Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am extremely surprised by how popular this device is. The number of glowing reviews praising its rich sounds, smart features, and overall quality make no sense to me, because I experienced essentially the exact opposite. This noise machine puts out very low quality sound, and I can't imagine anyone actually choosing to use it. To start with... Device design/ergonomics When I received the item, I immediately realized how light it was. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but when audio is concerned, in general the heavier the device the better the sound. Amplifiers, speaker magnets, and insulation materials are rather weighty, so a lightweight product probably doesn't have a lot of those. The buttons and the dial on the front are of very low quality. When you press the buttons, the entire front face caves a bit, and the buttons don't pop back out evenly. There is a lot of play when pressing the individual buttons, and it makes it sort of difficult to have a tactile idea of when the button has actually been pressed. This is a problem for a device that you'll be using in the dark when you're sleepy. Turning the knob to change the 'Sound Story', you can feel a large amount of play between the shaft and the receptacle, and there isn't much delineation between the choices. I would have preferred a snap-to feel on the knob so that it's obvious that you've made the choice, but instead you really just get a light pressure to tell you to stop turning. These complaints may seem nitpicky (and they are), but the reason I'm bringing this up is because this device costs $100. For that kind of money I expect high quality. I would have been OK with the above sacrifices if they were made to get better sound quality, but... Sound Quality The sound quality of this device is downright awful. I cannot put into words how let-down I was when I first fired it up. The sounds themselves are well recorded and of high quality, but the hardware on the device is just not up to the task of playing them. The manufacturers of the device like to point out that the device has a tweeter (speaker designed to play high notes), and a subwoofer (a speaker designed for low notes) to help replicate real-life sounds. However, one look at the dimensions of this product should have told me that the 'subwoofer' is far too small to be of any use. There is positively no bass sound coming out of this device, which is a problem for three reasons. The first reason is that bass sounds are what add richness to what you're hearing. When you remove the bass, you remove the depth and immersiveness (probably not a real word) of the sound. You're left with a sound that doesn't sound authentic, and is missing key areas that convince your mind that you actually are next to a babbling brook or a real thunderstorm. The second reason is that most of the sounds you'll want to block out have bass components to them. If someone is walking around above your apartment, you're only going to hear the low, bass-y sounds of the footsteps. Since this device has no ability to make low noises of its own, the bass noises from outside sources will flow right into your ear without any impediment. Idling cars, loud music, footsteps, people dropping things, people bumping into walls, etc, are completely unhindered by this device. Finally, the worst offender is that fact that the recorded sounds themselves are almost all bass-heavy! Playing the babbling brook 'Sound Story', you hear a lot of rushing water along with the 'plunks' of the current. Unfortunately, those 'plunks' are almost entirely bass, and they are WAY outside the range of what this device can handle. The 'subwoofer' in this device bottomed out every time that those sounds played (and they played maybe 1-2 times a second). I could almost hear the poor speaker wheezing 'Why... are... you... doing... this... to... me...' as it tried (and failed) to reproduce the sounds on the 'Sound Story'. The result was a pitiful and extremely annoying clunk that occurred nearly constantly, which completely overshadowed the rest of the story. The tweeter itself is also a problem, but for the opposite reason. The tweeter is hyperactive and incredibly shrill, so the sounds of the water on the Babbling Brook or the drops of rain on the Thunderstorm are extremely intrusive, and truly sound terrible. Furthermore, high-pitched sounds are very easily deflected and very directional, so if you move our head at all, the entire profile of the sound changes dramatically. I was listening to the Thunderstorm while lying on my back, and I was acutely aware of the fact that my right ear was getting much more sound than my left ear. After a few minutes I managed to acclimate myself to this, and it went from 'annoying' to 'nearly ignorable'. However, I rolled over on my side, and the sound profile instantly changed! Now my right ear was getting the full force of the sound and my left ear was almost completely blocked by the pillow. This dramatic change in sound profile shocked me awake, and it took a few minutes before I had acclimated to the new sound profile and was able to try to sleep again. If I moved or turned AT ALL, this process had to be repeated. Had the device had a strong bass component, and had the tweeter been turned down 20-30 notches, this would not be a problem. The sad thing is... The Sound Stories The 'Sound Stories' are actually all very high quality... when they work. You can attach headphones to the device if you want, and when I ran the sound through a decent amp and into some decent headphones, the 'Sound Stories' came alive. The deep bass is there, the highs are nicely muted and vibrant without being distracting, and the mids are immersive and clear. The sound quality is just not reproduceable by the low-quality components used in the product. Also, I must add that my unit had 2 definitely defective 'Sound Stories' and a few more that were likely on their way out. The Waterfall story was completely unusable. There was a loud hum present throughout the entire story, and it oscillated in a way that completely drowned out the actual waterfall. The 'Brown Noise' sound also kept getting infected with the cricket noises from the Meadow story, which was mildly amusing as well as distracting and unusable. I also had a few stories that sounded like they were going to have issues sooner or later. The Train seemed to buzz and hiss at random intervals, and the ocean had large periods of silence (sometimes 2-3 seconds) in the middle of playing. Finally, the sound stories themselves don't seem to be particularly well suited to a sleep machine. Many of them have large gaps in their frequencies that make it very easy for intrusive sounds to come in. As above, not having bass means that eternal bass sounds can come in. However, many of the sounds are missing large chunks of the mid-range frequencies that make them almost completely unsuited for blocking out any real noise. The Train story has almost nothing in the frequency range of human voices, so even relatively quiet talking cuts right through the story. The Meadow has nearly nothing between the asthmatic bass and the sharply shrill cricket chirps, and I honestly do not see how that would ever help anyone get to sleep unless the room was already silent. The Richness setting allows you to add additional sounds to each story, but instead of filling out the frequency range, it just adds random sound effects to the story. For instance, the Ocean story has a foghorn and seals. Maybe this helps some people, but to me it just made the sound story busier and more difficult to get lost in, which again completely goes against the purpose of this machine. The last thing about this machine is... The adaptive volume This was just comically bad. It's advertised as a way to have the device automatically increase its volume in response to external sounds, and it does technically do that. But the effect is that the device sloooooooooooooooooooooooowly fades-in the volume, meaning that the intrusive sound is going to do its damage and be done long before the device has had time to react. I had a loud diesel truck drive by my window, and the device didn't even start increasing the volume until the truck had passed and jolted me awake. Then, the instant it got to full volume, it realized the truck was gone and then slooooooooooooooowly brought itself down to regular volume again. It's like those videos you see where a parent pitches a ball to their small child to hit, and the ball whizzes past the kid a full 3 seconds before they swing. To be fair, I'm well aware of how hard it would be to make a device that can detect a sound, calculate it's volume, and increase it's own volume all before the original sound had time to reach the listener. However, just because something is difficult, doesn't mean we have to accept it when it's done poorly. Final Words The device was one of the most disappointing things I've ever purchased. The quality, quality control, design, output, capabilities, and overall ergonomics were nearly universally bad. I guess maybe sleep machines just aren't made for people like me, but it is truly surprising to me how positive the overall opinion of this product is. I would have expected the average person to be turned off by a device like this. At best, I would assume the overall impression would be grudgingly accepting. Instead, it seems like everyone genuinely loves this product. Granted, mine did have defects, but the defects themselves were only a small part of the problems that I saw. Most of my complaints are endemic to the device design, which is going to be the same for everyone. My advice would be to try to listen to this device in real life before you buy it. I'd wager than within 15 seconds you'll know without a doubt if you'll like it or not.