How to Mask Background Noise — A Practical Guide

Masking, cancellation and audio cleanup

Masking adds sound to your listening environment. Active noise cancellation uses equipment to reduce some incoming sound at the listener. Audio cleanup removes noise from a recording or microphone signal. This page offers the first of those, not the other two.

Try it without chasing the distraction

First listen to the room with the player paused. Choose a continuous noise or Rain, start at a low level, and compare whether the distracting event feels less prominent. Keep the background comfortable rather than increasing it to overpower every sound.

If the added texture becomes a distraction itself, lower it, switch or pause. A physical change such as moving away from a noisy source may be more useful than adding another layer.

1. Listen to the room with the player paused.
2. Choose Brown, Pink or Rain.
3. Press Play and adjust Volume gradually.
4. Compare with Pause, and keep only a background you prefer.

Match the texture to the situation

Brown and Pink are continuous generated textures; Rain adds natural variation. Different sounds may leave different parts of the distraction noticeable. Your equipment and position in the room also change what you hear.

Speech can stay recognizable even with an added background. If you start following the masker’s events or someone’s words, try a simpler sound or another arrangement. This player is not an acoustic privacy system and cannot make conversation confidential.

Know what you are hearing

Recordings & sources

The player repeats the short audio files below for as long as your session runs. The loop length is the length of each file, not a limit on listening time. Events within a recording may repeat.

Start at a comfortable level. The volume percentages describe player settings; they do not measure the sound level at your ears. Playback with a locked screen or a background tab depends on your device and browser. Opening another page stops playback.