The Small Speaker That Quieted a Noisy Hallway

The loudest room in our house is the hallway, and there is nothing in it. No television, no radio, no people. There is a floor grate, and under the grate is the furnace, and from October to April that furnace lets the whole house know when it has come on.

I retired from the school library two years ago. Dale retired from the machine shop a year after that. Two people, three bedrooms, a brick ranch house on a quiet street in Rockford, and somehow the noisiest hour of our day starts at five thirty in the morning when he gets up.

We ran a box fan in the bedroom for years to cover it. In February I replaced the fan with a Magicteam sound machine, the small one that sits on a dresser, and the box fan went out to the garage. That is the short version. The longer version is the reason I am writing this down, because I spent a lot of years putting up with a fan when I did not have to.

The fan worked, mostly. It also blew cold air across the room in January, which is a strange thing to want. On its low setting it rattled in a way that got into my jaw. And it took up a square foot of floor on my side of the bed, which in a room with one dresser and two people's worth of things is a real cost. I did not think of it as a compromise at the time. It was just what we did.

What I wanted was smaller than it sounds. Not a gadget. Not something I would have to learn or charge or talk to. I wanted a steady sound at a low volume that I could switch on at ten thirty and forget about until morning.

The furnace comes on under the hallway at five forty most mornings. With the rain sound going, I hear it the way you hear a car two streets over.

Nine months in, I use two of the twenty. Rain at night, and the fan sound when the rain feels too busy. There is white noise and brown noise and pink noise and blue noise, plus brook, ocean, bird and bonfire. I have tried all of them once. The bonfire is not for me. Neither is the bird.

Thirty two levels of volume sounds like more than anyone needs until you are lying in the dark trying to find the one that is just barely there. That is where the number earns its keep. My setting is low, low enough that I have to listen for it, and the memory function brings it back every night without my doing anything about it.

It has to be plugged in. The listing says so in the first line and I want to say it here too, because a small thing like this looks like it should be cordless and it is not. On the dresser it takes up about three inches, which matters when the top of the dresser is already holding a lamp, a coaster, Dale's watch and a stack of library books I have not returned. There is a timer for one, two or three hours. I leave it off at night, since I want the sound running until his alarm, but it is there if you want a machine that shuts itself off.

It does not make the furnace quiet. It covers it, which is a different thing done by a different method, and I want to be straight about that. It does not move air either. If you like a fan for the breeze, keep a fan. The quiet room at the back of the house does not need one at all. That room is away from the grate and it stays quiet on its own.

Dale was skeptical. He is a machinist by trade and by temperament and he does not care for things that beep or blink. He now notices when I forget to switch it on.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy it for one room and one job. Ours is the main bedroom and the job is covering a furnace, and the Magicteam has done that every night since February without a single fuss. If you want one machine to make a whole house feel calm, this is not that, and nothing is. If you want to stop hearing the thing that wakes you up at five thirty, this is a small purchase and it takes about three inches of dresser.

I would also tell you to start with the fan sound. It is closest to what most of us already know, so it will tell you within one night whether the whole idea suits you. Then try the rain. And I would tell you not to expect to love all twenty sounds. I love two. Two is enough. Nine months in, with the box fan long gone to the garage, I would buy it again tomorrow.