Normal white noise generators just make a soothing sound: this won’t help you acclimate to annoying sounds. You need a special “unbearable noise generator” to build up tolerance.

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Background:

A “white noise generator” is device that plays a static sound that resembles what you’d hear as a passenger in a car on the highway.

This sort of noise is often useful for people who sleep in environments where there is a constant low level of distracting sounds (e.g. frogs making noise, cars stopping and starting on a nearby street).

There’s apparently also a technical definition of what “white” noise is, but from a commercial perspective, “white noise” generators often also play audio loops of soothing sounds (ocean waves, raindrops on a roof, etc.).

Fig. 1: White noise generators are available as both standalone devices (as shown here) or as phone apps / audio tracks on a music streaming service.

The Issue:

Unfortunately, the white noise generator only serves to mask the sound of relatively quiet interruptions. If some sort of extremely loud activity is going on—for example, if you’re trying to sleep on a missile testing range, in a dog kennel, or during the World’s Most Blood-Curdling Scream Competition, the white noise generator won’t help you. 

Proposal:

Instead, the solution is to treat the cause of the inability to sleep during these annoying noises. We’ll use an exposure therapy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy) approach, and create an “unbearable noise” generator that a person can put on their bedside table (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: This device will constantly emit unbearable sounds of various types: cats fighting, dogs barking, fireworks, bizarre bird noises, the sounds of cars crashing, and more.

Although it might initially be difficult for a person to sleep while this device operates, the listener might, in theory, eventually become desensitized to these noises and sleep right through them.

Conclusion:

This might actually work! Pre-order today.

PROS: There is nothing physically impossible about this proposal!

CONS: It is important to not include fire alarm audio—which is undeniably quite annoying—in the list of sounds that the user wants to get used to to. There might also be other sounds (mosquitoes buzzing?) that the user would prefer not to ignore. This could complicate the selection of “annoying sounds for desensitization.