Talk:Pink noise

message: This has to be the worst article I've ever encountered on Wikipedia.  It is utterly, 100% useless to the overwhelming majority of people.  Not only could I not understand a thing that the article says, I can't even understand the talk page!  Good gravy, this is the quintessential example of something written by experts for experts, and no non-expert can make head nor tail of it.
I came here because I have a noise-generating device that I sleep with.  Among its myriad settings, it includes white noise and pink noise.  I find the pink noise superior for sleeping, because it empirically has more bass than the white noise.  I came here to learn just what the difference is between the two, but I leave with no increased knowledge, and a bundle of confusion.  I'm still especially scratching my head trying to grasp how somehow speech and music are both examples of pink noise!  I have the scores to all nine Beethoven symphonies, please point me to the bars where anything remotely like what I hear from my pink noise generator occurs.
I'm so flummoxed by what I read that it is hard for me to give suggestions for improvement.  But one thought that occurs to me is that it might help to provide some specific concrete examples when making grandiose sweeping statements.  For example, the claim that the pitch sequence in all melodies is basically pink noise.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.212.96.159 (talk) 15:59, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Worst Article Ever

message: i've heard of the use of pink noise in reducing ambient noise, as pink noise would maskerade human voice. Like a silencer. Is it true? If it is it should be pointed in the article.
-alexandre van de sande
alexandre, the use of noise (white, pink, etc.) to mask other sounds is often misunderstood/overrated. trusting a noisemaker for masking can in some cases have the opposite of its intended effect. for example, i recall seeing a film where a psychologist turned on a small nearby noisemaker prior to a session with a client, with the intention of keeping those in nearby rooms from following their conversation.
"small" is important there, because it means the noise probably won't have much low end; therefore, it won't go through walls very well. "nearby" is even worse, because if the noisemaker is close to them, the result will be that they talk louder to hear themselves over the noise. somebody in a room might then hear them better with the noisemaker than without.
almost any noise of moderate bandwidth can mask other sounds near the same frequencies. white and pink noise are often used because they are at constant levels, not having pauses through which the protected sounds may be discerned. an argument can be made that a better masking source would have some irregular nature to it, making it harder for a determined listener to tune out. the level, however, should remain mostly consistent. in any case, the locations of the sound sources and the potential listeners are crucial.
in the above example, the psychologist and his client would be better off moving toward the center of the room (away from walls and vents), and placing low-to-mid frequency noise sources along every wall and vent through which they don't want their conversation heard. that way they will keep their voices low (being further from the noise), and the relative mix downstream will have more noise in it, not only because of the new mix inside the room (more noise than voices), but because the low and mid frequencies will go through the walls better, and because the noise source is now closer (therefore louder) than the voices.
an even better example, though crude, is the behavior of folks using the toilet when a loud fan is overhead. they have the illusion that people outside hear the same mix they do. however, much of the fan's noise (mid-to-high frequency) is masked by the door and walls, whereas the, um, "natural" sounds are quite audible, and sometimes even louder than they would be if the donor didn't have that loud fan in his ears. a similar example is how people try to hold conversations with somebody running water at a kitchen sink; the proximity of the running water makes it hard for the person at the sink to hear, whereas the noise:voice mix for the person across the room is negligible.
re "silencer", the use of that word in this context is misleading. masking can only silence things relatively. the overall level is always increased, unless anti-noise is the masking source. however, though anti-noise works great in headsets and other tightly controlled environments, it's far more position dependent then brute force masking (drowning out), and isn't the panacea it's often portrayed. SaltyPig 06:25, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Reducing ambient noise

message: SaltyPig, from our edit summaries we both feel we have corrected the article, though our edits appear to be the opposite. Please explain where I am wrong. Hyacinth 18:31, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we hear according to the Equal-loudness contours, right? - Omegatron 19:56, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)
hi, Hyacinth. please excuse if i've stepped across wiki protocol. i don't have much experience with contested edits. glad you brought it up. the logical conclusion from acknowledging the distortion of the human ear is that nothing is heard as it is, rendering moot the pointing out that we don't hear one certain thing as what it is. what's crucial is that we hear white noise as our version of white noise; we recognize it for what it is. we can tell the difference between that and pink noise. should we say that we don't hear a cat's meow as a cat's meow until it's been run through an arbitrary filter to make it closer to what a mic hears?
the previous version asserted that "white noise is not perceived as white noise, while pink noise is." does that mean pink noise is perceived as white noise, or pink noise is perceived as pink noise? either way, it's incorrect. pink noise is not adjusted accurately for the human ear. if there's a color of noise (say for example, "fletcher-munson-bark") which is adjusted for the human ear, it might be worth a mention. however, it would still be misleading to say that "fletcher-munson-bark noise" is perceived as white noise.
let me know what you think of that. and please feel free to revert until we clear this up. my overall feeling is that the paragraph is unnecessary. whether your version or mine, i'd like it removed. pink noise has no direct bearing to bark, fletcher-munson, et al, nor should we forget that all such quantifications of human perception are arbitrary, and hardly suited to equating with such a tightly specified, verifiable thing as pink noise. SaltyPig 22:48, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: It's worth noting that '1/f noise' is not limited to sounds like the samples played on the site.  Music and speech both have 1/f noise spectra (Voss & Clarke, 1975). —WebDrake 12:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: White vs pink

message: :1/f noise is found in a wide variety of physical phenomena. Examples include ... financial markets, astronomy, and human coordination.
What exactly does it mean for financial markets, astronomy, and human coordination to produce noise? Obviously this isn't talking about physical sound (stars don't make sound that travels through space), but since the article does appears to be talking about sound, this should be made clear.  — Asbestos | Talk 10:03, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Noise' is a meaningful term with respect to all signals, not just sound.  The original discovery of 1/f noise was in current fluctuations in vacuum tubes (Schottky, 1918, 1922; Johnson, 1925).  With respect to financial markets you can look at e.g. volatility (fluctuations in the amplitude of price movements): the autocorrelation shows power-law decay.  I'll try to add some references here.  —WebDrake 11:58, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The noise of financial markets?

message: I have some problems with the recent entry. It says:
:"Producing true pink noise is notoriously difficult. Most digital and analog "pink noise" generators don't produce mathematically perfect 1/f noise; instead they start with white noise and filter it to remove more and more energy at succesively higher frequencies (about 3 dB per octave). This produces a more or less acceptable approximation to pink noise, depending on how many filters are used, but true pink noise cannot be produced from white noise with a finite set of filters."
Producing "true" pink or white noise is impossible - it would require infinite energy to generate the high frequencies all the way out to infinity. That means that these faulty pink noise generators don't start with true white noise to begin with. When you say that it takes a number of filters, you must be talking about a practical limitation, not a mathematical one. If you had the right kind of filter, and you had noise that was white over the bandwidth of interest, you would only need one filter. So when you talk about a number of filters, you must be talking about a specific kind of filter. Which kind? PAR 05:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: True pink noise

message: I've expanded the reference list.  It now includes both of Schottky's early papers in the Annalen der Physik as well as Johnson's 1925 Physical Review paper, which I think is the earliest English-language reference.  I've also included the Press (1978) and Dutta and Horn (1981) reviews, and a recent review of scale-free biological phenomena.
With regard to 1/f noise in neural signals, it's probably worth looking at the work of Walter J. Freeman: if anyone can get hold of Mass Action in the Nervous System (Academic Press, New York, 1975), that might contain appropriate data.  Another one, which I'll try to get hold of, is in Brain Res. 65, 91–107. (1974).  I have some of his more recent papers, but they are simulation papers, not the original data.  Funnily enough the Gisiger review does not reference them.  I'll look around and see what else I can find.
The William H. Press review covers at least some of the astrophysics and other data.  As for financial markets etc., again, I'll see what I can find that feels appropriate.  If anyone knows of a more recent, comprehensive review of 1/f noise, that would be very helpful.
One brief note — I've kept the Schottky papers because they were already referenced (and are historically important), but from my understanding they are not actually on 1/f noise.  My impression is that Schottky discovered the existence of fluctuations in the current, and theorised that they should be white noise: Johnson (1925) measured the effect more precisely and showed the 1/f phenomenon.  This is implicit in Johnson's paper and also the "pedagogical review" by Milotti, but I would like confirmation (I've tried and failed to get the Schottky papers out of Wiley).
Cheers, —WebDrake 13:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: "Pink" is a word to describe the character of noise, and is unrelated to its source or the medium it exists in.  It's just a description of the noise's frequency content.  For instance, statistics of natural phenomena can be pink without involving electronics at all.
"Flicker" noise is a specific phenomenon found in electronic circuits, which happens to have a pink spectrum.  Flicker noise should not redirect here. — Omegatron 14:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you want to write a detailed article on flicker noise, that's fine with me. —Keenan Pepper 16:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, I'll start it, anyway.  :-) — Omegatron 17:00, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh good! I was worried it would languish as a stub, but it looks quite decent. —Keenan Pepper 21:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I would like to propose it come back into the main pink noise article, for reasons discussed on Talk:Flicker noise.  Basically I feel that we can do the particular subject justice in the present article, and also that both subjects gain from being included together: flicker noise, from being discussed in the wider context of possible 1/f noises, and pink noise, because flicker noise is one of the most important historical examples. —WebDrake 22:16, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split 

message: Flicker noise was explicitly split from this article because it's a different topic (a type of noise that happens to be pink).  I obviously oppose a merge. — Omegatron 01:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I support a merge. We're not building a dictionary. It is is better encyclopedic form to cover multiple closely related topics in a single article. --Kvng (talk) 00:13, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flicker noise merge 

message: Is it a big bug? I think the article is in error concerning the statistics of natural images. It states that natural images should have a 1/f spectrum (and from the text at the beginning it should be clear that this would apply to the power spectrum). But when reading the cited literature (and it is easy, just click the link) I find on page 2385, just below Fig. 7: "The amplitude falls off quickly by a factor of roughly 1/f (i.e., the power falls at 1/f2)." So either the definition of pink and Brownian (red) noise is incorrect, or natural images have a Brownian (red) noise power spectrum. Kaernbach 21:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just verified with David Fields himself. And I got a very interesting answer. It is a question of the number of dimensions. Pink noise (which is self-similar on scaling) is 1/f in one dimension (acoustics), and 1/f^2 in two dimensions. The same is true for Brownian noise: 6 dB/octave in 1 dim, 12 db/octave in 2 dim (always referring to the power spectrum). So the reference to Fields (1987) is correct in the pink noise article, but the definition of pink noise should include the number of dimensions.  Is there anybody volunteering for this change? Or should I? Kaernbach 17:53, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Natural images, and the number of dimensions 

message: I found another name for this noise to be "Hooge noise", so I redirected it to this artcle. If that is something different, just let me know,--Rayc 18:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hooge noise 

message: I'm all for showing pink being both flat and sloped, with the appropriate text telling the reader which scale, linear or log, is being depicted. I'd especially like it if the reddish-orange graph were available in both linear and log versions. Binksternet (talk) 04:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, OK, I've tried being nice. You are wrong. whether the x axis is lin or log makes no difference to the direction of the slope of the spectrum. What matters is how the spectrum was generated. If it is constant delta-f such as fft then white noise will be flat, if it is constant %age bandwidth such as octave filters then pink noise will be flat. Greglocock (talk) 04:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images 

message: I removed this link:
*http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527483.900-solved-the-mathematics-of-the-hollywood-blockbuster.html Solved: The mathematics of the Hollywood blockbuster
It does not make any sense to me, because pink noise is filtered randomness, but the article says that pink noise in film shot length is related to attentions spans of viewers, with "attention spans of particular lengths were recurring at regular intervals." Pink noise has no regularly recurring data. Binksternet (talk) 18:37, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You only have your reading comprehension to blame for that, the article is fine. --188.102.158.197 (talk) 09:25, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Film shot length compared to pink noise 

message: There are many theories of the origin of 1/ƒ noise. Some theories attempt to be universal, while others are applicable to only a certain type of material, such as semiconductors. Universal theories of 1/ƒ noise remain a matter of current research interest.
Which theories? Current research interest? References are missing. 84.88.76.28 (talk) 16:37, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing citations 

message: The Wikipedia article currently says:
The name arises from being intermediate between white noise (1/ƒ0) and red noise (1/ƒ2) which is commonly known as Brownian noise.
However, I just read this that the name comes from what it looks like as visible light.
Which one is true? Does anyone have a citation for the article's explanation? --4368 (talk) 13:19, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I could not find a citation for white + red = pink. Yours is definitely a reliable source (here's a more specific link). I would encourage you to make the change and see if it sticks. --Kvng (talk) 14:52, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Thanks for the direct link. --4368 (talk) 21:24, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the name 

message: At some point in the article it was mentioned that at a point where the equation describing this noise would have f=0, producing a division by zero, that the result would be infinite energy. I may be wrong but I am under the impression that the notion of division by zero producing infinite values is archaic and has been disproven; perhaps that only applies to certain (or most?) schools of mathematics, but I believe that the statement should be revised for clarification to describe the statement asymptotically: as f approaches zero, the energy required to produce the sound wave increases infinitely.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.27.162.44 (talk) 16:03, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Infinite" energy... 

message: I saw that there is a request for clarification.
I found a reference that can be of help but unfortunately I am not educated enough to use it and make my own contribution to this article.
If someone can take initiative, here it is:
http://linkage.rockefeller.edu/dnacorr/voss92.pdf  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.218.88.234 (talk) 14:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pink noise in DNA 

message: I don't know how to add the image given on this link: http://www.penguinproducer.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/PinkNoise.png 
This image clearly depicts pink noise in time domain and the page lacks such image.
The image is covered under creative commons license so I guess we can use it.
Anybody who knows how to edit wikipedia pages, PLEASE ADD THIS IMAGE TO THE PAGE.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.226.74.62 (talk) 05:03, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image depicting pink noise in time domain 

message: I just analysed the "pink" noise sample-sound from this page (27 April 2016) and in fact it looks to be white (flat) from about 2kHz to 22kHz.
It does rise in amplitude from 2kHz down to 200Hz.
This isn't a comprehensive analysis, but I think this needs checking further...
Is there a better source of pink noise to cite in Wikipedia?
217.33.180.66 (talk) 16:10, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Same sound spectrum with a slightly different pitch, or just volume, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtimhT-ff4 prokaryotes (talk) 12:02, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accuracy of "pink" noise sample questioned 

message: Isn't the Description section graph wrong? Shouldn't a pink noise probability be flat over the bandwidth in a log frequency scale?
12:30 13 march 2019  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.78.87.131 (talk) 12:27, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it is confusing. The lead says inversely proportional to frequency and the Definition section agrees. The Description section mentions equal energy per logarithmic frequency unit and, in the same sentence, power falling off at 3 dB/Octave. None of this is well cited. My recollection is that though these descriptions appear to be contradictory, all are legit. We need to work on sourcing and then help readers connect the dots. ~Kvng (talk) 15:30, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pink Noise in log scale