Sleep sounds
Fireplace sounds for sleep
A fire is the oldest sound humans have deliberately fallen asleep beside, and it is also, acoustically, a small and irregular series of tiny explosions. Both of those facts matter when you choose it.
In short
A fire is a soft broadband roar with sparse, sharp crackles laid on top, and those crackles are transients, precisely the kind of sudden sound a light sleeper surfaces for. It is one of the best wind-down sounds in the library and one of the weakest choices to leave running until morning.
- Default fade
- 30 minDefault fadeA fall-asleep aid, not a masker. 15, 45 and 60 are the other options.
- Recordings bundled
- 22Recordings bundledFire is one. The randomness of a real ember is the entire sound.
- Layers per mix
- 4Layers per mixFire under rain is the pairing that fixes its one weakness.
The crackle is a transient, and transients are the problem
A crackle is a pocket of moisture or gas failing suddenly. It goes from nothing to full level in a millisecond or two, with energy spread right across the spectrum. That is the textbook description of the kind of sound that gets through to a sleeping brain.
On its own, in a quiet room, that is fine and even pleasant while you are still awake. Two hours later, against silence, each one is a small event with nothing between it and you.
Underneath the crackles is a decent bed
Strip out the pops and what is left is a low, soft roar that is not far off brown noise in shape. That part masks perfectly well, and it is why a fire feels enveloping rather than thin.
So the sound is doing two contradictory things at once. The roar is holding a floor and the crackles keep punching through it. Layering something over the top is the practical fix, because it raises the floor to meet the crackles instead of trying to remove them.
Real embers, because random is hard to fake
Fire is one of the 22 bundled recordings. What makes a fire sound like a fire is the exact statistical scatter of its pops, and generated fires give themselves away within about a minute because the spacing settles into something you can predict.
The rest of the library leans the other way: 41 of 63 sounds are built on your phone sample by sample and never repeat. Recordings are used only where the irregularity is the whole point, which is fire, rain, a field of crickets, a room with people in it.
Half an hour is the default for a reason
Tock sets fall-asleep aids to fade after 30 minutes and offers 15, 45 and 60. You can extend it, and if you have always slept fine next to a fire, extend it.
The default exists because a sound built to be interesting is a sound with something in it to wake up for. Interesting is exactly what you want at 11pm and exactly what you do not want at 3am.
Who it suits, and who it does not
Worth trying if
- The first half hour, as part of a wind-down rather than as overnight cover
- Cold nights and a quiet room, where nothing has to be masked in the first place
- People who want warmth in a sound rather than neutrality
- Layering under rain, which softens the crackles and gives them somewhere to sit
Probably skip it if
- All-night use in a noisy room, where the gaps between crackles let everything back in
- Very light sleepers, since every crackle is a transient and transients are what wake you
- Anyone who has ever lain there waiting for the next pop, which is a real failure mode
How it behaves once it is running
- It is one of the 22 bundled recordings, so it plays from the app with nothing to fetch.
- You can layer up to four sounds at once and save the result as a mix, so a bed you like is one tap the next night.
- A distance control puts it Far, Near or Close, which changes how present it feels rather than just how loud it is. 42 of the 63 sounds carry it.
- It fades with the sleep timer, and the good-night screen dims itself to near black after twenty seconds so the phone stops being a light source.
What to put underneath it
Four sounds at a time is the limit, and three is usually the sweet spot. These are the pairings that hold up.
- RainfallRain fills the space between crackles, so the pops stop being isolated events against silence and start being part of a room.
- Gentle windWind outside and fire inside. The wind drifts slowly under the crackles and makes the whole scene feel like a place rather than an effect.
- Brown noiseA low bed under the fire raises the floor enough that the sharpest crackles no longer stick out, which is the cheapest way to make this one safer to leave on.
Questions people ask
Can I leave the fireplace sound on all night?
You can set it to 60 minutes or override the timer entirely. Whether you should depends on how lightly you sleep. In a quiet room with a low volume most people are fine. If you already wake at small sounds, run rain or brown noise underneath so the crackles have a floor.
Does a fire sound actually mask anything?
The roar underneath does, and it is broader and lower than people expect. The crackles work against it by punching above the floor. Net effect is decent masking with occasional holes, which is fine in a quiet room and unreliable in a loud one.
Why does it have a distance control if it is not a masker?
Because distance is a genuine acoustic effect on any broadband texture, and it does something useful here specifically: setting it to Far rolls the high end off the crackles, which is the single best way to make them less sharp without turning the whole thing down.
Related sounds
Nearby textures worth trying on a night this one does not land.
- RainfallSteady rainfall spreads its energy fairly evenly across the audible range, close enough to pink noise that it masks about as well while sounding a great deal less like a machine. The bigger variable is the surface: rain on canvas, on glass and on a car roof are three genuinely different sounds, and only one of them will suit your room.
- Distant stormFar-off thunder helps at the start of the night because the slow rolling swells give your attention something easy to follow while it lets go, and it hurts later because every roll is a change in level, which is exactly what surfaces a light sleeper. Tock treats it as a fall-asleep aid and fades it out after half an hour by default.
- Late cafeA cafe bed works because a room with people in it reads as safe, and it only keeps working while none of the voices are intelligible. The moment you can pick out a word you start following it, and following language is the opposite of falling asleep, which is why Tock generates the murmur instead of recording a real room.
- Night forestA night forest bed is a soft, broad rustle of leaves with occasional distant events layered into it, and the design rule that makes it work is that none of those events should ever be identifiable. A sound you can name is a sound you then lie there waiting to hear again, which is the exact opposite of falling asleep.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- AlternativesTock vs RiseChoose Rise if planning your day around energy peaks and a running sleep debt is what actually changes your behaviour. Choose Tock if you want the alarm itself to be smarter, the night recorded from the phone, and a coach that can talk about what it heard.
- RoundupsThe best sleep apps for iPhone, sorted by what you're fixingFor iPhone, the best sleep app depends on the problem. Tock is the best all-round pick when the alarm and the morning are what is broken, Apple Health Sleep is the free place to start, Calm is for people who cannot fall asleep, AutoSleep is for Apple Watch owners, Rise is for sleep debt and SnoreLab is for snoring.
- Wake timesWaking up at 7:30amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 7:30am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 11:30pmWhere to put the alarm after a 11:30pm lights-out.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep adults needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adults sleep 7 or more hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health. It is expressed as a minimum rather than a range because the evidence supports a lower bound far more firmly than it supports an ideal figure.
- NapsThe 10 minute napA 10 minute nap lifts alertness without taking you into slow wave sleep, so you wake up clear rather than groggy. It is the safest nap to take close to work or driving, and it does nothing for memory consolidation, which needs considerably longer.
You cannot just decide to fall asleep
Fireplace is one of 63 sounds in Tock. Layer four at a time, save the mix, and let the alarm wake you at a lighter moment in the morning.