There's another possible explanation for this, depending on how the white noise machine is built.

Unshielded speakers can act as AM radio receivers. I've had old speakers play extremely faint music while not plugged into anything; a few minutes later it identified itself as the local radio station.

Many AM radio stations are permitted to crank up their transmit power at night, exactly when many people might use white noise to sleep.

> The first time I googled this random noise-during-noise, I panicked. Apparently hearing things that aren’t there is referred to in the psych biz as auditory pareidolia, or auditory hallucinations, and is a hallmark of schizophrenia—and some experts say it requires a psychological check-up.

I feel like it's important to note here that something like 1 in 100 people hears voices without schizophrenia, it's kinda quite common. I'm one of them. Paragraphs like this don't help with people's perception of this phenomenon though.

Hmmmm…

> Any app or machine you listen to that produces a color of noise, like white, brown, pink, green, or otherwise, is based on an algorithm or a code.

Well, brief aside: Brown noise isn’t a ‘color’ of noise - or if it were, it would be red. It’s just named after Robert Brown, the motion guy.

> It’s not truly random—so you’ll get a little while of what seems like random noise, and then the sounds repeat.

This is a complete misunderstanding of how pareidolia works. You’re not picking up on pseudorandomness or actual repetitions that are really hidden in the noise - you’re making up patterns out of the randomness itself.

Same thing that a diffusion-based image generator does when it squints really hard to find the picture of an astronaut riding a horse hidden in a noise field, by amplifying the bits that look most astronauty or horsey.

A running bath or shower will sometimes trigger "I can hear vague people talking type noises" for me (and has for decades) - not to the point of actually hearing voices with distinguishable words though, it's always just the vague "there's people nearby talking". Which can be really creepy if you're the only person in the house...

I wonder how common this is. I've never experienced it, or heard anyone else ever mention it was a thing so I assume it's not very common. No mention in the article about it but that could just be because no one knows.

This happens to me almost every night before falling asleep. I like to think I'm actually just composing what I'm hearing in my head! It almost always takes on a genre like bluegrass or orchestral or electronic. Very cool I enjoy self-made illusions!

This immediately made me think of this Reply All episode: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/mehrar/147-the-woman...

Humans: overly aggressive pattern matchers!

My use of a white noise machine has recently increased significantly with the arrival of my first kid. I spent so many nights bouncing her to sleep in the dark, trying to determine if the classical music coming faintly through the white noise was a product of my sleep deprivation, or something else. Now I have a likely answer: both!

I still hear faint music in the white noise sometimes, as recently as last night.

> Sometimes it’s music, like a full orchestral score

For me it's usually something like a full orchestra. I assume that is because our brains are already trained on the erratic arrangements and multitude of different sounds of a real orchestra - it pattern matches the noise better than say smooth jazz.

This was something I noticed, too, when I'd leave my Dyson fan on at night in my bedroom. To me, it didn't sound like voices, it sounded vaguely like chiptune music.

Of course, I'm a lifelong gamer, so I think that reinforces the idea that it's something your brain is trying to interpret--and hence it's shaped by things familiar to my brain. My wife heard something similar on a different night and described it as something else. But we were both in agreement that it definitely went away as soon as I turned off the fan.

I find it rather interesting when it happens, actually. It's my brain subconsciously doing creative musical improv--which I am far too inept to do consciously. I wish I could remember the melodies long enough in the morning to try my hand at transcribing them.

> Any app or machine you listen to that produces a color of noise, like white, brown, pink, green, or otherwise, is based on an algorithm or a code. It’s not truly random—so you’ll get a little while of what seems like random noise, and then the sounds repeat. On the surface, it probably doesn’t seem like it. But your brain recognizes the pattern and tries to make sense of it, which leads to hearing noises that aren’t actually there.

Many white noise machines are actually looping a 5 second recording of white noise. This is hard to notice at first, but it leads to the pattern recognition in the article.

I've found that this phenomenon is much less pronounced with white noise machines that generate actual random nosie.

The real reason we spot patterns where there aren’t patterns is because the human sensory system is tuned by natural selection to err on the side of caution in borderline cases. Our ancestors who thought they saw a wolf in the shadows and took cover are the ones who survived to pass their genes on, because sometimes there really was a wolf there. Their peers whose senses lacked that safety margin got picked off.

Diana Deutsch has something called the HIGH-LOW effect, where one ear hears the words high and low repeated, and the other ear hears the same thing, but in opposition so when one ear hears HIGH, the other heard LOW.

After a while of listening to it with headphones on, you'll start hearing different words phase in and out.

Pretty wild.

I've definitely experienced this with things like an air conditioner emanating classical music...went through the same process of freaking out only to be relieved by a professional.

One thing I'd notice -- it was way, way worse if I was severely sleep deprived (which is not often anymore).

I've heard this called Musical Ear Syndrome because it can manifest as either muffled random voices, or random music.

Sometimes drugs trigger it. I was on a medication for a week that made my washroom fan seem to emit choir music. It was quite entertaining.

This happens to me occasionally. I don't use white noise machines but I might hear babble in wind noise, etc. Actually the source that triggers this the strongest is the rain SFX in the video game Escape From Tarkov.

When I am tired and/or drunk, i can totally interpret sounds of a running dish washer as electronic music. It is relaxing and amusing

Hearing voices would terrify me. I only hear crickets in mine. (And, y'know, never outside of it since real crickets are extinct now.)

Um, I have a 6 month old and every room in my house has a white noise machine for naps.

I've never heard a voice in any of them.

This might be a personal problem.

I can't finish wired articles. It seems they are never going to get to the point. What's the tldr?

> I have aphantasia

Also.

> on queue I can "pull up" a song and play it in my head

But I also do not have that. Starting to feel a bit short-changed here.

This actually pretty accurately describes what goes on inside my head - no pictures, but a life soundtrack.

The "voice" in the noise is unintelligible, so I figure I'm safe until it starts to tell me to do things I should not.