Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Binaural beats

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 49 posts

Re: Binaural beats

#11

Post by rktjmp »

ics wrote: post #9
milkmiruku wrote: post #3

Here's some software for generating them; http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/ http://discord.sourceforge.net/ http://sbagen.sourceforge.net/ http://entrainer.sourceforge.net/

Some good, more general purpose and programmer-y alternatives: ChucK => http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/ Pure Data => http://puredata.info/ SuperCollider => http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/

There's also http://overtone.github.io/, which sits over super collider. Overtone provides an emacs mode, but you can also use it in http://www.lighttable.com/ which is a bit more accessible.

Re: Binaural beats

#12

Post by chinpokomon »

eurleif wrote: post #5
milkmiruku wrote: post #3

Here's some software for generating them; http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/ http://discord.sourceforge.net/ http://sbagen.sourceforge.net/ http://entrainer.sourceforge.net/

Or, since this is Hacker News, you can use ChucK, which is a realtime programming language for processing audio: SinOsc left => dac.left; SinOsc right => dac.right; 300 => left.freq; 310 => right.freq; while (1) 1::second => now;

The last time I looked at ChucK had to have been almost 5 years ago. I was doing some interesting phase shift work where I would offset one channel by a few samples. Lots of fun.

Re: Binaural beats

#13

Post by spacecowboy »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #4

Knew about them for a long time. I am still not sure if these work for some people or not, because they don't work for me at all.

The following youtube video is a decent intro on binaural beats - make sure you listen with headphones. Also, everything after the 5:55 mark starts becoming an infomercial so you can stop there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCfUbFjin00

Re: Binaural beats

#14

Post by a_bonobo »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #4

Knew about them for a long time. I am still not sure if these work for some people or not, because they don't work for me at all.

I don't think they work at all, especially because there are no studies proving binaural beats to be good for anything (except making money?). The only blind study Wikipedia cites was published in the "Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine", which isn't really a journal at all.

Edit: Found this study [1] looking at binaural beats and changes in EEG: "Analysis of changes in broad-band and narrow-band amplitudes, and frequency showed no effect of binaural beat frequency eliciting a frequency following effect in the EEG". This study is (conveniently) not cited in the Wikipedia-article.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016787601...

Re: Binaural beats

#15

Post by JamesArgo »

a_bonobo wrote: post #14
cLeEOGPw wrote: post #4

Knew about them for a long time. I am still not sure if these work for some people or not, because they don't work for me at all.

I don't think they work at all, especially because there are no studies proving binaural beats to be good for anything (except making money?). The only blind study Wikipedia cites was published in the "Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine", which isn't really a journal at all. Edit: Found this study [1] looking at binaural beats and changes in EEG: "Analysis of changes in broad-band and narrow-band ampli…

They are, however, good at sounding cool.

Re: Binaural beats

#18

Post by ics »

rktjmp wrote: post #11
ics wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some good, more general purpose and programmer-y alternatives: ChucK => http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/ Pure Data => http://puredata.info/ SuperCollider => http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/

There's also http://overtone.github.io/ , which sits over super collider. Overtone provides an emacs mode, but you can also use it in http://www.lighttable.com/ which is a bit more accessible.

It's funny, here I was futzing around to make emacs part of my PD workflow... Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard of it before.

Re: Binaural beats

#19

Post by mugsydean »

90 percent of them dont seem to have much effect, but i found a few that seemed to put me in a super deep sleep... like an audio mind massage. pretty sure it was a 3hz delta state, with out any weird static noises mixed in. i find those static sounds somewhat annoying, but did find a pleasant one with nature sounds mixed in there.

Re: Binaural beats

#20

Post by eksith »

aroman wrote: post #16

See also the coolest auditory illusion I know of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone

I knew that sounded familiar!

"In The Dark Knight and the follow up The Dark Knight Rises a Shepard tone was used to create the sound of the 'Batpod' - a motorcycle that the filmmakers didn't want to change gear and tone abruptly but to constantly ascend."

Post reply on HN