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Used to. Had to have the radio going on low or a fan running during the summer. Not anymore. Any chance you’re adhd? Sometimes The noise in the head is hard to shut off so you can sleep.

Whatever it takes to quiet the thoughts. Plus, adding a base layer of familiar sound helps drown out the odd sounds that makes your brain assess the danger. I don’t often use sound, but for a while I did key myself into playing a particular Deadmau5 album to knock me out for a lunch nap.

The thoughts can be a problem. You can’t stop thinking about how to fix something from earlier. My favorite mental game is picking a category and going through the alphabet, naming an item for each letter. It’s OK to skip a letter, come back later. You’re still thinking creatively, but the speed is much slower. The “problem” is no longer something threatening you (bills, arguments, chores), it’s just finding a one-word response at a time. Cities, towns but not real cities, desserts, bodies of water, car models, zoo animals, construction materials, colors…

Yes, either the fan, or gentle psybient music, something. Because it’s never silent, and earplugs make me cough, I need sleepy sounds.

ETA I also love when a neighbor has a party, sleeping to the distant sounds of a party, music and all, relaxes my mind so much. I think my subconscious must figure things are ok if people are partying. I have had sometimes the opportunity to sleep above a dance club and that also was so nice.

I use a fan. Without it it’s too quiet and hot.

I do not. AI prefer quiet for sleep.

The sound of rain is nice though to go to sleep.

Podcast recommendations:

1. The Drowsy Historian
2. History of English Podcast (Kevin Stroud)

Both have no ads at all, and uniform volume.

Nope, the quieter, the better

As a teenager in the '70s I used to fall asleep to albums and the radio on headphones. These days, I need silence!

These days no, because my spouse doesn’t like it. Prior I used to sleep to instrumental music on repeat. My go to for a long time was the sound track to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. To this day if I hear any part of it on shuffle, I immediately feel sleepy.

Yeah, tinnitus.

I live in a city, of course there’s noise, mostly road noise from cars going past tbh

Oh man no. Not like that. White noise or nature sounds is great. One thing is I run a fan often in the summers and it is a bit annoying to adjust to not having it but its not so big a deal I feel I have to use it. Its like a treat for myself to put on some nature sounds but I rarely do it. I love having a fire with ocean rains and a light storm combined. Im actually sorta the opposite of you. Sounds that actually have engaging audio drive me nuts and its kina worse the lower it gets. The most annoying thing is to have this sound of a show or voices that is just barely loud enough that I can hear them and its keeping me from actually sleeping. Have had to remind my wife a bunch to put on her headphones as she always thinks she can just lower the volume and it will be fine. But the lower volume is as I said. Worse.

I’ve had some success with binaural beats. It’s two pure sin wave tones - one in each ear. The tones are out of tune with each other so it has a bit of a wavy or pulsing sound. But they’re close enough to sound like one note and not two. Apparently the difference between these two waves gets entrained into your brain waves even though you can’t hear it. My favorites are 94 hz carrying a 3 hz differential, 96 hz carrying a 4hz differential, and 115 hz carrying a 5 hz differential. I’m using an app called Binaural Beat Gen by TMSOFT. Anyway the very low brain waves are delta waves associated with deep sleep. In a way, it’s hacking your brain to sleep.