Rain Sounds

What you are hearing

A 31-second recording of rainfall, played over and over. Each pass is faded into the one before it over about a second and a half, so the join is hard to pick out — but it is a loop, and on a quiet night with headphones you may eventually notice it come round. That is the honest trade for a recording small enough to download in a moment.

The recording is 493 KB, and it is fetched only when you press Play. Opening this page costs you nothing but the page itself, and once the file is here, pressing Play again does not download it twice.

Rain, or noise?

Rain and white noise do the same job in different ways. Noise is even and unchanging, which makes it better at burying speech; rain has texture and small events in it, which some people find pleasant company and others find distracting. If rain keeps pulling your attention, try brown noise, which is deeper and duller. If you want something with more movement, there is Ocean Waves and Campfire Sounds.

Using it without regretting it

1. 1

   Start quieter than you think. Masking works at a level just above what you are covering, and hours of loud rain is a bad trade. The volume starts at 40%.

2. 2

   Use the sleep timer if you are going to sleep. 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 rain. It does not treat insomnia, anxiety, tinnitus or anything else, and nothing here is medical advice. Whether rain helps you sleep or concentrate is a question for your own experience, not for a tool page.

Where the recording came from

The sound is "Rain.mp3" by oen, 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, because saying where something came from costs nothing. The file is served exactly as it was downloaded, and every detail of it, down to its length and sample rate, is recorded in the site's asset-license notes.