The Little Fan Machine That Finally Drowned Out the 5 A.M. Bus

The 5:12 bus hits the stop sign out front of our house most mornings. I know the time because for eleven years I was awake for it, flat on my back with my eyes on the ceiling, waiting for the air brakes to let go.

We live in a 1960s split-level in Clifton, New Jersey. The main bedroom faces a street with a bus route. The buses start around five and run past midnight. My alarm goes off at 4:45 on weekdays, so the early ones are not usually my problem. It was the 11:40 and the 12:20 that got me, plus any weekend morning I tried to sleep until 6:30. Add a streetlight that comes through the blinds at an angle, and you have a room that is never quite dark and never quite quiet.

Linda is the lighter sleeper of the two of us, and she runs warm on top of that, which is a separate project. A guy I work with at the hospital kept telling me to buy a Marpac. I ignored him for the better part of a year. Between us we had tried about everything. Foam earplugs handled the noise but left her unable to hear the smoke alarm, so she quit them. A box fan in the window worked in July and was miserable by October. Then I put a white noise app on my phone, and it sounded like a radio tuned between stations, and twice the thing buzzed a notification into the speaker at two in the morning. I am not going to pretend I handled those nights gracefully.

Three years ago I bought the Dohm Classic from Marpac. It is a small thing. The listing puts it at 5.75 by 5.75 by 3.25 inches and 1.6 pounds, which is about right for something that sits on a nightstand. It came with a 7-foot cord, so I plugged it in, flipped the switch, and left it on the low speed.

The first thing I noticed is that it does not sound like a recording. There is a real fan in there moving real air. That mattered more than I expected. The phone app had a loop I could hear after about a minute, a little hiccup in the pattern, and once you hear it you cannot unhear it. The Dohm does not have a loop, because there is nothing in it to loop.

The bus still comes at 5:12. I am just not awake for it anymore.

It took Linda about a week to stop noticing it, which I had not planned for. I figured she would either like it or she would not. Instead she just stopped mentioning it, and then one night I moved the thing to dust the nightstand and she asked me what I was doing. She had not realized she had gotten used to it.

Placement is most of the job. Mine sits on the nightstand on the street side, about three feet from my head. When I first had it across the room it did almost nothing. The closer it is, the more it fills in the gaps between the traffic sounds, and the gaps are what wake you up. If you try one and you are not impressed, move it closer before you decide anything.

There are two speeds. I run the low one, which is a soft rushing sound with no edge to it. I have used the high speed twice: once during a week when the town had a leaf blower going outside the building at six in the morning, and once when Linda had a cold. The high speed is noticeably louder and a little brighter. Most nights I do not need it.

What it does not do, since that is the part that matters. It does not cool the room. It moves a little air, but it is not a fan for people, it is a fan for sound. It does not travel, because it is corded and there is no battery in it, so it stays on that nightstand. It does not give you a menu of ocean sounds and rain sounds and forest sounds. It makes one sound, the sound of air, at one of two speeds. Every couple of weeks I run the vacuum brush over the intake, because anything that moves air collects dust.

It also does not fix snoring, and I say that as the man who did the snoring. Three years ago I nodded off in the hospital parking lot before a shift, and that scared me enough to get a home sleep test. Apnea got ruled out and I am glad I checked. If you snore hard enough that your partner has moved to the couch, get the test before you buy a machine. Fan noise will not open an airway.

The Dohm Classic from Marpac was the first change I made, and if it died tomorrow it is the first thing I would replace. Not because it is clever. Because it is boring, it runs all night, and it asks nothing of me.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy it for noise and nothing else. If the problem is that your room is too warm, this is the wrong purchase and no sound machine will fix it. If the problem is a street, a hallway, a neighbor's dog, or a partner who gets up at three, this is the cheapest fix I have found in three years of trying things.

I would tell you that most of what I have spent on sleep was wasted and this was not. Marpac has been making this thing for a long time, and it shows in the dull way it just works. Mine has run every night for three years on the low speed and I have never once had to think about it. There is a one year limited warranty on it, which I have not needed.

And I would tell you to see a doctor before you buy anything, if you are waking up gasping or falling asleep at stoplights. I did, and it was worth the afternoon it cost me. A sound machine is a good tool for a noisy room. It is not a treatment for anything.