The dictionary definition is: White noise is a sound containing a blend of all the audible
frequencies distributed equally over the range of the frequency band.
White noise is analogous to white light which contains all the colors of the spectrum
together.
How to Use White Noise
Because white noise contains all frequencies, it is commonly 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. How does this "white" sound work and why does it mask out other noise?
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 100 people are talking simultaneously, there is no way that your brain
can pick out one voice. It turns out that 100 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 100 voices. The voice next-door makes it 101 voices, and your brain can't pick
it out anymore. One thing to keep in mind when using white noise is that more is not
always better - it is usually best to use just enough to help mask the offending noise, not
completely overwhelm it.
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