Once upon a time, I lived with a woman who quite possibly had the most difficult time falling asleep that I’ve ever witnessed. My ever-present friend, tinnitus, and myself could fall asleep just about anywhere, but she needed just the right amount of noise.

Any pattern or repetition in a white noise machine, she’d notice it, latch onto it mentally, and flip and turn in bed as the hours melted off the clock. Then she bought this big, honking sound machine, and peace returned to bedtime.

the non-repetition is the key

“Sound machine?” I’d wondered way back then. “I’d always heard them called white noise machines…” But a sound machine, I’d come to find out with a bit of Google digging, was different. White noise is but one type of ambient noise.

The Sound+Sleep has an interesting way of divvying up its 10 sounds. Even though there’s a white noise setting, the stars of the show are the soundtracks such as train, waterfall, city, brook, ocean, meadow, and more.

And then for each of the 10, there are three “richness” settings that layer in more or fewer ambient sounds, like deciding how much pepper you want in your salad. That makes for a total of 30 sounds, as far as Adaptive Sound Technologies figures it.

The randomness of these enhancements made it impossible for me to notice any looping or mind-gnashing repetition in the tracks. The sleep timer can be set for in 30-minute increments from a half-hour to two hours.

With a sound-setting wheel and all the buttons, it was only semi-intuitive to use in the dark. I could reach over and work the raised buttons easily enough when I could remember what each one did, but there was a bit of guesswork involved in using the wheel when I couldn’t see it.

The Sound+Sleep is big and expensive compared to my number-one sound machine, the $50 Lectrofan. What you get with the Sound+Sleep, though, are the range of environmental noises, such as train, fireplace, and rainfall.

If you dig the idea of falling asleep to more than just whooshing noises, the Sound+Sleep is unmatched.