ST-90 · SIDE O · OPEN-PLAN MASKING
Office Sound Masking.
The most distracting thing in an open office is not the volume — it's the conversation two desks away that your brain insists on transcribing. Sound masking fixes the problem at the acoustic level: a soft, steady background that makes distant speech unintelligible. Preview the three masking channels below.
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01 — LISTEN
Three masking channels.
Previews are 20-second clips. In NoiseTape every sound is a seamless, gap-free loop tuned for 8-hour sessions — keep listening in the app.
- Pink Noise
- White Noise
- Fan
02 — HOW OFFICES DO IT
What the ceiling speakers are playing.
Sound masking is an established piece of office engineering: many corporate buildings quietly run networks of ceiling loudspeakers playing filtered noise at around 42–48 dB, tuned to a pink-like spectrum that concentrates energy where human speech lives. The goal is not silence but a shorter distraction radius — a conversation fifteen meters away stays audible as texture but stops being intelligible, and unintelligible speech is dramatically easier to ignore. Acoustics researchers call the underlying problem the irrelevant speech effect: understood words, even unwanted ones, measurably tax reading and working memory.
If your office has no masking system — or your office is a kitchen table — the same principle scales down to one desk. Pink noise is the closest match to what the commercial systems play; white noise masks a wider band at the cost of a brighter hiss; a steady fan does the same job with a more natural, mechanical warmth. Keep it just loud enough that speech around you loses its words, on headphones or a small speaker. NoiseTape runs it offline on iPhone, iPad and Mac — on the Mac, the menu-bar controller starts and stops masking with ⌘P, no window needed.
03 — FAQ
Sound masking at work, answered.
What is sound masking?
Adding a soft, steady, engineered background sound to a space so that speech and sudden noises stand out less. Commercial systems play filtered pink-spectrum noise from ceiling speakers at roughly 42–48 dB; the same effect works at one desk with a phone or laptop. The aim is unintelligibility, not silence — speech you can't parse is speech you can ignore.
Pink noise or white noise for the office?
Pink noise is what commercial masking systems approximate — its energy sits where speech does, so it masks conversation efficiently at a comfortable volume, and most people can sit inside it for a full workday. White noise covers a wider band but sounds brighter and hissier. Try pink first, white if chatter still cuts through, and a fan sound if you prefer something that reads as a real machine.
Headphones or a speaker?
Headphones give the strongest masking and bother nobody — the practical choice in a shared office. A small speaker at low volume works well in a home office or a private room, and keeps your ears free. Either way the volume rule is the same: just enough that nearby speech loses its words.
Does sound masking actually improve focus?
Research on open-plan acoustics consistently shows intelligible background speech harms reading and working-memory tasks, and that masking reduces that penalty — which is why sound-masking installations are a standard line item in office builds. It won't make work effortless; it removes one well-documented tax on attention.
See also: pink noise for deeper sleep · white noise for sleep & focus · fan noise for sleeping · the full 113-sound library