Get yourself a standing fan. You specifically want the gnarliest, loudest, most industrial looking fan you can find. The idea is that the fan in your room is loud/close enough to drown out most other sounds, but since it’s constant noise with no information your brain will fade it to background processing and you’ll effectively stop hearing it. The only downside is that this requires a bit of willingness to learn how to take apart and fix a fan; if the oscillation starts to precess it ruins the white noise and the fan needs to be cleaned or sometimes the blades rebalanced. I really like “Blizzard” brand fans for being cheap plastic pieces of shit that are easy to take apart to clean/fix and are loud as fuck.
It’s not the constant background noise/hum that gets me but the occasional car/bike zooming through the streets to the point where things start to vibrate while also sounding like the most annoying mosquito. Even though I’m almost 40 I can still hear very high frequency sounds (like those devices to scare away animals) and fast vehicles seem to go into similar register. ANC headphones don’t block it well either since they’re tuned for low frequency sounds.
The occasional bike/car zooming through the streets and the associated noise are still alleviated by the fan. White noise works because it makes your brain “turn down the volume” on the sensory pathway between your ears and your brain (Gain control is a much better comparison if youre familiar with it, but I went with the volume one because its more accessible). The car/bike might even be loud enough to hear over the fan, but you should hear it less/be less bothered by it because your brain already set your ears’ volume on low to tune out the fan. There are white noise apps you can get on your phone if you want to try it for free; an app playing fan sounds through my phone speaker is the only way I manage to sleep when I’m traveling
This seems like it would work but I refuse to add more noise pollution to account for breaking the law. Introducing hazards to race tracks is more enjoyable (and very effective, racers rarely want to clean up hazards from the race track because it would mean they’re thinking of someone else). If the police ever gets interested enough to look for the source of hazard their presence should prevent races from taking place too.
Get yourself a standing fan. You specifically want the gnarliest, loudest, most industrial looking fan you can find. The idea is that the fan in your room is loud/close enough to drown out most other sounds, but since it’s constant noise with no information your brain will fade it to background processing and you’ll effectively stop hearing it. The only downside is that this requires a bit of willingness to learn how to take apart and fix a fan; if the oscillation starts to precess it ruins the white noise and the fan needs to be cleaned or sometimes the blades rebalanced. I really like “Blizzard” brand fans for being cheap plastic pieces of shit that are easy to take apart to clean/fix and are loud as fuck.
It’s not the constant background noise/hum that gets me but the occasional car/bike zooming through the streets to the point where things start to vibrate while also sounding like the most annoying mosquito. Even though I’m almost 40 I can still hear very high frequency sounds (like those devices to scare away animals) and fast vehicles seem to go into similar register. ANC headphones don’t block it well either since they’re tuned for low frequency sounds.
The occasional bike/car zooming through the streets and the associated noise are still alleviated by the fan. White noise works because it makes your brain “turn down the volume” on the sensory pathway between your ears and your brain (Gain control is a much better comparison if youre familiar with it, but I went with the volume one because its more accessible). The car/bike might even be loud enough to hear over the fan, but you should hear it less/be less bothered by it because your brain already set your ears’ volume on low to tune out the fan. There are white noise apps you can get on your phone if you want to try it for free; an app playing fan sounds through my phone speaker is the only way I manage to sleep when I’m traveling
This seems like it would work but I refuse to add more noise pollution to account for breaking the law. Introducing hazards to race tracks is more enjoyable (and very effective, racers rarely want to clean up hazards from the race track because it would mean they’re thinking of someone else). If the police ever gets interested enough to look for the source of hazard their presence should prevent races from taking place too.