I snore. And this is a problem for the BJJ Cavewife. And what is a problem for the BJJ Cavewife becomes a problem for me.
Here’s how the cycle works. I come home exhausted from a hard day of work and BJJ training and will inevitably be the first to fall asleep. The BJJ Cavewife reads a little and slowly drift off to sleep. I inevitably snore at the exact moment she falls asleep which snaps her back into wakefulness. She pushes me to get me onto my side. I stop snoring, but also wake up. Eventually we both finally fall asleep and I roll onto my back and start snoring. This wakes her up and she pushes or elbows or kicks me to get me back onto my side. I stop snoring and wake up.
All of a sudden the alarm comes on and we’re both exhausted.
Here’s a sample of me snoring just so you know exactly what the BJJ Cavewife has to deal with:
I’ve tried shoving objects INTO my nose and placing objects OVER my nose to remedy the situation all without success.
As some readers have suggested we’ve resorted to sleeping in separate rooms on certain nights just so we can get a good nights sleep.
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One day I was tidying up around the house and noticed our Bose Quiet Comfort noise cancelling headphones. It’s one of our favorite things to use on flights because the technology somehow cancels all of the ambient noise of the jet engines, people talking, and babies crying to make for a better movie or napping experience.
From what I understand, the way these head phones work are via external microphones that pick up ambient noises. These get processed and the headphone then emits a sound into that cancels out the frequencies of the ambient noises so you end up not hearing any of it.
I wondered if there was anything like this for snoring. Could there be a machine that could hear my snoring and then emit a sound that could cancel it out so that the BJJ Cavewife couldn’t hear it?
It turns out there is such a piece of technology: the Sound + Sleep SE
This little box hows a set of 16 ambient sounds that can be selected using the central dial like rainfall, ocean, baby, white noise, large fan, etc. This part isn’t what excited me though since any standard sound machine can produce noises.
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What makes this stand out is the “Adaptive Sound” technology:
Press the Adaptive button and the built-in microphone will monitor your environment and provide instant volume adjustment to counteract environmental noise.
Sounds just like the Bose technology doesn’t it? I planned to keep the ADAPTIVE button on all the time!
The BJJ Cavewife was a little hesitant because of the $116.99 price tag, but the prospect of a good nights sleep was enough to convince her to give it a shot.
Add to Cart. Check Out. Free two day shipping. LETS OPEN IT!
I plugged it in, fiddled with the volume, settled the dial onto “pink noise,” and clicked the ADAPTIVE button to test it out.
The BJJ Cavewife and I spoke to each other softly and the pink noise got a little louder. We couldn’t exactly hear what the other person was saying so we raised our voices and the pink noise in turn grew louder. We kept increasing our volume until we were pretty much screaming at each other and the machine responded in kind!
Promising!
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This machine would finally allow me to come out of exile from the lonely guest room and get back to snuggling with my beloved.
When we woke up I asked the BJJ Cavewife how her sleep was and she responded with, “I still woke up to your snoring.”
I was crestfallen.
But maybe pink noise wasn’t the right one! What about large fan? Or rainfall?
Over the next few nights we tried most of the other selections on the dial. While the machine did a great job in obscuring our speech it didn’t seem to do enough to cancel out the sounds of my snoring.
Alas, another failed attempt.
SAD.
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Cpap for the win.