Brown Noise
Deep, steady brown noise, generated in your browser. It masks the sounds around you: traffic outside, a room of people typing, a television through a wall. Many people keep it on while they study or work.
This sound is generated in your browser as it plays. It is not a recording, so nothing streams and nothing is downloaded.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored on a server.
Sound fades in when you press Play and fades out when you stop.
Audio starts on your first tap on Play, as required by your browser.
What the research says
Brown noise became popular as a study aid, and the claims made for it run well ahead of the evidence. Here is where the evidence actually stands.
A 2024 meta-analysis pooled 13 randomized trials with 335 participants in total. It found a small benefit of white or pink noise on task performance in young people with ADHD or raised attention problems. The effect was small, about g = 0.25. The same noise slightly worsened performance in participants who did not have those attention problems.
Brown noise was not in that analysis. No trial of brown noise met the inclusion criteria, so there is almost no direct research on the sound this page plays. Anyone who tells you brown noise is proven has gone past the evidence.
One claim is well supported: steady broadband noise masks other sounds. A constant background covers the speech, traffic and door noise that would otherwise pull your attention away. That is acoustics rather than psychology, and it is what this tool is for.
Past masking, people use brown noise because they like it. It is softer than white noise, and a sound you find pleasant is a sound you leave on. That is a preference, not a treatment. Nothing here promises that brown noise will make you focus better, remember more or work faster.
None of this is medical advice, and sound is not a treatment for ADHD. If attention is a problem in your daily life, that is a conversation for a clinician.
What brown noise is
Brown noise is a noise color whose energy falls as the pitch rises, and it falls faster than pink noise does. That leaves the low end in charge, so it sounds deep and soft, like distant surf or the inside of a plane. This page generates it live from a random source rather than playing a recording.
How to use it while you work
Set the volume low enough that you can still hear someone say your name. Use the muffle control to roll off the top if the hiss draws attention on its own. Set the sleep timer if you want the session to end without you. Headphones mask more than speakers do at the same setting, so they need less level, not more.
For sleep
Plenty of people leave brown noise on overnight, and the honest reason is the one that applies during the day: it covers the sounds that would otherwise stand out - a road, a boiler, someone else in the house - and many people simply like how it sounds. That is masking and preference, not treatment, and nothing here promises you will fall asleep sooner or sleep more deeply. The sleep timer runs to 8 hours and fades out over the last 30 seconds, so the sound can end without you. Set the volume for the quietest part of the night rather than the loudest, because whatever you choose at bedtime is what plays until morning.
Volume and your hearing
Sound you keep on for hours deserves more care than sound you play for a minute. Steady noise is easy to creep up on, because nothing in it ever arrives suddenly. Start quiet, check yourself after an hour, and turn the room down rather than the noise up.
Other noise colors
White and pink noise are the two colors the ADHD trials actually used. Both are on the noise generator, and all six colors are on the colored noise page.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between brown, pink and white noise?
It is how the energy is spread across the frequency range. White noise holds equal energy at every frequency and sounds bright and hissy. Pink noise falls as the pitch rises and sounds balanced. Brown noise falls faster still, so the low end dominates and the result is deep and soft. You can compare all six colors on the colored noise page.
Does brown noise help with ADHD?
Nobody has tested brown noise properly, so the honest answer is that nobody knows. A 2024 meta-analysis of 13 trials found a small benefit from white and pink noise on task performance in young people with ADHD-type attention problems, and a slight cost for people without them. Brown noise was not in it. What brown noise certainly does is mask the sounds around you. The sources are on this page.
How loud should I play it?
Quiet. Loud enough to cover the sounds you want gone, and no louder. If you cannot hear a person speaking next to you, it is too loud for a session that runs for hours. Steady noise never sounds sudden, so check the level after an hour instead of trusting how it feels.
Does it work offline?
Yes, once you have opened it. The sound is generated on your device rather than streamed, and the page is cached after your first visit. Install the site from your browser menu and it opens without a connection.