Campfire Sounds

What you are hearing

A 25-second recording of a fire, played over and over, with each pass faded into the one before it over about a second. A fire is made of small, unrelated events — a pop here, a settle there — which is the easiest kind of sound to loop without anyone noticing, because there is no rhythm or melody to give the repeat away.

It is still a loop. If you listen for a particular crack, you will hear it come round every twenty-five seconds. Most people never do, because a fire is background by nature.

About the download

This recording is 2.1 MB, which makes it the largest file on this site — four times the rain recording, for a quarter of the length. That is because it is an uncompressed WAV, and the honest reason it has not been shrunk is that compressing it would mean adding a new tool to this project, which is a decision for the site's owner rather than something to slip in quietly.

So the page does the next best thing: it downloads nothing until you press Play. Opening this page, reading it and leaving costs you nothing at all. If you are on a metered connection, that is the number to weigh before pressing.

Fire, rain, or noise?

A fire is company rather than cover. Its sounds are sparse and irregular, so there are gaps between them — which means it does very little to mask a conversation through a wall. For that, steady sound wins: rain or, more bluntly, brown noise. For long swells rather than small pops, there is Ocean Waves.

What a fire is good at is making a silent room feel less silent, which is a different job and a real one.

Using it without regretting it

1. 1

   Start quieter than you think. Crackles are short and sharp, and a level that feels gentle in the quiet parts can be jarring when the fire pops. The volume starts at 40%.

2. 2

   Use the sleep timer if you are drifting off. It is off by default; set to 15, 30 or 60 minutes it fades out instead of stopping abruptly.

3. 3

   Leave the tab open. Hiding the tab stops the sound, because a page that keeps playing after you switch away is a page you will curse later.

What this page does not claim

It plays a recording of a fire. It does not treat insomnia, anxiety or anything else, and nothing here is medical advice. There is also no picture of a fire here and nothing flickering on screen — a flickering image is exactly the kind of thing this site will not put in front of you. If you want a screen that does nothing at all while this plays, there is Focus Mode.

Where the recording came from

The sound is "Campfire.wav" by Defaultv, published on Freesound under Creative Commons 0, which places it in the public domain. CC0 asks for no credit at all — this page gives it anyway. The file is served exactly as it was downloaded: 44 100 Hz, mono, 16-bit, as recorded in the site's asset-license notes.