This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Sixteen Zen, Relaxation, and Meditation Apps. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Five different apps have been designed to create peaceful, relaxing sounds, letting you use earphones or speakers to drown out distracting noises in your environment.
The two heavy-hitters in this category are Ambiance ($1) by Matt Coneybeare and aSleep ($1) from Signs Studios.
Ambiance offers you 34 different, looping sound effects, ranging from different types of wind, fire, and rain to outdoor recordings called “city,” “coast,” and “creek,” animals and insects, fans, subways, trains, a clock, and various types of electronic noise. Even through speakers, the sounds are realistic, and you can adjust the volume directly in the app, even affecting the Dock Connector’s output level.
A timer is included to provide minute-level incremental timing for the effect for up to a full day, and settings permit you to fade the sound upwards or downwards during or after the timer. We also liked the fader features in Ambiance.