81–90 of 106 posts
can anyone comment on binaural beats and the claim that they can be used to manipulate brain activity- such as promoting focus or relaxation?
I use a non-looping white/brown noise machine to help me sleep at night and it works wonders in the city. One thing I've wondered is the health effects of listening to that noise at ~ 40db all night over all these years. OSHA says that anything under ~ 80db is safe for 8h, but I do wonder if there are any longer term impacts to hearing or audio processing for softer sounds played over a lifetime. I could easily see t…
Interesting, could it be possible to elaborate which listening device you are using?
I got into it because of tinnitus, and used it to sleep, but eventually started using it when working. Years ago in menlo park, with headphones on and white/brown noise drowning out the world. I likened it sensory deprivation, as nothing rises above the noise floor and it can fade away from your attention.
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Hmmm, I wonder what implications that has for those of us who like to sleep with a fan.
I'm skeptical about generalizing those results to more "natural" sounds like fan noise. As others have mentioned true white noise is very unnatural due to its uniform power spectrum. Pink and brown noise though seem more natural due to the dampening at higher frequencies, and I'd bet things like fan noise, rainfall, waterfall, etc. lie somewhere along the 1/f^alpha for alpha > 1 (in between pink and brown). I'm sure…
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"nerves that fire together, wire together" - ha, that's quite a profound statement. I've been thinking recently how we manage to hear harmonics as one sound without preexisting algorithms in our brain to detect them, and this is probably the answer. Edit. This also means we hear sounds differently. Someone who listens much to classical music hears harmonics really well, but someone who listens to sounds with differen…
Harmonics or harmonies? Your edit is nonsense either way.
All heavy metal music sounds about the same to me. But I'm sure that is not the case for fans of heavy metal.
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Hmmm, I wonder what implications that has for those of us who like to sleep with a fan.
I'm skeptical about generalizing those results to more "natural" sounds like fan noise. As others have mentioned true white noise is very unnatural due to its uniform power spectrum. Pink and brown noise though seem more natural due to the dampening at higher frequencies, and I'd bet things like fan noise, rainfall, waterfall, etc. lie somewhere along the 1/f^alpha for alpha > 1 (in between pink and brown). I'm sure…
A fan that's rotating back and forth might produce neurologically better sounds, as the breeze bounces off different parts of the room than one that is fixed in one direction?
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Harmonics or harmonies? Your edit is nonsense either way.
I wouldn't be so quick to call nonsense. Spending time listening to certain things most definitely affects your ability to pick out specific details. All heavy metal music sounds about the same to me. But I'm sure that is not the case for fans of heavy metal.
Sure, maybe they'd be better at picking out a bassoon in the mix than a metal fan, and a metal fan might be able to tell the difference between a Jackson guitar and a ESP guitar than the classical fan, but that's just due to familiarity, not their overall sense of hearing.
I don't think any serious musician would agree with you whether you're talking harmony or harmonics. However, listening to music in general will definitely allow you to hear different harmonic intervals better than if you didn't, but this is again just due to familiarity/ear training and doesn't overlap into your overall ability to hear.
We just use mnemonics. For example, Amen = 4th twinkle twinkle = 5th NBC = 6th etc.
can anyone comment on binaural beats and the claim that they can be used to manipulate brain activity- such as promoting focus or relaxation?
Gerald Oster, "Auditory beats in the brain", Scientific American, 229 (4): pages 94-102, October 1973.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/auditory-beats-in...
From what I understand, later controlled studies do not seem to back the claim that specific frequency differences lead the brain to an alpha state, or theta state etc. as claimed. But there may be potential in reducing anxiety:
R Padmanabhan 1, A J Hildreth, D Laws. "A prospective, randomised, controlled study examining binaural beat audio and pre-operative anxiety in patients undergoing general anaesthesia for day case surgery", Anaesthesia, 2005.
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It's crazy they loop, it just takes one transistor in avalanche mode to create white noise. Maybe I should mod my Bose Sleep buds that have ridiculously bad sound quality and short loops (and battery life).
It's easy electronically but if you're writing an app for a device/OS that doesn't implement that capability and expose it to apps you're left with either pseudorandom numbers or a sample. A very long losslessly compressed sample can be good but would require a large download, so in practice these apps generally have short, lossily compressed samples. These samples (and the alternative, pseudorandom numbers) sound ab…
This resonates with my feelings. Hardware pseudo random noise is something i'd like to try, but I'm not sure my partner is so keen on it, how to deliver the sound in a discrete and non-intrusive way?
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"nerves that fire together, wire together" - ha, that's quite a profound statement. I've been thinking recently how we manage to hear harmonics as one sound without preexisting algorithms in our brain to detect them, and this is probably the answer. Edit. This also means we hear sounds differently. Someone who listens much to classical music hears harmonics really well, but someone who listens to sounds with differen…
Harmonics or harmonies? Your edit is nonsense either way.