It’s a very common first-month problem. The sound machine goes on, the baby falls asleep, and then the monitor on your nightstand plays a steady “shhhhh” all night. Or the parent unit keeps lighting up for nothing. Or your phone gets a sound alert every few minutes because the camera hears the white noise and thinks something happened.
You don’t have to pick between white noise and a monitor. In most homes the fix is a mix of three things: a lower machine volume, better placement of both devices, and the monitor’s sound sensitivity setting. This guide walks through each one by monitor type. The setup tips come from monitor makers’ own manuals and help pages, linked below. We didn’t lab-test monitors and we don’t give made-up scores.
A monitor’s microphone is built to pick up quiet sounds in a quiet room. White noise is the opposite of quiet: it’s a steady sound across a wide range of pitches that never stops. So the monitor does what it was made to do and sends it to you.
Most audio and video monitors have one of two behaviors:
Wi-Fi cameras that send alerts to your phone work in a similar way. A sound alert set to high sensitivity can treat the machine as “sound in the nursery,” and live audio in the app plays the hiss just like a parent unit would.
Start here, because it helps your baby too. A 2014 study in Pediatrics, “Infant Sleep Machines and Hazardous Sound Pressure Levels”, tested 14 infant sleep machines at full volume and found all of them could go over 50 dBA (the limit recommended for hospital nurseries) at crib-rail and nearby-table distances. The authors suggested placing machines as far from the baby as possible and keeping the volume low.
If your monitor is filling with hiss, that’s a useful sign that the machine may be louder at the crib than it needs to be. VTech’s own help pages give the same first tip: if you use a white noise machine with their monitors, lower the sound machine’s volume, or lower the monitor’s sensitivity to medium or below.
A practical check: stand at the crib with the machine at its normal setting and talk to someone at arm’s length. If you need to raise your voice, the machine is too loud. Turn it down until normal talking is easy, then see how much of the monitor problem is left.
The goal is simple: the monitor microphone should be closer to your baby than to the sound machine. Then a cry is the loudest thing the monitor hears.
The exact menus differ by brand, but the settings fall into a few groups.
| Monitor type | Setting to look for | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| Audio or video monitor with a parent unit (VTech, Philips Avent and similar) | “VOX,” “sensitivity,” “sound activation” or a sound-activated screen setting | Drop one level at a time from the highest. VTech says its VOX setting is preset to the highest level and suggests medium or below with a white noise machine. Philips notes that at its highest sensitivity you get continuous sound; lower levels mute quieter sounds. |
| Wi-Fi camera with phone alerts (Nanit and similar) | Sound alert sensitivity, cry detection, background audio | Lower sound alert sensitivity so steady noise doesn’t trigger it. Nanit describes its Cry Detection as alerting when it hears crying for a few seconds and filtering out other sounds (it requires a paid plan). |
| App with live background audio | Background audio on/off, audio volume | Live audio will always carry some hiss. Some parents keep the phone’s volume low, rely on alerts, or use a separate simple audio monitor for overnight listening. |
| Sound machine with its own audio monitor | Listen / monitor tab in the app | Check your model first. Hatch says the original Rest+ had an audio monitor, but the Rest+ 2nd gen does not. |
The trade-off is real. Lower sensitivity means fewer false alarms, but it also means you may not hear quiet fussing, grunts or a short whimper. For most parents that’s fine, since crying gets through. If you need to hear every small sound (for example, your pediatrician has asked you to watch something specific), keep sensitivity higher, accept more background noise, and talk to your pediatrician about what monitoring actually helps.
Sometimes “the monitor picks up the sound machine” really means the video keeps dropping. That’s a different problem. Many smart sound machines and Wi-Fi cameras both use your home Wi-Fi; Hatch, for example, says its connected devices need a 2.4 GHz network. The white noise sound itself doesn’t jam a radio signal. Dropouts are more often about distance from the router, walls, or a busy network.
If you think the two devices are fighting, it’s easy to rule out: move them apart, or turn the smart machine off for a night and see whether the monitor still drops. If you’d rather not add another Wi-Fi device to the nursery, a non-connected machine like the Dohm or LectroFan has no wireless radio at all.
The AAP recommends that babies sleep in the parents’ room, on their own sleep surface, ideally for at least the first 6 months. If your baby is a few feet from your bed, an audio monitor on top of a sound machine can be more noise than help. Many families in this setup skip monitor audio and keep the white noise low enough that they can still hear their baby. See our room-sharing guide for where to put the machine in a shared room.
Any sound machine can work with a monitor. A few features help: fine volume steps (so you can go quieter without jumping to “too quiet”), sound that fills the room from across it, and control from a phone so you don’t have to walk past the crib to turn it down.
Approx. ~$50–$70 · ASIN B074FL2HL2
Digital fan and noise sounds with fine volume control, which helps when you’re turning things down a notch at a time to quiet the monitor. No Wi-Fi. Compare: Dohm vs LectroFan.
Check LectroFan EVO on AmazonApprox. ~$40–$55 · ASIN B00HD0ELFK
A real fan inside sends sound all around the room, so it works well placed far from the crib. Volume is set by twisting the cap and collar, which is simple but less precise than buttons. No Wi-Fi or app.
Check Dohm on AmazonHatch list price $79.99 · ASIN B0F7C6XJ3P
App control means you can lower the volume from the hallway when the monitor tells you it’s louder than you thought. Needs 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi for app features. It’s a sound machine and light, not an audio monitor. Compare the lineup in Hatch Baby vs Rest vs Go.
Check Hatch Baby on AmazonApprox. ~$20–$30 · ASIN B07RWRJ4XW
If hallway noise is the reason the nursery machine is turned up, a second budget machine outside the door can let you run the one inside lower, which also helps the monitor. Plastic build and some looped sounds. Compare: Hatch vs a cheap machine.
Check Magicteam on AmazonFull nursery roundup: Best Baby White Noise Machines (2026).
Its microphone is picking up the sound machine, and the monitor is set to send all sound (or its sound-activation level is very sensitive). Lower the machine’s volume, move it farther from the monitor, and lower the monitor’s sensitivity a level or two.
Usually, yes. Crying is much louder than steady background noise. You may miss soft fussing, which is the trade-off. Test with someone making crying sounds at the crib before relying on the new setting.
Not on live audio. If you listen live, you’ll hear some of the room. Some Wi-Fi cameras offer cry detection alerts that are designed to react to crying instead of other sounds, which is the closest thing to “filtering it out.”
You don’t have to. A machine at a sensible volume, placed across the room, and a monitor with a sensible sensitivity setting usually work fine together. If you can only hear your baby by turning the machine off, it’s probably set louder than it needs to be.
It’s the setup most likely to cause the problem, since the machine is right next to the microphone. Split them up if the room allows, and keep the monitor and both cords at least 3 feet from the crib.
No. Setting tips come from the monitor and machine makers’ own help pages and manuals linked above, and the sound figures come from the published Pediatrics study. We don’t invent measurements or ratings.
Related: Where to put a sound machine · How loud should white noise be · Room-sharing · App vs machine · All night vs timer · Best Machines 2026 · ← Home