Whether there’s too much noise or not enough, you sometimes need some ambient sound to fill the silence or drown out the ruckus. Problem is, music is often too distracting, and YouTube ambient mixes aren’t exactly customizable.

Elpy is a simple, completely free app that lets you create your own ambient mix from your desktop. It includes a decent variety of sounds which can be mixed at different volumes to get the perfect ambiance. You can then save your mixes for later.

The first step is to add one to three sounds to the mix. These audio loops include nature and city sounds, campfires, and various types of noise. The audio quality is good, and you can’t tell when they loop, as the transition is seamless.

Each sound can have its volume controlled separately, which helps to prevent some of them drowning out the others. A master volume control is also available.

Once you’ve created your ideal mix, you can save the current set for later. Some presets are already available if you need inspiration, so you can just start from there and customize them to your liking.

If you’re using the app to help with falling asleep at night, it might be a good idea to set a sleep timer. When it ends, playback will be stopped, and hopefully you’ll have fallen asleep by then.

One thing I would like is the option to hide the app’s Dock icon. Many users will probably want to listen to ambient noise while working, so it would be nice to remove some clutter from the Dock and manage the app entirely from the menu bar.

Elpy is a great option if you need ambient noise, and it’s completely free and works offline. It’s easy to use, with an intuitive interface, though its Electron-based architecture means its not quite as lightweight as we’d like.