[egypturnash]

Lately I've been spending a lot of my working-with-a-laptop-at-a-cafe time at places that have outdoor seating. And another chunk of that time has been sitting outside at a very nice park I live nearby.

There is no music except for occasional snatches of it from passing cars. Instead there is the wind in the trees, various birds having their conversations, and perhaps kids playing if I'm near the playground. It's really kind of wonderful.

I find myself thinking that a cafe whose playlist is nothing but natural ambient sounds - maybe you walk in and the playlist is "jungle fauna", or "rainstorm", or "tranquil beach" - would be really cool, but I also know that running a small cafe is a ton of work and a great way to probably lose a ton of money. Maybe I'll suggest that at one of the cafes I work inside of on a regular basis.

[DEADBEEFC0FFEE]

I went through a period of listening to natural sounds, rivers, forests, rain, thunder, waves, etc. It's surprisingly easy to detect loops and repeats.

There are some nice apps for blending sounds.

Seems like a good space for ML to play, producing unique, but authentic feeling sounds.

[egypturnash]

You could also just get a recording from someone who went out to a beautiful-sounding place and recorded several hours, these have existed since before digital sampling techniques, much less machine learning. Looping short samples is pretty much the worst way possible to generate a soundscape.

[lloydatkinson]

You’d think and yet Spotify playlists are mostly full of exactly that - short clips maybe 2 minutes long, it’s so jarring it’s impossible to listen to.

[thepaulstella]

I do enjoy myNoise, but I find their mobile apps to be usability headaches a lot of the time.

[frosted-flakes]

Just use the website. Add it to the home screen (on Android) and it functions like an app. The only downside is that it requires Internet to load the noise generator.

Stephane Pigeon of myNoise.net made the website himself, but hired out the app development.

[coldtea]

>I went through a period of listening to natural sounds, rivers, forests, rain, thunder, waves, etc. It's surprisingly easy to detect loops and repeats.

Perhaps, but there are several sound libraries with 10hours + non looping recordings...

[m463]

The rainforest cafe does jungle and even an occasional thunderstorm.

It's quite successful too. (There's one right outside disneyland in Los Angeles)