Free Online Player
Blue Ocean Depths
Blue Ocean Depths climbs and then stops. Blue noise is supposed to keep getting brighter all the way to the top of your hearing, and this one gives up well short of that, so the fine glassy hiss the name promises is missing. If you came here expecting the usual blue noise hiss, this is not that. What you get instead is a hard, forward sound with no weight under it whatsoever.
Ready to play
Stack this under rain or a fire, keep the blend, and play it with your screen off. Slo, on iOS, Android and Mac.
Bright, but capped
The blue noise generator here gets steadily brighter as pitch rises and carries on doing so to the limit of hearing, and violet noise climbs faster still. This recording does not. It peaks in the upper middle and then ends, which takes off the glassy edge the generated versions have. It is a fixed 32-second file too, where those generators run on without ever repeating.
The result is unmistakably bright without being piercing. It moves more than the flat brown files do, with the most pronounced peaks of the twelve noise recordings here, so it has life in it rather than sitting still. It also has almost no bass, which means it costs a phone or a laptop speaker nothing to reproduce.
What it covers and what it does not
Consonants, keyboard clicks, cutlery and squeaks all live in the range this file occupies, so it works well against a bright, hard room. What it cannot do is cover anything low: traffic rumble, a bass-heavy neighbour, a boiler through the floor. There is nothing down there for those to hide behind.
Green Meadow Breeze is the nearest relative in this set, the softer version of the same idea. If you need the missing bottom, the Blue Ocean Depths and brown noise blend in the free sound mixer fills it in. The name refers to a colour of noise rather than to the sea; ocean is the recording.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a recording of the sea?
No. It is a blue noise render. The ocean page holds the recorded surf.
Why does it not hiss like blue noise?
Because it stops before the top of the range. Generated blue and violet noise keep climbing past that point, and that is where the glassy hiss comes from.
Can it mask traffic?
Poorly. It has almost nothing low in it, so there is nothing to lay over a rumble. It works best against bright, close sounds.
Does it lose anything on small speakers?
Very little. Almost none of the file sits in the range small drivers struggle with, so a phone gives you nearly all of it.