It's the Best!

There's really no comparison with lesser apps which merely generate canned audio recordings. White Noise from Engenuity Corporation is the only one on the market which generates soothing, sound-masking noise using a random number generator and a tuned filter.

How Can Sound Be Colored?

It's just jargon. Technical people working with audio like to sound important, so they make up weird names for things. Some will even use phrases like "tuned filter" and think it makes them sound important.

Sound is made up of pressure waves — basically vibrations in the air — which oscillate at different rates, called frequencies. Humans can hear sound from about 20Hz (that's twenty oscillations in one second) up to 20kHz (twenty thousand per second). Many sounds, especially music and speech, are made up of a small number of frequencies combined together. If you generate sound with all frequencies at the same time, you'll end up with a loud "hiss", which science-types have termed "white" noise because it reminds them of the color white which combines all frequencies (colors) of light together.

If you didn't get all that, don't worry about it... it's just techies talking.

What's with the TV Screen Showing Static?

If you have "show animations" selected in the top-swipe menu, you'll see a pattern on the TV screen when the sound is on. This emulates what you'd see on a TV screen back in the era where they were black-and-white, analog, and had manual dials that you could "jam" between two channels. When you did that, no coherent signal from a TV station was picked up, and the TV would play the sound of random RF noise out the speakers, resulting in the well-known sound of static... which happens to be pretty close to white noise.

Does the Animation Waste Power?

Not really. The app automatically disables the animations whenever it isn't "active", which is generally whenever you minimize it, switch away from it, or let the tablet go to sleep. Don't worry, though: the sound keeps playing.

You may not have noticed, but there's another animation, too. The background will change, very slowly, in an evolving pattern of visual noise. If you've got nothing better to do with your time you could watch it for a while and see how it changes. Each run is different — no repetition here either!

How Does the Sound Keep Playing in Standby?

Ah, many developers would like to know that. It's not rocket science, though.... In March, RIM specialists posted an article about the QNXSystemPowerMode settings, which allow apps to do just this.

Most developers weren't paying attention, unfortunately, so many apps which ought to behave this way do not. White Noise works properly, but we've tried hard to communicate this information widely so all PlayBook apps can be as effective.

Why Are the Button Clicks So Loud?

Sorry about that. We're going to fix it in an update. The clicks were a late addition, and we didn't control their volume using the app's own volume control, so if you've got your system volume set pretty loud the clicks can be rather obnoxious.

What Else?

You tell us! To be among the best PlayBook app developers, we need to hear your feedback. Email us at with your requests or suggestions. And thanks for the feedback!

Finally, please leave us a nice App World review and rating for White Noise if you liked it. Thank you!