I used to resort to a couple of Mac apps to help put me to sleep. Recently, I found something another tool to help me achieve blissful slumber — my iPhone.

I was looking for an iPhone app that would play soothing sounds (something akin to a Sound Machine) like pouring rain or blowing wind (yeah, I’m kinda digging that) to help put my mind at ease. Coincidently, I found that listening to these sounds while falling asleep, I dream less and tend to get a better night’s rest. Although, your personal results may differ.

In my quest to find these apps (the App Store is so cluttered these days), I tested several and found that most of them have slightly different sounds to offer. Each one has its own distinctive motif. So, instead of choosing the best one for me (which may not be the one for you), I decided to list them all down so that you can try for yourselves. So here they are, 9 iPhone apps to help soothe you to sleep.

Custom Sounds of Nature Lite

CSON Lite provides 2 very realistic sounds of nature — Calm Ocean and Mountain Stream. Within Calm Ocean, there is a selection of sounds and the option to configure their presence and volume: Ocean, Seagulls, Wind Chimes and Foghorn. Mountain Stream has a several sounds to choose from as well: Stream, Bull Frogs, Birds and Day Crickets.

Each of the selected sounds loop so they can be played endlessly. CSON Lite also has a built-in timer so that you can listen to the sounds for as long as you wish before the sounds slowly fade away.

iRelax Melodies

iRelax Melodies is free for a limited time and has a collection of 16 very relaxing (indeed!) sounds to put you to sleep –River, Ocean, Flute, Rain, Winds, Music Box, Lounge, Birds, Piano, Orchestral, Waterfall, Thunder, Zen, Fire Camp, Melody and Night — all arranged as post-it notes spanning two pages. The sounds are selected by tapping on their corresponding notes and here’s the cool thing: you can select as many sounds as you want and mix your own customized track!

iRelax also offers a built-in timer albeit only as predefined time intervals of 5, 10, 15, 30, 45 minutes; 1 hour and 2 hours.

eSleep Lite

eSleep Lite is slightly different from your regular sound machine in the sense that it allows you to select 1 background “music” track and up to 3 “noise” tracks. Besides that, it also has a little party piece: it will let you record your own soothing sound to be played as a “noise” track.

eSleep Lite comes with built-in alarm and timer that starts to fade out in the final minute.

Ambiance Lite

Ambiance Lite is not your ordinary sound machine. It is a full-fledge jukebox of awesome sounds. The free app comes pre-installed with three: Large Wind Chimes, Loons and Rain and Thunder II. However, you can download as many sounds as you want for free from their online repository!

To imagine how Ambiance Lite works, think of it as an iPod. You can rate, favourite, loop and shuffle different sounds from the main playlist. It also features the usual timer and alarm functions so that you can set the app to play and drift off to sleep without a worry in your mind! Not bad for a free app!

Naturespace

Boasting holographic audio, Naturespace features five stock environments with 3D sound that are accurately recorded in high definition and seamlessly reproduced to provide you with a realistic experience.

If you’re not the kind to fiddle with settings or customize sounds to perfection but rather, just want a simple app that can help calm you down instantly (and effectively), this is the one you need.

Sleepmaker Storm, Stream and Rain

Sleepmaker’s series of apps are for the serious insomniacs who know what they need to put them to sleep. These 3 apps dish out specific collections of sounds, all targeted at tranquility. Unfortunately, this is also the apps’ weakness. Because they are separated into three distinct applications, there’s no mixing and matching. You are able to only play one sound at a time.

However, the sounds that they offer are pretty realistic. Take a look at their descriptive titles.

In Storm;

• Gentle long rolls with lite rain
• Medium thunder with heavy splatter
• Heavy constant wind storm

In Stream;

• Gentle mouth of brook
• Medium fast flowing stream
• Heavy bottom of waterfall

In Rain;

• Gentle onto forest foliage
• Medium and steady with puddles
• Medium rain against windows
• Heavy torrential downpour

Sleepmaker also produces Wildlife and Waves sound packs but I have yet to review them. Personally, I think it would be easier for end-users if they made one free app with all the sounds packaged together.

White Noise Lite

Don’t be fooled by the name, White Noise Lite has a larger selection of sounds than just pure white noise. Actually, it has several sounds that are pretty odd like Grandfather Clock, Oscillating Fan, Train Ride and Airplane Travel. Although, I must admit, they’re surprisingly relaxing and I grew to like them, especially Train Ride — it is hypnotic!

It also has the usual calming ocean and rain sounds. My suggestion is to try out the other sounds because they may seem weird but they’re actually quite good.

So which is my favourite? I can’t really say. They all have something different to offer. But I don’t see why we have to choose — they all free! Try them out and let me know how they work for you. Are you an insomniac? Do you find it hard to fall asleep? What do you usually do to get yourself some kip?

I’ve been looking into some relaxing sounds which apparently allows us to relax and slip into a more relaxed state of mind by influencing brain waves. Basically when our brain works, there’s an electrical impulse generated which runs a specific frequency. This frequency changes according to our state of mind: alertness (alpha), relax (beta), drowsiness (theta) and deep sleep (delta).

With an external stimulus (in this case we’re using sound/music) we can shift our state of mind from alpha to beta or hopefully theta if you’re trying to fall asleep; or to alpha if you’re trying to wake yourself up.

I’ve found several ways to achieve this and I’m going to list them out here:

Sounds to relax or fall asleep

Pzizz

Many Mac and Windows users should be familiar with this application. It’s well known for helping insomniacs fall asleep and also to get the best out of power napping. Pzizz may not be free but they do offer two sample 15-minute MP3′s to get a short preview of how their application is like. One of the two MP3′s is to help you fall asleep and the other is the energizer module.

Hopefully, listening to 15 minutes of the sleep module will get you relaxed enough to fall asleep. If not, there’s always the “Repeat” button. If you’re a serious insomniac who is looking for a way to help you get some kip, this should be it.

iSerenity

iSerenity is a website which has pre-recorded ambient soundscapes like falling rain, ocean waves, thunder and the sound of a crackling fire among many others. Think of it as something like an online sound machine.

There’s no need to download anything, just click on each sound to listen to it. And it loops indefinitely.

SonicMood

Another online sound machine is SonicMood. It’s a little different from iSerenity in the sense that the sounds they offer aren’t exactly “ambient”. It’s more like a blend of MIDI instruments to form a relaxing sound piece.

Similarly to iSerenity, you can listen to SonicMood through your web browser. They package their sounds in different “moods”, most of which are to help you relax. My favourites are Japanese Wind Chimes and Lighthouse.

dlooch Dashboard widget [Mac Only]

If you’re not big on ambient sounds, you may find dlooch an interesting approach to relaxing. All it does is loop soothing sounds by fading them in and out. At first, they sound rather mechanical but slowly the relaxation kicks in if you allow it to play for a while.

Podcasts

One shouldn’t overlook the beauty of podcasts when searching for ambient sounds. There are quite a few like Dark Ambient [iTunes link] and White Noise Lounge [iTunes link] that provides soothing soundscapes. Just do a simple search in iTunes store for “ambient” and scroll through the results. You’ll be amazed at what you might find.

To wake up!

Back in 2006, an interesting MP3 arose on the internet which supposedly replaces your morning cuppa joe and its aptly called – Coffee Replacement. To some people, it sounds like a washing machine winding up in frequency with some birds chirping in the background. It may or may not work for you – and in my book, there’s never a good replacement for that steaming cup of coffee in the morning.

However, this is definitely worth a try if you’re cutting down on coffee or need something to pick you up if whenever you’re feeling sleepy.

The 20 minute MP3 was lost in the sea of all the file sharing sites, most of the links appeared to be dead. By chance, I managed to find a live link and decided to share it here with our MakeUseOf readers.

Coffee Replacement – 20 min MP3, 27MB

WARNING: Coffee Replacement should NOT be used by people who have any forms of seizures or epilepsy; suffering from cardiac disorders or use pacemakers; or take psychoactive drugs or stimulants.

Sounds to concentrate

If you’re easily distracted by the noises in your environment and you aren’t rich enough to get one of these bad boys, then you may want to take a look at white noise. Or rather, listen.

White noise is a signal which contains equal power of a set of frequencies within the audible bandwidth of human beings. In a nutshell, it’s a collection of all the frequencies of sounds we can hear. It is more commonly used for masking sound, i.e. blocking out unwanted surrounding sounds like chatter or street noise. Some even use it to mask tinnitus, a ear condition where a person will constantly hear ringing or buzzing and often causes headaches. White noise is best appreciated when using stereo headphones.

For Mac users, there’s Noisy – a simple white and pink noise generator. Windows users may want to take a look at a free application called White Noise Sleep System. For everyone else, there’s Simplynoise – an online white, pink and red noise generator.

So there, all the sounds you’ll need to help you feel relaxed, fall asleep, concentrate or to wake up without that morning coffee. Let me know how it works for you. And like always, if there are any other applications you use which are not listed here, please share them with us in the comments.