Americans spent more than $3 billion on prescription sleep aids in 2007, no doubt urged on by the ubiquitous TV ads, such as the Rozerem commercial, promoting those drugs (you know the ones: luna moths, soft music, Abe Lincoln, a beaver). But for many poor sleepers, a safer, less-expensive solution—a sound machine—may be just as helpful.

That's a finding from a recent sleep survey of 1,466 nationally representative respondents and a parallel survey of 1,093 Americans suffering from chronic sleep loss conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center and published in the September issue of Consumer Reports. Our analysis of what techniques worked best focused on the experiences of 2,021 problem sleepers and confirmed insomniacs, drawn from both surveys.

We asked respondents who had used some kind of insomnia treatment on at least eight nights in the previous month about what they’d tried, and how often it helped. Among the 12 percent who’d used prescription drugs, 75 percent of them said the pills helped most nights. (That included not just drugs marketed exclusively for sleep, like Ambien CR, Lunesta, Rozerem, and Sonata, but other drugs with sleep-inducing properties, including the antianxiety drug alprazolam and the antidepressant trazodone.) But nearly the same percentage—70 percent—of people who used a sound machine (above) in the bedroom reported getting relief. For the most severe cases, however, they were not as effective. We bought three such machines and asked a staff panel to try them out. Their favorite: the Brookstone Tranquil Moments Sound Therapy System, $129, which offers white noise and 11 other sounds.