Published on December 5, 2023
There is a lot of noise around us. Sometimes quite enough to give us a headache. We try our best to fall asleep or maybe, we’re just in the middle of a great when the neighbor’s dog suddenly starts barking, or someone slams the door with a bang, or trying their best to not wake you up but the door creaks anyway like that in a horror movie. We’d daresay, Thanos is not inevitable rather noise is.
But wouldn’t it be great if we had a certain control on our environment? To cancel out all those agitating noises?
Gladly, with the advent of technology, we’ve ambient noise apps or simply, a “sound conditioner”, a catchall term for noise-producing devices. In 2012, a National Sleep Foundation poll discovered that 5% of Americans sleep well with such a sound conditioner. It’s a lifesaver, or shall we say, sleep-slaver, when the person is in a place, where head-splitting noises are an every night thing. Michael Grander, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona, says the “blanket of sound” is a savior in such clamorous ambiances.
To help us fall asleep, concentrate, or simply relax, ambient noise apps play our favorite, most soothing sounds And one of the popular ambient noise apps is Dark Noise, built exclusively for iOS. When it comes to evoking a comforting sense of calm and getting a certain control over our environment, Dark Noise whole-heartedly serves the purpose of an obedient ambient noise app. This soul-stirring app comes with many advantages as well, so let’s jump into it right away.
What gives Dark Noise an Edge?
Dark Noise stands out as premier iOS app, offering an exceptional experience within the iOS ecosystem. It seamlessly integrates top iOS technologies like Siri lanes, haptic feedback, alternate app icons, an customizable contrivance, ipad interpretation with Split View support, and much more, setting itself piecemeal as a name choice for iOS druggies.
Dark Noise provides 50 different background sounds while letting you create your unique mixes. As a matter of fact, you even have the opportunity to launch your top mixes with voices as the app has a home-screen widget and Siri support, which we have mentioned just a while ago.
To make things more convenient, Dark Noise is just a one-time purchase with only $6 and absolutely no ads. If that still seems a lot, well you can try other ambient noise apps that contain cheap sound effects, maddening commercial breaks, and sky-high subscription fees.
But that’s just the price difference. The designs in Dark Noise (and gear up, people, we’re slowly getting into the guardian angel of this article and almost all articles at Animoox, that angel is, of course, Lottie) are well commendable. Ryan Christoffel from MacStories has put out rave reviews on the designs implemented in Dark Noise. The designs are breathtaking he said, and what’s more amazing is that they were created to work perfectly with the iPad also.
That’s the thing about Dark Noise. It’s just as delightful to the eyes as it is to the ears. The reason being, Charlie Chapman, the designer, and developer of Dark Noise’s expertise in design is reflected throughout the app. He created a truly wonderful design experience that immerses the user in a soothing yet delightful ambiance.
How Lottie Became A Core Part of Dark Noise
The journey started when Dark Noise pondered upon a way to signal their users that audio is currently playing. After a couple of experiments, where they tried mixing various audio visualizers, they figured perking up their existing icons with fun animations for each sound might do the trick. And boy, they were right!
Initially, Dark Noise used Lottie animations to add zing to their play/pause and heart buttons. But it didn’t take long for Dark Noise to realize the true potentials of Lottie in terms of dynamism and flexibility that eventually, they made Lottie animations an integral part of the ambient noise app.
The Benefits of Lottie That Upped Dark Noise’s Game
As Dark Noise built their icons in Adobe Illustrator, it was quite convenient for them to pull those icons into Adobe After Effects in order to animate them. The LottieFiles for After Effects plugin and iOS app made it much smoother to demo test the animations in an app. This allows them to observe any unusual behavior so that it can be fixed immediately. Furthermore, as the Lottie format is of very insignificant size, Dark Noise wholeheartedly expanded its sound library without fretting over bloating the app size. The case, however, would have been different if there were animated PNG sequences or video files.
When Dark Noise introduced a feature to enable their users to create custom mixes, they were also aware that they had to bring that customization into the icon animations as well. Thanks to Lottie and its seventh-heaven flexibility, Dark Noise was able to build an icon editor. This editor lets their users customize the colors of their icons for every unique mix with a live icon editor, where users can also view the animation altering as they choose from a variety of colors.
Although these integrations with Lottie animations were simple and don’t seem anything extraordinary, they did jazz up Dark Noise. More than being marvelous, these implementations were very necessary. Dark Noise always credits the animations as a key factor in making their app stand out in a buzzing crowd.
