At 70 decibels, people had more ideas than they did in silence.
A quiet room is not a free room. In five experiments, noise about as loud as a busy coffee shop helped people on creative problems. Highway-loud noise did the opposite. The next 25 minutes will happen either way. The only question is what they sound like.
The hour you are about to spend
Lyrics take the sentence you were about to write. A dead-silent room lets every ping land whole. A steady room gives the hour a floor. Topline keeps that room on the Mac, in the same bar as the timer: a coffee shop, rain, an ocean, a fire, and a few slow loops with no words.
You can hear them before you buy anything. They play from the bar at the top of the homepage. $4.99 once. A coffee is about that price, and then it is gone.
If the other name in the search was Endel, that comparison is separate. Endel is a different app, and the page says when to stay with Endel.
What 70 decibels actually did
In 2012, Ravi Mehta, Rui (Juliet) Zhu, and Amar Cheema published five experiments in the Journal of Consumer Research. They compared ambient noise at 50 decibels, 70, and 85. Creative work was better at 70 than at 50. At 85 it got worse. The authors called 70 the middle that is loud enough to push thinking up a level, and not so loud that thinking stops.
In one of those tests, a remote-associates problem, people in the moderate noise averaged 5.80 correct answers. People in the quieter room averaged 4.29. That is about a third more correct answers, on that one lab test, in that one experiment. It is not a third more of your Tuesday. The authors' own suggestion was to leave the silent room for a place like a café.
Topline's Coffee Shop is that kind of room: low chatter and cups. It is not a calibrated 70 decibel tone. You set the volume. If you have to work to hear yourself over it, you are past the point they found useful.
A landscape, after the hard part
Stephen Van Hedger and colleagues, at the University of Chicago, played people nature soundscapes or city soundscapes and then retested directed attention (a backward digit span plus a dual n-back). Nature listeners improved. City listeners did not. Afterward, the nature group was ahead by a medium-to-large margin, Cohen's d of 0.65, in a single session of about 60 people. Liking the sound more did not explain the gain. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2019.
Jesper Alvarsson, Stefan Wiens, and Mats Nilsson, in Stockholm, stressed people with mental arithmetic and then played a recovery sound. Skin conductance, a measure of the body's alarm system, fell halfway back in 101.3 seconds with a fountain and birds. The same halfway point took 111.4 seconds with traffic at the same volume, 121.3 seconds with a quiet mechanical hum, and 159.8 seconds with loud traffic. The authors described the nature sound as 9 to 37 percent faster on that recovery curve. Heart-rate variability did not change. It was a four-minute lab recovery, not a measure of work finished. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2010.
Waterfall, Jungle, Ocean, Fireplace, Storm, and Rain are the landscapes on the bar. They are the kind of sound those studies used. They are not a prescription.
Why the words are the expensive part
Nick Perham and Harriet Currie asked 30 students to do a reading-comprehension test in quiet, with music they liked, with music they disliked, and with music that had no lyrics. Quiet and the wordless music came out best. Lyrics were worse, and it did not matter that the listener liked the song. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2014.
That is the practical cut. A favorite playlist is a fine way to feel awake, and a costly way to write a paragraph. Deep, Drift, Glow, and Rain have no lyric. Drift is the one with a pulse, mellow keys rather than a pad. It is not a metronome for your brain.
The number we will not borrow
A lot of focus audio cites binaural beats and then a single percent. Garcia-Argibay, Santed, and Reales pooled 22 studies in 2019 and found a medium average effect, Hedges' g of 0.45, across memory, attention, anxiety, and pain. The effect depended on the frequency, how long you listened, and whether you listened before the task. Undertone now has three Tones that do play two tones, one in each ear, for people who like them. Nobody has tested these three, so that 0.45 is still not ours, and we are not going to rent it.
Nobody in the studies above clocked a workday and found that a soundscape adds a fixed percent to it. What they found is narrower, and more useful. The wrong noise costs you the idea. A steady natural room gives attention somewhere to land. A lyric spends the channel you needed for the sentence.
How to put the room on
Click the waveform button next to the timer.
Pick a place, or one of the four loops. Coffee Shop for the 70 decibel idea. A landscape when the last hour was loud. Deep, Drift, Glow, or Rain when you are writing.
Set it loud enough that the room feels occupied, and no louder.
Then click the timer, if you want the 25 minutes. The timer will not start the sound, stop it, or cut it off when the break begins.
While Undertone plays, Spotify or Apple Music pauses. Press play in that app and the room stops. Undertone ships with the app. No account, no extra subscription. The Pomodoro timer and the keyboard sounds live on the same bar and do not start the room for you.
Questions
Do coffee shop sounds increase productivity by a set percent?
No. A 2012 series of experiments found that moderate noise, about 70 decibels, helped people on creative problems, and that noise around 85 decibels hurt. In one of those tests, the moderate-noise group averaged 5.80 correct answers and the quieter group averaged 4.29. A later study found nature soundscapes improved a lab measure of directed attention compared with city noise. A 2010 study found a nature sound sped recovery of a stress response after mental arithmetic, which the authors put at 9 to 37 percent faster than noise. None of these measured a fixed percent of a workday, and Topline does not promise one.
Is Undertone a binaural beat?
Partly. A binaural beat is two close tones, one in each ear. Most of Undertone is not that: Coffee Shop, Waterfall, Jungle, Ocean, Fireplace, Storm, Deep, Drift, Glow, and Rain are recorded places and slow loops. The three Tones are: Focus (16 Hz), Calm (10 Hz), and Drift (6 Hz), each a beat inside soft noise and a low drone. They need headphones. A 2019 meta-analysis of binaural beats found a medium average effect across memory, attention, anxiety, and pain, and the effect depended on the frequency and the timing. That is an average across 22 studies, not a measurement of these tones, so Topline does not claim it.
Does the Pomodoro timer start the soundscape?
No. Click the waveform button next to the timer and pick a sound. The focus timer does not start it, stop it, or pause your music when the break begins. While an Undertone sound is playing, Spotify or Music pauses. Press play in Spotify or Music and Undertone stops.
How loud should a focus soundscape be?
The creativity experiments used about 70 decibels, roughly a busy coffee shop, and found that about 85 decibels, roughly loud traffic, made creative work worse. Topline does not set that level for you. Turn it up until the room feels occupied, and down if you are straining to hear your own thoughts. The file is not a calibrated 70 decibel tone.