Of all the ambient noise apps I’ve tried, myNoise is the best. Based on the well-regarded website of the same name, myNoise for iPhone is a “noise generator,” not just an app that plays recordings of rain and coffee shops.
And it also looks as good as it sounds.
The app consists of a library, a store, a calibration section and the player itself.
The first are self-explanatory, although it’s worth mentioning that you can preview anything in the store, and that you get rain, white noise and a sweet binaural generator built in to the free app.
The player lets you hand-tweak the various frequencies of the generator to suit your mood, or you can have it automatically animate the sliders and therefore the sound. You can also choose a preset. If you are listening to a fire burning, then the crackles of the fire and the pops of wet wood as it explodes can all be dialed in.
These presets and animations tie in with the calibration. You can choose to auto-calibrate using the iPhone’s microphone, and this is great if you want to use the app as a curtain to block out distracting noise. You can also run thorough the calibration manually to set it to match your ears, your environment and your sound equipment (the app works great with AirPlay).
You can save these calibrations as presets and apply them to the generated soundscapes. And it’s all dead simple to do.
I listen to ambient soundtracks when I’m writing fiction (in the summer, I just open my window) because I find music way too distracting. I have the excellent Coffitivity, and Rdio is full of ambient tracks, but I like myNoise a lot more. It never repeats, it has top-notch sounds, and it is just plain fun to use.
