Is it Sleepmate or Sleep Mate or Soundscreen or Sound Screen? Name confusion is the only problem we found with this machine. This is the white noise machine that started it all, and with its ingenious engineering, it is still the leader.  Now 50 years old, the Marpac SleepMate is still the benchmark in the white noise world.

There have been many upgrades, with the last one coming about a year ago which added the “A” to the model number and a slight change in dimensions and a “whiter” color.  Marpac places either a Sleep Mate label or a Soundscreen label on the unit depending on the resellers order.  These units are also used in doctor’s offices to keep you from hearing what disease the person  who is in with your doctor has as you wait in the waiting room.  For this reason the Soundscreen label was introduced.  After all, who wants a machine in their waiting room that says Sleep Mate? Read more…

We are blown away by the quality the Marpac Marsona TSC-330 has exhibited. Our ’330′ has now been running 24/7 for over 17,500 hours! That’s 2+ years! If you decide to run it 8 hours a night, you will have now had 6 years of care free operation.

This is an analog sound machine which doesn’t have a loop as do many other digital sound machine on the market today.  The “loop”  which can be described as a repeating “tick” sound every 3-5 seconds, can often keep people awake at night.   The loop free quality of white noise of the Marsona TSC-330 is very impressive. Read more…

For this review sent a machine home with a co-worker who was having some sleep issues:

I have tried other sleep sound devices at various times with limited success, but Sound + Sleep works for me.  The Sound + Sleep  produces a rich room filling sound.  Plus the Adaptive Sound Technology which raises and lowers the volume as the background noise increases – like when the heat turns on and off.  With ten choices of sound profiles you can vary the sound to keep from getting tired of the same sound profile.

The unit has a pleasing modern design with a top mounted speaker which does provide a better room filling sound volume than front mounted speakers.  It’s about 8 inches across and is a larger than most other units and thus takes up more of the limited bedside space.

The controls are large and easy to use.  You can turn on or off the lights on the controls.  However the sound selection control is not lighted.  It can be turned off by the built in timer or be on continuously.  Also you  can adjust the bass or richness of the sound.

I think the unit is very good overall and is lacking only a built in large digital display clock radio.  Today everything needs to do multiple functions.

The only problem I had with the unit is that it sometimes it slides on the night stand as you operate the controls.

The new Sound Oasis S-850 travel alarm clock/sound machine looks modern and up to date. It feels very solid. There are very few buttons on a machine that has 19 sounds, yes we said 19 sounds! It has a rotary volume dial for that “there’s no light to find the buttons” moment. The clock face lights up with a nice blue color when the snooze button is pushed and stays lit for about 4 seconds on battery power. It has a nice “home” and “away” feature that keeps you from having to change the time and alarm time if you happen to travel to the same time zone often. It also shows the home time, if you selected away, in smaller font on the face. A nice feature if you’re plan on calling home and can’t remember what time it is there. Read more…