What is white noise?

Answer 1

The adjective "white" is used to describe this type of noise because of the way white light works. White light is light that is made up of all of the different colors (frequencies) of light combined together (a prism or a rainbow separates white light back into its component colors). In the same way, white noise is a combination of all of the different frequencies of sound. You can think of white noise as 20,000 tones all playing at the same time.

Because white noise contains all frequencies, it is frequently used to mask other sounds. If you are in a hotel and voices from the room next-door are leaking into your room, you might turn on a fan to drown out the voices. The fan produces a good approximation of white noise. Why does that work? Why does white noise drown out voices?

Here is one way to think about it. Let's say two people are talking at the same time. Your brain can normally "pick out" one of the two voices and actually listen to it and understand it. If three people are talking simultaneously, your brain can probably still pick out one voice. However, if 1,000 people are talking simultaneously, there is no way that your brain can pick out one voice. It turns out that 1,000 people talking together sounds a lot like white noise. So when you turn on a fan to create white noise, you are essentially creating a source of 1,000 voices. The voice next-door makes it 1,001 voices, and your brain can't pick it out any more.

Answer 2

tune your radio so that yo receive no station signal, the sound yo hear is white noise. Some people monitor this in hopes of hearing alien signals from space, I'm not making that up, it is a big deal for some groups. White noise is also a similar sound, like turning on a fan, to block out extraneous street or household sounds, white noise can be used to mask other sounds. there are white noise players, that just produce a unchanging, static like sound to help people sleep by blocking out other sounds. I prefer the fan.

Answer 3

OK, I am not an expert on this, but I believe I have grasp the fundamental concept.

basically white noise is a noise which when introduced along with a known noise renders that noise silent, kind of like the antiparticle, and particle pair canceling each other out and you are left with nothing.

Answer 4

THe white noise is typically a humming sound that drowns out or has the effect of muting other sounds (like a fan, static, running water, etc.)

Answer 5

White noise is a random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal's power spectral density has equal power in any band, at any centre frequency, having a given bandwidth. White noise is considered analogous to white light which contains all frequencies.

An infinite-bandwidth white noise signal is purely a theoretical construction. By having power at all frequencies, the total power of such a signal is infinite. In practice, a signal can be "white" with a flat spectrum over a defined frequency band.

Answer 6

Background noise caused by a repetitious (usually mechanical) sound like the humming of a computer or a fan.

Answer 7

Its the sound of like if you turned the TV on and it was on a channel that wasnt picking up, it makes a fuzzy sort of sound, that sound is called white noise.

Answer 8

White noise is a combination of all of the different frequencies of sound.

Just as white light is a combination of all the frequesncies of light.

Answer 9

Open your television set and switch it to a channel that have nothing to show.

Also, go to this link http://www.purewhitenoise.com/ then click on pure white noise - click hear.

That is white noise.

Answer 10

A movie.. I think it's about a noise that only kids can hear.. Supposed to be a thriller but I have heard bad reviews from friends. Don't bother seeing it.