Why can't I hear my own snoring?
My own snoring never reaches my own ears while I am asleep. How I feel in the morning does not tell me how long the loud sound actually lasted that night. When I recorded and lined up two nights, what I felt and what the record showed pointed in opposite directions.
My own ears never hear my own snoring
I have no way to check how loud I actually am, because I cannot hear the sound of my own night with my own ears while it happens. The person asleep has no way of knowing what size the sound was, or how long it went on for.
My mood in the morning alone does not tell me how much loud sound came out during the night. On a day I felt I had slept well, a day that felt ordinary, and a day that felt hard, none of them told me on their own what the sound had actually been. How deeply I slept and how loud the sound was seem to be two different things.
Even if someone tells me about it, whoever mentions it is not necessarily remembering the exact minutes or the exact size. The feeling that it was loud might come across, but how many minutes it lasted, or exactly when the loudest moment was, is not the kind of thing that stays in anyone's memory. Short of checking it myself, that was a gap nobody else could fill in.
The method I thought of was to just record the night itself, as it happened, and check it back the next morning with my own ears. Not something for someone else to listen to, but a record kept for myself.
One night alone would not tell me whether it was just that particular night, so I decided to record two nights that felt different, the same way, and line them up.
Two nights, lined up
First, the night of August 25. My mood in the morning was neither good nor bad, just ordinary, the way most nights feel. But the record showed loud sound for 29 minutes, peaking at 8:05, one of the longest stretches of loud sound in my record so far.
Next, the night of August 27. This one felt hard in the morning. But the record showed loud sound for only 4 minutes, peaking at 10:03. The sound had not continued as long as I felt it had.
The night that felt ordinary turned out to have the longest loud sound of the two, and the night that felt hard turned out to be the quietest of the two. What I felt and the numbers pointed in opposite directions.
For both nights, I decide the start and end myself with a tap. August 25 came to 7 hours and 52 minutes, August 27 to 6 hours and 25 minutes. That difference in length comes from how long I actually slept each night.
I could have added a short tag to either night afterward, but I added none to either. I had no sense that anything unusual had happened; I just slept the way I usually do and let the recording end the way it usually does.
The night that felt hard, August 27, did not take any more effort to record. I tap once before sleeping and once in the morning to end it. That number of taps is the same on both nights.
My own ears cannot hear the sound of the night while it happens. If I had judged only by how I felt in the morning, I would not have noticed that these two nights ran in opposite directions. Looking at either night alone would not have shown me the same thing either.
Recording and your record are free, always. The sound is sent nowhere. Only the loud stretches are kept.
The method itself is in another article
How I actually record the night's sound is written up in another article. What I can say here is only this: I put one phone by my pillow, and that was all. No special equipment, nothing worn on the body.
What stays, and what does not
Where the sound goes is explained the same way every time, in one sentence: "The sound is sent nowhere. Only the loud stretches are kept." For both nights, the whole night's sound was not kept as it was; only the loud minutes and the short stretch right around them stayed on the phone.
The loudest single moment can be played back in my own ears. The second loudest is kept too, in order, and I can listen to it. Every other, quiet minute of sound is never kept at all. Both August 25 and August 27 could be checked back the same way.
Recording and keeping the record are always free. The recording stays on this phone for 14 nights, and the oldest is cleared automatically; there is nothing to delete by hand.
If there is a recording I want gone, I can delete it myself, one at a time. If I do nothing, the oldest ones just clear themselves, and there is nothing else I need to do.
What two nights still do not tell me
What I can say is that my own night of August 25 had 29 loud minutes, and August 27 had 4. Two nights are not enough to say which of them is the usual one for me.
I still do not know why what I felt and the numbers ran in opposite directions. It might be something from the day before, or it might just be how those particular nights happened to go. Two nights are not enough to say which.
I do not want to read too much into just two nights of record. Even so, having this record is what let me confirm something as basic as the fact that my own ears cannot hear my own sound.
If I keep recording the same way for a few more nights, some pattern in the ordinary-feeling nights and the hard-feeling nights might start to show. Even so, I am not putting an answer to that ahead of the record I actually have. This pair of nights is what first made me want to question how I feel about a night at all.
Checking, the next morning, a night's sound that my own ears cannot hear while it happens: that is what these two nights showed me I can do.
For anything about treatment or making it stop, a doctor is the surest person to ask. All Nagi can do is record the night's sound so you can hear back, in the morning, how long it was loud and when it peaked. No verdicts, only the record.