Can background sounds help you concentrate? What my listening test found

Why can the sound of rain help you settle into work, while the sound of a neighbour's television drives you mad? Both are "noise". Both reach your ears at roughly the same volume. Yet one seems to fade into the background and the other keeps pulling at your attention.

That question sat at the centre of my final-year project in Sound Engineering and Production at the University of Salford, which I completed in 2023. I wanted to know whether listening to recorded natural soundscapes through headphones could help people concentrate while reading, meditating or working. This article is the short, honest version of what I found.

Why does noise make it so hard to focus?

We can close our eyes, but we can't close our ears. The auditory system keeps working all the time, even while we sleep, which is why a low-level disturbance can still wake you up.

The research on noise is not kind. Exposure to high noise levels has been linked to sleep disruption, stress, poorer performance at work and school, more mistakes and lower motivation. The World Health Organization recommends keeping bedrooms below 30 dB(A) at night for healthy sleep. For anyone working from a busy flat, a shared office or a café, that is a long way from reality.

So many of us do something about it. We put on headphones and build our own little sound world. The researcher Mack Hagood calls this "soundscaping": using headphones to replace the noise around you with sound you've chosen, and claiming back a bit of private acoustic space.

What does the research already say?

A 2022 study by Haruvi and colleagues measured people's focus while they worked in everyday environments. Personalised soundscapes significantly increased focus compared with silence. Music playlists did not have a significant effect.

That is one study, but it was enough to make me curious. If soundscapes can help, which ones do people actually prefer, and how much difference do they feel it makes?

What did I test?

I built an online listening test. Twenty people aged between 20 and 60 took part from wherever they were, using their own headphones. They heard four soundscapes:

Waterflow: a field recording of running water
Sea waves: a recording I made on La Misericordia beach in Málaga
Jungle: a tropical recording of birdsong and forest life
White noise: generated in my computer, the classic "masking" sound

Each person chose the soundscape they preferred, listened to it while doing a focused activity of their choice, and then rated how much it reduced distraction, on a scale from 0 to 100.

What did people report?

Here's the part that surprised me most. 19 of the 20 participants rated the soundscape at 50 or above for reducing distraction:

15 people put it in the 50–79 range ("somewhat reduces distractions")
4 people put it in the 80–100 range ("highly effective")
Only 1 person put it below 50

Their comments told a richer story than the numbers. One participant wrote:

"My experience was calm and relaxing, to my surprise. I was able to clear my thoughts and concentrate fully on my breathing thanks to the water's flowing sound, which was quiet and pleasant."

Another noticed that it depends on more than the sound itself:

"The ability to focus whilst listening to soundscape can vary based on two factors: are the headphones noise-cancelling or not, and the practitioner's innate ability to focus."

I think that's spot on. The same recording through cheap earbuds on a noisy train is a different experience from the same recording through closed headphones in a quiet room.

What can't these results tell us?

This is where I want to be straight with you, because a lot of content about "focus sounds" isn't.

Twenty people is a small group. It's enough to spot patterns, not to make universal claims.
These are people's own impressions. I measured how much distraction people felt was reduced, not how well they performed on a task.
I didn't compare against silence. So I can't tell you that a soundscape beats a quiet room. The Haruvi study suggests it might, but my test wasn't designed to show it.
When I compared groups statistically (for example, people with and without tinnitus), the differences were not statistically significant. In plain English: they could have happened by chance.

So the honest conclusion is this: most of the people in my test felt that a soundscape they had chosen helped them concentrate. That's encouraging, and it matches the wider research, but it isn't proof that it works for everyone.

How can you try this yourself?

You don't need special equipment. If you'd like a sound to start with, here are two minutes of my own sea-waves recording from Málaga. It comes from the recording I used in the test, and it repeats by itself:

Sea waves at La Misericordia beach, Málaga, recorded by Isco Bueno on 14 January 2023 (Zoom H4n Pro, X/Y). Two-minute excerpt.

Then try a small experiment this week:

Pick a steady natural sound you find pleasant: rain, a river, waves. In my test, nobody picked white noise as their favourite, but you might.
Keep the volume low. It should sit just above the noise around you, not on top of it. Your ears will thank you.
Work for 25 minutes with it, then 25 minutes without, on a similar task.
Notice, don't judge. Which session felt easier to stay with? Did the sound fade into the background, or did it keep calling for attention?

Your answer is the one that matters. Soundscapes are personal: the same waves that give one person "space" can irritate another.

In the next articles in this series, I'll look at why people chose the sounds they did, whether boosting the high frequencies made any difference, and what this all means for people living with tinnitus.