I use one every night to help block out the traffic noise. I love it.

I used to use one with noisy neighbors downstairs in addition to a fan. But I had to use a pillow speaker...my husband could hear the part where the pattern of sound started over again! It drove him nuts!

We both always had fans in our rooms growing up. Can't sleep without it~

I live on a very busy road next to a hospital and a major intersection. My husband and I use a large standing fan every night. We bought him (yes, we personified him) at the hardware store on clearance for $20. It has saved our sleep and probably our marriage! But my brother has a little noise machine. He lives in NYC and says it is absolutely great. I will buy one when we move in June, even if the street is quiet!

I've been sleeping with my machine for over 10 years. I just can't stand absolute silence. But, the house settling and the sound of cat nails hitting the hardwood drove me crazy.

I'm like a baby with a blankie when it comes to my white noise machine - I can't sleep without it!

But if you'd like to test it out before you buy, you could go to simplynoise.com. They're a website that broadcasts white noise for free. I use the pink noise setting in my den when I put the my daughter down for naps there. It works great!

I live in a downtown highrise, and a white noise machine is a must. I can handle traffic noise and sirens, but the bar downstairs at 200am will drive you nuts. It has saved my sanity.

My wife has some fans that are very small. She usually throws one in her carry on without a problem.

We have picked them up a various outlets for not much at the end of season. Take a look at an office supply place like Staples. There are some small fans that are marketed as a desktop fan for your cubicle. They still circualte the air and make that fan noise.

My husband swears by them. We've been together about ten years and he's on his third! He also puts it on while he's reading or doing (grad) school work so he can concentrate.

yes they work. usually the electronic versions will have a noticeable looping point. it is inevitable. So instead go mechanical. This is the one i purchased.

http://www.amazon.com/Marpac-980A-Sound-Screen-Conditioner/dp/B000MPH0PG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1332854929&sr=8-3

it started because my parents house is pretty noisy. you can hear where everyone is, all the time. It drove my wife crazy and i like to have a happy wife... so i bought this. It is amazing. you can vary the sound just by turning the 2 different pieces to line up the air holes differently.

we now take it on trips with us for hotel rooms. When we go home. We use it every night and since we have a newborn my wife uses it when she tries to slip a nap in.

well worth the money. it is small enough to sort of travel with, around 5-6" cubed. It is just made out of the horrible tan plastic computer were made out of in the 80's. I have thought about taking it apart and laying some spray paint down on it.

Must have fan to sleep. Mine is a 1940's steel version, very retro, very dangerous to the fingers. But I love it and wouldnt trade it.

simplynoise.com - thanks for that link! I have very noisey coworkers and flimsy panel walls at work - this should do the trick.

When I was in undergrad, my room was on the corner of a busy street that had those beepers for blind pedestrians and they went all night. A loud A/C (on fan mode in the winter) was the only way to sleep.

I now live in a city and I have a lot of street noise, but I tend to be able to sleep through it fine. However, in our guest room, we have a fan for a guest to turn on should he or she need it to block the noise.

If I am trying to study in a loud environment, I often turn on simple classical music. I know it won't work for the classical music lovers out there, but I can tune it out and the environmental noise with it.

Not exactly white noise but I need the sound of people talking in order to fall asleep. I usually fall asleep to a DVD but talk radio will do. When I lived in Cairo on a busy street where people were out and about all night, I didn't need anything. I could fall asleep easily if I left the window open.

If you have a smartphone, there are a lot of white noise apps out there now too if you need something more portable than a fan or white noise machine.

Our white noise machine is a MUST. I purchased one first to distract our dog from the noises of others in the apartment building, but it quickly became quite necessary for me to sleep as well. Occasionally one of the cats will cruise past it and step on a button, changing the "sound"....sometimes I'm okay with that, unless it's a "water" sound....they always make me have to pee. :)

Absolutely they work! I sleep with a small fan going every night since noisy dorm living. Now it is very difficult to sleep without it if I have to. I finally am in a big house in the country with no close neighbors and I still use it. It just evens out all the little noises...

We have a friend who uses white noise machines for her kids and they're so dependent on them that she has to travel with 4 machines now. I was a critic until we started using one to drown out the traffic noise. It's so amazing that when ours quit, I couldn't sleep. I'm addicted now too. Careful...

If white isn't working for you, try other colors of noise. I've found Brown or Pink to be much more useful in my apartment because it covers more low frequencies (which are what was bothering me). White noise just doesn't have enough power in the lows to mask what I was trying to mask.

I grew up in the country, where I was sung to sleep by crickets, at least in the summer (as long as they are not in the room with you, it's pretty soothing). Later in life I moved on to having Josh Groban sing me to sleep. Now our bedroom has a track of the Puerto Rican jungle playing on loop.

I acutally use a small air filter fan that's meant for kitchens and bathrooms. It's quite small and fits into carry-on baggage with no problem or bulk. Here's the model I use, and it's quite inexpensive, and produces just enough white noise and air for my bedroom at home and a hotel room on the road. http://www.allergybegone.com/hamilton-beach-04251-air-cleaner.html

I was wondering, with so many people (including myself) talking about fans, what about using an air-filter like @TJFTX above? It served double duty as noise and cleaning.

Playing with SimplyNoise, I think I like brown and pink more than white. It is less annoying.

I love my white noise machine. I got it as a present about twenty years ago, and it's still going strong. When I travel, I use a white noise app, which works just as well...

Yes, absolutely, I've had a few over my lifetime and now have a clock that has a built-in 4-sound white noise maker.

No fans... no white noise!
Natural sounds of life are much easier to fall asleep to compared to "noise"
Noise is just so... noisy.

White noise app for the iPod touch/iPhone/iPad is remarkable...it helps my 2 month old sleep soundly for 8-10 hours, which in turn helps me sleep, so no, I don't use one personally right now, but it makes a huge difference in his sleeping!

There are some pretty good smartphone apps that do white noise... It would certainly save space

I credit the Marpac Sleepmate for helping me resume sleeping through the night after it became apparent that my Masters and Johnson-esque neighbors weren't going to stop their early morning "research" anytime soon. I haven't heard any moaning or creaking bed frames since.

Approx 5 years ago I bought a small air filter for my bedroom; I turn it on high each night and it makes the perfect sound and tone for drowning out noise. I love that it filters air while lulling us to sleep. It's the perfect answer for us.

I have this one: http://www.walmart.com/ip/HoMedics-SoundSpa-Portable-Sound-Machine/2686012

The box fan I was accustomed to made the room too cold and was kind of ugly, so I bought the noise machine. It took me about a week to get used to it, but now I love it! I use the "rain" setting because it's the closest to sounding like my fan.

I've tried the white noise machines and several phone apps but I haven't found one that truly captures the sound a strong fan blowing. It usually comes out tinny sounding without the deep bass and because it's a loop, I can sometimes hear where it stops and loops again, and that is more annoying to me.

What I would really like is a full 8hr recording of the fan so there won't be any looping.

If you find the sound of the ocean calming (I grew up a few blocks from the beach in San Diego), you might like what I use, which is subliminals from http://www.brainwave-entrainment.com/hypnosis-downloads-subliminal-downloads.htm. So you get not only to have the noise blocked, but also help with an issue you want to change, and for only ten bucks.

I download them from his site, quick & easy - and you get two versions, one with the waves-background and the other completely silent. And yes, the latter works. The first one I bought was for breaking caffeine addiction. I listened to the silent-only version several times and the next morning simply had no interest in coffee - which, given my "absolute need" for it in the past, blew me away.

I work at home. A neighbor has a small yapping dog who gets going, and these wave sounds save my sanity. And by the way, if you're cautious about subliminals, which is understandable, I've been in touch with the guy who makes them several times, and feel I can totally vouch for his sincerity. Also, if you have an issue you want help with and there's no "app" for that, he'll make you a custom one for under $50. They're quite extraordinary.

I use Lightning Bug on my Android for my white noise, but I use the cityscape, which has ambulances and firetrucks as well as rain and thunder which puts me right to sleep. Just like the article says, it's also my mental cue to go to sleep and best of all, it's free.

Mine is a must. I have really bad tinitus (thanks to a youth spent in rock clubs). The white noise masks the ringing. I couldn't sleep without it.

The SimplyNoise app is decent, but I find the pitch to be a bit too high. For the last 2-3 years I've been listening to the "Brown Noise Loop" from this album: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/white-noise-loops-for-sleep/id251929527. The lower pitch of brown noise (a term I must confess I'd never heard before) easily blocks out noises that I find white noise does not, like stereo bass. I've also used a travel sound machine from Sharper Image. Sadly, the model I own is no longer available, but they have a new, pricier version that looks similar - http://www.sharperimage.com/si/view/product/Travel-Sleep-Sound-Machine/100908?trail=.

I have a HEPA air filtration fan which doubles as my white noise. 2 for the price of 1!

Like a couple of other people have mentioned digital white noise tracks can have repetitive sounds that catch your attention. White noise sounds too fast to me and Pink has some weird squealy sounds that I can't not pay attention to. I have an app on my phone where I can play a couple different noises at once and that seems to work OK.

In my opinion, digital just can't compare to the sound of an actual fan.

Both my children (3&17months) have used noise machines since birth, they are great sleepers, and will protest if we forget to turn them on. I was always afrad that they would become dependant on it. My husband and I don't use one, but I always noticed that when we were using a baby monitor I would sleep better with the sound from the baby's room.

Is the brown noise machine mentioned here the same one urban dictionary mentions?

This is my noise machine:
http://www.amazon.com/Marpac-Sound-Screen-Model-Each/dp/B00082FCZS/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1332878054&sr=8-5&tag=acleint-20

You can adjust the pitch and level. My husband and I became addicted after my SIL brought it over when my nephew and niece stayed over. It's worth every penny.

May be I need one for my husband. I can sleep through anything and love quietness when it arrives. My husband, on the other hand, can lie listening to a storm and keep waking going "what's that?" to a repetitive creak or a tap amid the noise.

Having said that, if I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, I do get up and lie on the couch with the TV sound too low to actually hear. Seems to work - so imagine these things are great

Are "brown noise" and "pink noise" real things? I can't tell if some of these posters are just being facetious or not....

I thought I was the only one who detected the beginning of a loop in white noise machines! o_O

A fan works much better (we have one with a "white noise" setting on it)... plus a fan is better for me when my body temperature spikes in the middle of the night.

"Are "brown noise" and "pink noise" real things?"

Absolutely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise

I have slept with a fan for over 30 years. I have a couple of small ones that I can travel with. I find the white noise machines are great when I want to read or study but not so great to sleep with. I also need the feel of the fan blowing the air on me to really relax.

Like some other commenters, I just use room air filters at home. I do without when away from home.

My husband loves his too. Have you tried using your cell phone? There are many wonderful apps that are very easy to use in a hotel room.

I've never used white noise before, but I absolutely cannot fall asleep without earplugs. If you have the right kind of alarm, you still wake up, but there's nothing to listen to. It's heavenly.

I don't remember when I started needing noise to sleep with, but I've been using a thunderstorm app on my iphone for probably the last two years. I just dock it and play it for around 8 hours. It's awesome, I get a good nights sleep, wake up naturally and on nights when my insomnia is really bothering me, I can count between thunderclaps and focus myself enough to relax and sleep.

I never had to sleep with any machine (even living right off the stairs in dorms) until my bf started requiring a fan to sleep at night... now its sometimes hard to sleep without one especially with noisy neighbors upstairs.

I am using Sleep Bug on my iPhone to get my son to sleep. He really loves it. I just set it to run for 30 mins and it works.
Earlier I had a sound machine above his bed but it broke. So instad of buying a new one I got this app. I recommend it!

i swear by my marpac dohm white noise machine. i have ADHD, misophonia, anxiety, and a snoring partner/apt near to an expressway. if it works for me, i feel like it could work for just about anyone.