Sleep stories read in a male voice.

Which voice puts you under is not a preference anyone can argue you out of, and it is one of the few things about sleep audio worth choosing deliberately. Some people need a lower register to stop tracking the words; others find exactly that too close to a voice reading them the news.

These are the stories read by David from Oxford, Arthur from Ludlow, Brian from St Ives and Patrick from Block Island. What they have in common is not pitch but pacing: no performance, no characters, no leaning on a word to tell you it matters. The delivery flattens rather than dramatises, and the last third of every recording is quieter and slower than the first, on purpose, whether or not you are still awake to notice.

If none of them work, every one of them is written out in full to read if you would rather not listen at all. There are no ads and no music in any of them.