My basic idea is to overshadow those unpleasant noises and sounds with pleasant ones.

Ambient Mixer now is an online service where users can listen to ambient sound from other users or create their own relaxing sounds. It is free to listen to other user’s sounds, while the creation of custom atmospheric sounds requires an account.

A custom ambient song consists of up to eight different sound samples that you can combine. A click on Load next to each channel opens a menu with sound categories. Included here are effects, nature sounds, transport, human or unreal ambiances to name a few. You usually encounter a number of sub-groups when you select a main group. The nature category for instance is split into the four groups Animals, Musical Instruments, Other, Weather and Water.

Each channel comes with its own volume control and other settings. It is for instance possible to make a channel random so that its sound loop is only played a specific amount of times per minute, ten minutes or hour.

If there is a downside to the service it is the fact that downloading music to your PC is not free. You have to pay between $5 and $16 depending on the length of the audio that you want.

It is possible to bypass this with sound recorders but it may not be legal in the country you are living in. It is however possible to listen to the songs online. This however is not applicable for me, considering that I do not want to hear my PC running in the background while trying to sleep. While it is almost silent, it is still noticeable.

Users who just want to listen can pick a popular composition on the main page or use the Ambient categories to find something that they like to listen to.

You can check out Ambient Mixer here.

Resting the eyes is obviously still possible, as is light gymnastics. Add ambient music to the experience if you are in the possession of headsets, or a workplace where you can play music without disturbing others.

MoodTurn is a web based application that offers ambient music to “relax and enjoy”. The websites consists of various themes and a player, to play ambient noise as soon as the website is loaded.

moodturn

Available themes include the usual suspects: Rainforest, Storm, Beach, Night, Bonfire, Rain or Garden. Each theme comes with its own distinct ambient noise, and background images that are set to rotate, but offer an option to stop the rotation.

It is a free web service, developed by Ramunas Geciauskas, that provides ambient music and soothing landscapes to help you relax and avoid stress in your daily life.

The site loops music and visuals if you’d prefer to let it play in the background while you work in another window. MoodTurn might be the best way to block out your noisy cubicle neighbor.

The sounds are surprisingly large, each with a playtime of around one hour, which means the site offers roughly ten hours of ambient music to listen to.

Moodturn is perfect for a quick power nap at the work place, or a period of relaxation. The service should be compatible with most modern web browsers.

Pressing F11, or the full screen icon in the player controls, will display the service in full screen mode. (via Shellcity)

The application provides different sound sets and graphics that go along well with each other to provide artificial nature right on your desktop. The lite version of the application is completely free to use and comes with ten different settings like Rainy Day, Deep Forest, Thunderstorm and Oceans Edge.

The quality of the sounds is pretty good and does not become boring or repetitive after a while. Each setting makes use of different sound samples that work well together. Samples can be added or removed during playback, like Light Wind and a Campfire to your Ocean sounds ? No problem.

The sounds are divided into Background Sounds, like Rain, Night or Ocean and Random Sounds like Thunder Roll (six different !) and animals. Sounds can be recorded, the application makes use of the Windows Sound Recorder. I received an error but was able to record sounds normally with Audacity. Any other program that can record sounds directly from the sound card will do.

Atmosphere Lite is a nice application for those hours where you just want to relax. Could be very nice as a general background sound during night or breaks during the day. The two commercial versions of the product come with additional songs, longer loops and import functions.

One last remark. The Lite version comes with four so called Brainwaves that are supposed to stimulate the brain. Did not work for me though, found the four available ones rather annoying.