English: Sound masking is often referred to as “white noise” but as you can see on the chart on the left, their sound curves vary significantly.

Unlike white noise, sound masking is specifically engineered to match the frequencies of human speech and to sound comfortable, even pleasant, to the human ear. When implemented properly, sound masking should just fade into the background “hum” of a workplace while simultaneously making speech more difficult to hear and understand.

Conversely, the frequency of white noise would be extremely irritating if it were amplified to a volume that would be effective for masking human speech — think “loud AM radio static.” It might cover up the sounds of human speech, but not effectively or efficiently since it is not specifically engineered to do so