We'd just had a baby and were deep in the zombie phase, the very-early-hours feeds where you desperately want sleep and your newborn hasn't quite figured out how to be alive yet. One of those nights, about 45 minutes into shushing our son, my husband Ben (@oscardog) thought: Wouldn't it be great if something could just do this?
Ben's a composer, he scores films and games. But the idea came from further back: the tape recorders he had as a kid, when he'd splice real tape into literal loops that ran round and round for hours. So he started building a shush machine that worked like a tape deck. Open it, press record, make your sound, and ten seconds later it's looping. That became Somnideck.
Hey Product Hunt - Ben here, maker of Somnideck.
Amy told the origin story better than I could, so I’ll add the maker side.
This started as a very practical problem: I wanted something that could take the tiny, human sounds we were already making for our baby - shushes, hums, little made-up melodies - and turn them into a calm, seamless loop without making a tired parent think about audio software at 3am.
Because I write and produce music for a living, I knew the hard part wasn’t “record a sound and loop it.” The hard part was making it feel instant, forgiving, and warm. I wanted it to behave more like a little tape deck than a utility: simple on the surface, but with enough depth that you can shape the sound if you want to.
A few things I cared about while building it:
No account, no cloud, no tracking. These are intimate little recordings, and they should stay on your device.
The free version should be genuinely useful, not just a teaser.
The app should work for an exhausted parent, but still be interesting enough for musicians, sound designers, and kids who just want to hear their voice melt into a loop.
The sounds should feel made, not stock. I composed Nocturne, built the synthetic noise, and recorded the field recordings with the same level of care I’d bring to any score.
The funniest surprise is that Somnideck became less of a “baby app” than I expected. It’s still very much for sleep and soothing, but it also turned into a powerful creative instrument - and one with DAW-quality export. I use it like a sketchpad during the day, and at bedtime it’s still just a way to make the room a little calmer.
I’d genuinely love feedback from this community, especially on two things:
Does the balance feel right between “dead simple” and “actually powerful”?
What would you want this to become next: more sleep-focused, more music-making focused, or something in between?
Thanks for taking a look!