speed is different. This causes sound waves to bend from their original direction. Refraction is caused by sound entering the new medium at an angle. Because of the angle, part of the wave enters the new medium first and changes speed. The difference in speeds causes the wave to bend.

That concludes our introduction to sound. Hopefully now you’ve gained a more detailed understanding of what sound is, and how sound works.

Article first published as The Fundamentals of Sound on Technorati.

Source: ArticlesBase.com