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Café sounds for focus
Café sound is the murmur of a coffee shop: cups, chairs, an espresso machine and many voices blended so that no single conversation stands out. It gives a sense of company and energy without asking you to listen. Our café sound is generated in the browser from murmur and the odd cup, so there are no real conversations or words to follow.
Live in your browser
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Café
Distant conversation and the odd cup. No words to follow.
Generated live in your browser. Start low and raise it until the room blurs.
Pair it with the 25/5 Pomodoro timer
Café murmur suits writing sprints and admin, where a little energy in the room helps. 25/5 matches the rhythm of a coffee-shop work session.
Focus
25:00
Then a 5 min break
What the evidence says
Honest summary: in five experiments, a moderate level of ambient noise (about 70 dB) improved performance on creative tasks compared with a low level (50 dB), while a high level (85 dB) hurt it (Mehta, Zhu & Cheema 2012). Those were lab creativity tasks, not a full study session. On the other hand, intelligible speech is one of the most distracting backgrounds for reading (Vasilev et al. 2018), so café sound suits writing, brainstorming and admin better than reading or memorising.
How to use it with a timer
Keep it quiet. According to the NIDCD, sound at or below 70 dBA is unlikely to cause hearing loss; long or repeated exposure at 85 dBA or more can (NIDCD). A good rule: you should still be able to hear someone speaking at normal volume next to you.
Other sounds
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About café. Missing something? Write to [email protected].
For creative work such as writing and brainstorming, possibly: lab studies found moderate ambient noise helped creative tasks. For reading and memorising, voices can distract, so rain or silence is usually better.
Around the level of a quiet café. Mehta, Zhu and Cheema (2012) found moderate noise helped creative tasks and loud noise (85 dB) hurt them; NIDCD hearing guidance also points to keeping everyday listening well below 85 dBA.
Yes. Café has its own volume slider; the Nova Jazz or Lo-Fi playlist on Spotify works well underneath.