I'm skeptical about generalizing those results to more "natural" sounds like fan noise. As others have mentioned true white noise is very unnatural due to its uniform power spectrum. Pink and brown noise though seem more natural due to the dampening at higher frequencies, and I'd bet things like fan noise, rainfall, waterfall, etc. lie somewhere along the 1/f^alpha for alpha > 1 (in between pink and brown).
I'm sure that we've evolved to handle things like noisy nights (thunder, rainfall) and living near rivers. You probably don't want to go beyond 50db though.
But to be on the safe side I'm going to turn by fan one notch down (40db -> 30db) to be on the safe side.
Nature sounds like rainfall & ocean waves vary a lot I imagine, with lots of breaks and pauses, the lack of a continuous sound probably helps.
A fan that's rotating back and forth might produce neurologically better sounds, as the breeze bounces off different parts of the room than one that is fixed in one direction?
Actually hm I just tried a hearing test at https://hearingtest.online (very well done site, read the sidebar notes) and I seem to have a characteristic 4khz dip. I don't listen to music with headphones and have never gone to concerts, perhaps the years of fan noise at night did indeed contribute to this.
Comments
I'm skeptical about generalizing those results to more "natural" sounds like fan noise. As others have mentioned true white noise is very unnatural due to its uniform power spectrum. Pink and brown noise though seem more natural due to the dampening at higher frequencies, and I'd bet things like fan noise, rainfall, waterfall, etc. lie somewhere along the 1/f^alpha for alpha > 1 (in between pink and brown).
I'm sure that we've evolved to handle things like noisy nights (thunder, rainfall) and living near rivers. You probably don't want to go beyond 50db though.
But to be on the safe side I'm going to turn by fan one notch down (40db -> 30db) to be on the safe side.
Ya, I would think there would have been some correlations drawn by now between hearing loss and living by the ocean or something.
Nature sounds like rainfall & ocean waves vary a lot I imagine, with lots of breaks and pauses, the lack of a continuous sound probably helps.
A fan that's rotating back and forth might produce neurologically better sounds, as the breeze bounces off different parts of the room than one that is fixed in one direction?
Actually hm I just tried a hearing test at https://hearingtest.online (very well done site, read the sidebar notes) and I seem to have a characteristic 4khz dip. I don't listen to music with headphones and have never gone to concerts, perhaps the years of fan noise at night did indeed contribute to this.