Sleep/Sound Machines : know any good ones?

Hi everybody :-)

I'm looking for the best possible sound machine/relaxation machine or whatever the technical term is for them? In order to aide me in getting great, quality sleep and also to block out the noise of my loud neighbors since they don't work and are up all day and all night making a lot of loud noise. Also a lot of loud noises coming from outside as well during the night and day. I tried ear plugs but I just hate having to use them all the time, they bother my ears after awhile. I would rather have a sleep machine that is calming if I need to just relax or if want to read a good book without being interrupted by my loud annoying neighbors, as well as put me to sleep without having to worry about loud noise. I found this one for example:

Amazon.com: Ecotones Sound + Sleep Machine, Model ASM1002: Health & Personal Care

But I would like other suggestions from people that own a different one or used to have a good one. I just need to find a great one, and before I buy one would like to hear from other peoples experiences with their own machines or even ones they just read about would help me in being an intelligent consumer. Please help, any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

My daughter has an iHome for her iPhone, which is basically an alarm clock to which you can plug in your iPhone. This allows you to listed to music through the speakers. She then downloaded an app. which plays a variety of white noise (ocean, rain, forest, river, etc). She can select the one she wants, or even combine the sound. She can set the volume for each of the choices independently (so the river and forest can play at the same time, and the forest noise can be quieter than the river). Also, the clock face is back lit and you can set the brightness very low.

That's all..anyone else have any suggestions or no? If not OK, thanks Tygar.:-)

On amazon you can purchase 2 hours of natural sounds for less then 1gbp, 90p or there abouts, it may be 70p even, but anyway, these mp3 recordings are pretty good at covering up the din of noisy neighbours, unless they have Nirvana pumping out as loud as humanly possible...

These mp3s can be used on any android or non android phone, and can often be used without an external speaker due to the frequency of the sounds. The sounds are very limited however, you wont find any city noise recordings, something which i was searching for, so i simply made my own city sounds MP3 by downloading audio from youtube of city walkabouts, with no chatter from the person filming, just the sounds of a busy bustling modern city. I then load them up into VirtualDJ and mix them up a bit, seamlessly though, for the first 20 minutes i have the sounds of london, then after that some Tokyo noise, and them some big old apple of New York.

Oddly enough it is this city sounds that gets me to sleep the fastest recently, possibly due to the fact that i rarely hear urban noise as i only live in a small town, on the outskirts at that! The city sounds are usually played through my bluetooth speakers as the hum of traffik requires some low end bassness.

I know all this sounds like a lot of faffing about, but it is cheap to do, and works well. Anyone will a half decent DSLR or digital camera with good video recording capabilities could record their own sounds and just save the audio as an mp3, however be warned, as usually these devices will pick up on the slightest bit of wind, and a windy recording is a shitty one.

To mix up your own sounds, virtualdj is free to download, or audacity, and both work well to create soothing atmospheres.

As a side note, i have a recording of Underwater Bubbles... What? Yes i do! It is the one i meditate too mostly, it also sends me to sleep very often, and if i switch the lighting in my bedroom to Red and close my eyes lightly, well, its like being in the womb again... ok, well not quite, but it is a soothing sound, very unusual, sometimes i think someone is in the bath when it is on and i suddenly become aware of it.

Again, there are a few apps which provide sleep sounds, like Sleep Cycle, but most of the sounds on that app sound like the same recording, just played at various speeds to provide an illusion of rain, wind and waves. There is a Cabin Hum sound which is very restful, it is subtle unlike the wind, rain or waves sounds.

Failing that, buy a CD, you could probably buy a whole bundle of natural sounds CD's for a few quid/dolla/yen/peanut's from a certain auction site thats popular.

*The Yellow One*