silence while sleeping or do you need ambient noise?

Absolute silence.  I don't sleep well at all if there is any noise.

I go to sleep listening to one of James MacDonald's podcasts. If I don't go right back to sleep after one of the billion times a night I get up to go to the bathroom, I'll turn another one on, but usually I just go back to sleep with no noise then.

ETA:  I love to sleep to the sound of rain and thunder. I can sleep all day on a rainy day. 

I can sleep anywhere, anytime through anything. But we do have the fan on in our room at night and we have a window air conditioner that's pretty loud too.

Silence would be fantastic. But DH snores. And he ALWAYS falls asleep before I do. We've been running a fan this summer to help move some air around, it's been a nice counterbalance to the snoring. I would pay to sleep in silence.

We have our two cpap machines, so we have that white noise. I do not want the tv or music on. I feel that the brain needs some time away from those things.

At times the TV is still on until the last person in the house goes to bed. I could fall asleep but would definitely wake up if the sound carries on for any length of time.

Peal, has your dh had a sleep study? My dh snored very loudly. You could seriously hear him all the way across the house and downstairs. His sleep study showed severe apnea and the cpap machine totally stopped the snoring.

I leave the tv on a lot, but also love using the fan-I have to have some noise to go to sleep. Otherwise, my mind doesn't want to turn off.

Silence. Total silence.

I'm such a light sleeper, and DH is such a loud snorer. I have two fans going, and even then he wakes me up several times a night. I, too, would pay to sleep in silence.

Total silence, I sleep with ear plugs.

I like it to be really quiet and dark.

I have to sleep with a fan on for white noise. I used to live in a really noisy house so I used it to block out the sound and now I can't sleep without some sort of white noise.

I have a white noise app on my iPhone but it's not very good. It is a loop of sound and I can hear where the loop ends and begins. So now when it's on, I get tuned into the loop and can't sleep! I'm a very fickle light sleeper. My DH on the other hand, can sleep anywhere, any time and usually within a few minutes of his head hitting the pillow.

I would love total silence when I'm trying to get to sleep, but we live on a busy road and there's always traffic noise. And then there's my DH snoring like a possessed bull beside me, and 80lb of Doodle sighing and grumbling at the bottom of the bed. Strangely, whenever my DH is working away, the dog doesn't do this. He obviously objects to the snoring as much as I do!