binaural beats?

[swordpath]

One of my friends was trying to tell me about this, how he was getting into it and using it to meditate and stuff. He says it really works for relaxing and stuff. Anyone know anything on this?

Binaural beats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[aeon]

Yep, it seems to work just like the article says. I have done experimentation with binaural beats by programming my Clavia Nord Modular synthesizer (and other audio gear) to generate the stereo tones, as well as move them among various beat frequencies and pitches. I do not own or have access to an EEG, so I have no way to verify what is happening in terms of my brain waves - all I can do is monitor the delta of my experience of consciousness.


cheers,
Ian

 

[swordpath]

Interesting. I'm nabbing a torrent of some waves now. I wanna try em out when I go to bed.

 

[owarinoTenshi]

I wrote a paper on this once. It was a pretty crappy paper, particularly since there wasn't a whole lot of research I could easily find on the topic and I was too lazy to look harder. Based on what I did find, binaural beats seem to have some noticeable effects, particularly promoting relaxation. I tried it out a little bit, and for the most part I didn't notice a whole lot for the most part, although that might just be because I have a hard time sensing changes in my feelings. One time, though, I got into some kind of funky meditative trance. It was cool. When I think about it, it seems kind of strange that binaural beats would trigger such effects, but then again we have a long way to go until we understand how the brain fully works...

 

[spirilis]

I used BWGen a few years ago-- experimented a few times. I had one preset that someone on the bwgen community created that put me to sleep for a half hour and successfully brought me out of it. Tried the same thing on a friend and he didn't feel anything... thing is, in my friend's example we had the sound going through some stereo and I think that stereo messed with the left/right channel separation, whereas in the 1st example I had the headphones plugged directly into the sound card.

I can definitely confirm they have an "effect" on me, but you *have* to make sure your sound source has 100% proper left/right stereo separation or it won't work. MP3s encoded with joint-stereo would violate that, but MP3s encoded with real-stereo wouldn't, and WAV files would be alright.

 

[Folderol]

One of my friends was trying to tell me about this, how he was getting into it and using it to meditate and stuff. He says it really works for relaxing and stuff. Anyone know anything on this?

Binaural beats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, these things work. You can also entrain your brain to different states through visual means with your eyes closed and the combination of the two is called a Mind Machine.

I use the Brainwave Generator. My favorite presets are "Studying aid 2" and "Too much coffee [improved]". I also "Winning" and "Super Learning", from the Brain Sync subliminal series. Binaural beats work best right when you get up and right when you go to bed, but ONLY with headphones. There are separate sounds coming from the left and right.

 

[Risen]

Yea, they work amazingly well. You need to research the different brain functions associated with the different dominant brainwaves patterns (delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma in that order). You can use binaural beats for whichever effect you want pretty much. It helps if you have prior experience in meditation, which in itself is a powerful tool for altering the state of your own mind.

By far the most effective ones I've used are those developed by Jeffrey Thompson. All his stuff is cheap, super effective, and readily downloadable too . He has a gamma wave cd that focuses you brain on high frequency gamma waves, which is like a super alert and focused state (awesome for anything but sleeping).