Noisli

 College is a busy time. Students are expected to study, do homework, join clubs, work, and have a social life. With all of that time gone, one thing that we need is sleep. But, we all have those nights where we can’t sleep. We are worrying about too many things or our roommate snores and we have no hope of reaching sleep. We need something that gives just enough noise to relax, but not enough to keep us up and it needs to be cheap.

 That’s where Noisli comes in. Noisli.com is a website that creates background noise. It is free and has a variety of options. You can listen to a light rain in the middle of December, or you could have your own thunderstorm. If rain isn’t you thing, you can listen to plain white noise. Maybe you like camping, well Noisli has a nice fire for you to listen to, or the sounds of bugs chirping during a summer night.

 Noisli isn’t just for sleeping; you can visit a coffee shop without leaving campus. Or continue your camping trip with some birds chirping and wind blowing. I found the different noises to be the perfect amount to help me tune out the silence or noise from people around me, but wasn’t too loud that I began to focus on the sounds.

Not only does Noisli have nice sounds to listen to, but the website itself is set up nicely. There is one page where you can toggle sounds on and off, combining them and creating your own background noise. Then, the background color of the site slowly transitions from color to color, the smooth move from color to color is very relaxing.

If you click a link right below the volume button it leads you to a new text editor. There you can write down anything you want and it will be saved locally, or you can save it to your computer. You can brainstorm and write down your ideas, or create a to do list, anything you feel should be written down.

While Noisli is free and provides the perfect background noise, I’m not sure I like that I have to be connected to the Internet to listen to it. Also, sometimes the colors can throw me off because they aren’t the most soothing or the prettiest. I watched as it turned from mustard, to puke green, and finally back into a soothing dark blue.

Still, Noisli can be used on your phone even, making it a mobile sound maker and making it easy to sit next to your bed, because I know almost all of us keep our phone next to us at all times. You don’t have to spend any money finding the perfect sound maker anymore. Now, you can relax, focus on that paper, study for the big test, or sleep to the soothing sounds of Noisli.

Brenna Sievert

Brenna Sievert ’16 is an English Writing major from New Ulm, Minnesota. She enjoys writing (obviously), reading, and considers herself a Sci-Fi-nerd. On campus and off, she enjoys helping through Colleges Against Cancer, and Outreach. With her degree, she hopes to become an author or an editor while traveling as much as possible.