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I find this hard to believe this is universally true. I sleep much worse without noise. I use a fan or a speaker to add noise to the room. If I don't, I wake up constantly.
1) I’d like to see additional measures beyond dB. A 50dB consistent white noise does not bother me (and may even enhance my sleep) but an intermittent off/on sound of the same magnitude has a very different effect
2) what is the accuracy of the consumer metrics compared to medical benchmarks? In other words, how reliable are the sleep measures of consumer devices? Anecdotally, I’ve noticed my watch thinks I’m sleeping sometimes when I watch a movie, and I’ve heard MDs say the metrics aren’t accurate enough to make strong conclusions.
A couple things: 1) I’d like to see additional measures beyond dB. A 50dB consistent white noise does not bother me (and may even enhance my sleep) but an intermittent off/on sound of the same magnitude has a very different effect 2) what is the accuracy of the consumer metrics compared to medical benchmarks? In other words, how reliable are the sleep measures of consumer devices? Anecdotally, I’ve noticed my watch t…
https://amp.sacbee.com/news/california/article240396741.html
EDIT/TLDR: highly effective
Would love to know what kind of noise and sound level was used for this test. Was it a continuous monotonous noise (such as white/pink/brown noise) at a fixed volume? Or was it some random noise that would "pop-up" randomly? Does anyone know? I would imagine that a noise that would randomly "pop-up" would be worse. But would be curious if that's not the case.
Something like the variability of noise (eg, maybe figure out the 25th percentile dbs across the night, and then count the spikes above that? or maybe count the number of times the slope goes above a certain value indicating sharp rises in volume that would disturb someone?)
I also would love to simply see the data based on the average of "N loudest moment(s)" during the sleep. eg: treat the dbs score for that night as the average of the N loudest moments over the night, and plot a series of graphs that show various values of N. (or make it 3d, but i've found many folks are not capable of reading those kinds of graphs)
So just use some good quality earplugs?
Also similarly for parents? (kids/baby crying)
I've mostly been YOLOing it so far, but worry that once I'm not single (no kids) it won't be acceptable.
So just use some good quality earplugs?
I’ll respond much differently to my bedroom door opening or a voice speaking than I do a bus outside.
It reminds me of the anecdote where human researchers rang bells near bears (human sounds) and the bears didn’t care, but if they broke a large bundle of branches (bear sounds), the bears went berserk.
I feel like our subconscious is a lot more involved here than we give it credit for.
Wonder if white noise counts as noise from this perspective. Or if it’s mainly unexpected noises that make sleep quality worse.
Dog's are thought to be an exception, because part of their domestication involved selection for the offspring that was more alert (watch dogs).
The brain is thought to be hyper sensitive to a certain subset of sounds while sleeping, such as babies crying.
White noise is thought to work by drowning out the sounds we are most sensitive to.