Anyone who has ever spent the night in a hotel or motel knows that they're rarely as quiet as you'd like. But I never hear anything going on around my room, either inside or outside the hotel.

I turn the TV or radio to the white noise between stations. I turn the volume up until I can't hear the external noise, and I go to sleep.

That is a technique commonly used for keeping prisoners of war quiet at Guantanamo bay.

A good pair of earplugs provides me with a cone of silence. A few of weeks ago I stayed at a hotel in Grindelwald that was right next to a cemetary. Now those were some quiet neighbors.

I get really drunk on cheap sparkling wine and pass out.

cher cher, LOL not a bad idea

It depends on the hotel, I have been to some that I wonder if we are the only people there, it is so quiet. Others are spoiled by inconsiderate louts bellowing outside the room door in the middle of the night.
But asking for a quiet room away from the street usually works for us.
My favorite "white noise" is rain during the night in Paris ~

When we hear that "klaxon" sound from the police cars during the night, we actually smile in our sleep. We've even discussed that we should record the night traffic sounds so we can sleep better at home...

This is easy! Simply make enough of your OWN noise (and depending upon what you are DOING to make it) and you won't even notice the noise from any other room! More fun, too.

So, R, you are the nasty SOB who makes the motel so noisey that the rest of us can't sleep.

HI Robespierre--I wonder if this "white noise" from the TV is loud enough to penetrate the walls of the adjoining room, that may not be making noise?? A TV produces a powerful vibration from the back of it, which is much louder than what comes out of the front of it. I am sure it is not your intent to disturb other quiet guests. My suggestion for a method more considerate of your fellow guests would be to acquire a small travel size white noise machine that can be placed on the night table, and that would be far less likely to penetrate the wall between rooms. A method I use, no matter the time of year, is to engage the individually controlled room fan/AC--ususally mounted on an interior wall of the room-- which efficiently drowns out any ambient noise.

First of all, the noise is not really white - it's pink. The low frequencies that would be transmitted through walls aren't produced by a desktop TV's speaker.

My technique creates the same amount of noise as the machine you suggested (which I will not lug around - did I tell you I never check a bag?)

I think white noise could perhaps muffle or "negate" outside/far away noise, perhaps distant city or traffic noise. It could not muffle noise from loud neighbors banging doors or talking very loudly in the room next door. My last trip in Paris, I stayed next to a room where the people decided to bring their teenage (early teens, I guess) children to Paris and leave them alone for long periods in the hotel room. They created a lot of noise and it sounded like they were breaking things at one point. I went to complain to them, and the girl said her brother was banging the closet doors for fun. YOu could not drown this out with a TV set.

Also, TV noise from neighboring rooms is disturbing very late at night if it's loud. I think it's true that TV noise can be worse through a wall than it seems in the room. If I had a neighbor in a hotel who left his TV on all night long and it was loud enough to block out all outside noise, I'd complain to management. Maybe Robespierre stays in very expensive hotels with really thick walls and large rooms, then it probably wouldn't bother people--I rather doubt it.

All I can do is to suggest that you try it instead of imagining it.

The next time you're in a hotel, switch on the TV, tune in some white noise, turn it up until you can't hear ambient noise, then step out of the room.

I think you will be surprised.

HI--Robespierre--you do not strike me as an inconsiderate person. The point I am making is *not* whether the sound can be heard in the hall, but rather through the wall of the adjoining room via the intense vibration that the sound creates. Therefore, the only way to test this is to go into the room that shares the wall w/the TV. The hall test will not yield this info.

Pink noise?
I can imagine it and I have actually experienced it and NO, you don't hear it through the walls. Unless they are some cheap flop house type walls where you can hear the man next door snoring anyway.
White noise, even Pink noise is sort of like air blowing, a shhhshhhing sound..it has no intense vibrations.
LOL, unless everyone here hears sounds far more acutely than we do

HI Scarlett--I don't know if you had noticed but he was using the TV at full volume to produce that white/pink (?) noise. TV sound generates a *lot* of vibration esp from behind. And since the back of the set is often right up against the wall of the adjoining room...that was why I thought the sound might very well travel. I am (alas) one of those very light sleepers in hotels which is why I usually turn on the room fan.

Just to clarify Pink noise for you:

The characteristics of pink noise.

For the purposes of this discussion, "power" means the average power or energy contained in a signal over a long period of time.
White noise has the same distribution of power for all frequencies, so there is the same amount of power between 0 and 500 Hz, 500 and 1,000 Hz or 20,000 and 20,500 Hz.

Pink noise has the same distribution of power for each octave, so the power between 0.5 Hz and 1 Hz is the same as between 5,000 Hz and 10,000 Hz.

Since power is proportional to amplitude squared, the energy per Hz will decline at higher frequencies at the rate of about -3dB per octave. To be absolutely precise, the rolloff should be -10dB/decade, which is about 3.0102999 dB/octave.

So now you know
;-)

Muck

Oh Muck, that was easy for you to say!!

socialworker, his words were that he turns it up until he cannot hear the external noise, which is not neccesarily full volume..and I always thought that to get that bass thumping/vibration, one needs to have actual sound on.
I checked it on my little telly in the kitchen, it just made the shhhshhhing noise louder, no vibration
EVeryone go check and see what happens LOL

Or just get an acoustical power spectrum analyzer (there's a couple on eBay) and see what I'm talking about graphically.

What? You slept through logarithms? Class dismissed.

I don't mind my neighbors loud voices. I just hate when I am 'lucky' to be witness to the overactive, noisy neighbors who have the room above mine. This has occurred only in Paris-so far. And for some strange reason both sets of neighbors were French judging from the language they spoke-and yeah, you can hear everything. It's good my hotels were built in the 1700's and are still sturdy as my ceilings stayed intact both times.