Drowning out sound with...sound?

[Drunken Irishman]

Anyone else do this? I can't stand chirping birds in the morning (I must be evil), so in the summer when it's way too hot to keep my window closed, I have my fan full blast to drown out the noise of the pesky birds.

Isn't it interesting we can tolerate some sounds, but not others? Snoring is another bad one. I can sleep with music on, but can't sleep with someone snoring, even if it's not even as loud as the music. Same with dogs.

What 'bout you?

[Archae]

1. Worst sounds...

Nails on a chalkboard.

A little kid screaming.

A circular saw.

[SeattleGirl]

2. My sound irritants:

Crunching while eating.

Smacking one's lips while eating.

Badly off-tune singing or humming.

Sharp, loud noises (not sure how that could be covered up unless I had music or something going 24/7).

There are more, but I'll leave it at that.

[petronius]

3. We sleep with the fan on year-round, for just that reason

I'm pretty cranky about noise when I sleep, although I've gotten better with age - the fan drowns out the street noise or neighbors talking or whatever, but it doesn't help with car alarms or dogs...

[Drunken Irishman]

6. I kinda like the street noises...

I don't live too far from a freeway, so I can hear the buzz of cars. I also can hear the trains go by and police sirens.

It's nice.

But yeah, talking would bug and so would dogs and car alarms.

[one_voice]

4. dogs barking at 5 am...

for an hour straight. I don't blame the dog...dogs bark. I blame the owner for leaving them out at 5 am for an hour barking.

My husband snoring...I kick him till he stops long enough for me to fall a sleep.

The neighbors that live behind me tend to stay on their porch till the wee hours of the morning. The later it gets, the more they drink...the louder they are. I keep my window open even in cold weather, cuz my room gets so warm, so the only thing I can do is close my window and sweat to death. In the summer when it's really hot and the air is on, it's not a problem.

[Beaverhausen]

5. I have slept with a 'white noise' sleep machine going for over 25 years

I actually can't sleep when it's silent, but I use it mostly to drown out other noises.

[MiddleFingerMom]

7. When I was young and in the Army...

.
...I could actually wake up from a deep sleep at the sound of
a quiet footstep scuffing the ground -- other noises, I'd be fine
with (my brain seemed to filter out non-threatening noise), but
not that one.
.
Now... I constantly worry about sleeping through the alarm clock.
.
I lived in an RV for years, and the nicer places I found in this
area were relatively near train tracks, but far enough away that
the mournful train whistles at night were very, very cool -- even
wanderlust romantic.
.

[struggle4progress]

8. Unusual and irregular noises are more disturbing than usual regular ones

I live by a road that gets constant traffic at rush hours, but only occasional traffic in the wee hours. The occasional car or truck I hardly notice

But last year I woke with a start at 3AM and tried to figure out what had awakened me. In the distance, I could hear a car driving very irregularly: the noise was quite usual, on-again off-again, of uneven pitch

I thought :wtf:

As I sat up listening over the next twenty or thirty seconds, it became clear from the sound that the driver was driving fast and unevenly. Whoever it was, lost control of the vehicle and crashed into the ditch on the other side of the road just after passing my place. I called 911. Quite a lot of official activity resulted: ambulance, several fire department truckis, half a dozen police cars ...

Never found out what happened. I wasn't about to go get in the way of the emergency guys at 3 or 4AM

I've lived here a while, and I've driven that road a lot. I have a reliable way to estimate other drivers' speeds when I'm driving, and it's common for folk to do 55-60 mph even though the limit's 45. Slower than 45 or faster than 60 are not common. To judge by the tire noise before the accident, that driver was driving strangely and going way faster than 60. But it wasn't the volume that woke me up when the car was half or three-quarters of a mile away: it was the fact that the distant sound simply didn't register as "ordinary"