Cabin noise for sleep, somewhere over nothing.

Why it works

The inside of an aircraft at cruise is a broad, low roar with a steady tone or two inside it. This page builds that from filtered pink noise and two faint tones at 100 and 200 Hz. It is not a recording of an aircraft, which is why nothing ever happens in it, and why it never starts over.

Part of why people doze on planes is that nothing is expected of them until landing. The hum is only the wallpaper of that feeling. A story does more of the work: someone else is in charge of what happens next, and what happens next is slow, true and already over.

What you are hearing

• Cabin hum. Pink noise low-passed at 700 Hz over two faint steady tones at 100 and 200 Hz. Shaped after the inside of an aircraft at cruise; it is not a recording of one.
• The voice. The first four minutes of Aristotle, the Greatest Philosopher, a Lullable story, in a synthesised voice. It only plays if you bring it in.
• The ending. The preview lasts four minutes. Its last ten seconds are a straight fade to silence, so it never stops abruptly.

For a real recording that runs forty minutes, the Lullable iPhone app has rain, waves, a campfire and plain noise, with no voice and no music.