I use two alarm clocks. The first one is this Peaceful Progression Wake-Up Clock from Hammacher Schlemmer. It gradually lightens up the room for 30 minutes before the sound alarm starts going off. It also starts birds chirping (you can pick other sounds) about 15 minutes before wake up time. There are better light alarms than this one, but I found it for $12 on ebay so I went with it. It is so much nicer in the winter to have a bit of light in my room when I wake up instead of having it be pitch black.

But I don't like the alarm sound that it makes and the birds chirping is too loud when I have the alarm volume high enough, so I have the volume pretty much all the way down. It doesn't actually wake me up, but I think it subconsciously registers that it is morning in my brain. Since it isn't loud enough to actually wake me, I leave it on all the time, even when I don't have to wake up. That way I don't have to remember to turn it back on.

Because it doesn't wake me, I have a second alarm for the wake-up part. I hate the shrill of 'alarm' sounds as well, so I have it set to wake me up to NPR. It goes off right around the time they are doing the hourly news update and the local news, so I can just lay in bed for a few minutes gradually waking up and getting accustomed to the low light of my alarm clock, and then I eventually turn on the real light and put on my glasses and get up. It is a much nicer way to wake up. I also like this alarm because it knows the days of the week so I don't have to turn it off on the weekends, and then forget to turn it on again for Monday. It is actually supposed to automatically adjust to daylight savings time as well, but I bought it before the gubment decided to screw with the timing of that, so now I actually have to reset the time 4 times a year instead of 2, because it resets it on the old daylight savings days, which I then have to switch back, and then I have to manually switch it on the actual day. So make sure you buy a newer one if you get it!