Some time ago, I wrote about a website called Coffitivity. Coffitivity plays the Background Noise of a cafe so that you can have some ambience while working. I work alone (not in the Chuck Norris sense, it’s just that I work from home) so sometimes a bit of background noise can be welcome.

More ambience sites have sprung up since then, and one of my new favourites is A Soft Murmur. But why is it different?

Simply put, it’s because it offers a variety of sounds. The coffee shop is still in there, but you can mix it with thunder, rain, white noise, singing bowls, and more. Each sound has a slider (on the desktop version of the site) so you can get the relative levels you want. Personally, I like listening to the rain and thunder so that’s the combination I usually go with.

I find having a little background noise does help with my concentration, and these sites have an advantage over “live” noise in that I can turn them off anytime I want to. It’s kind of hard to get everyone in my local coffee shop to be quiet on demand! The disadvantage, of course, is there’s no counter to buy coffee from!

Have a listen at http://asoftmurmur.com/ and see if it works for you.