WarpMyMind

I've seen binaurals talked about a lot on this site and others but despite picking up a few clues here and there I'm still lost as to how to construct them. Everything I read is either too academic and theoretical or just misses the important steps. Does anyone at least have a link to where I could learn about them?

Also I've been wondering why all of the files I've listened to so far seem to have been recorded in one go. Unless you're an excellent reader you're going to stumble eventually in the 20 minutes that you're speaking, and sometimes you just don't say something as clearly as you'd like. I don't understand why you wouldn't just cut the track from the end of the last sentence and then start from there.

Thanks for the replies, they explain a lot. Looks like the binaural thing was a lot simpler than I thought. From the sound of it the tones would need to be audible but separated by just a few Hz. This wouldn't be that hard to do on a synthesizer. I don't suppose anyone knows if there's a certain kind of tone that works best? Like a particular waveform or just white or pink noise?

I've taken a look at the program. It seems easy enough to use on its own but there's nothing here that couldn't be done with more powerful, less specialized software.

The benefit of BWG is that you can program it to speed up or slow down the pulses as you like.

However, and I've said this before on the forum, for myself I think that binaurals are overrated. If you're doing it yourself, get Audacity (or something similar), generate a tone and tremolo it. It sounds better and it's a lot more flexible than messing around with different tones in each ear. You can then use multiple tones, use multiple frequencies of beats, use different amplitudes of beats, oscillate the sound left to right and so on. I've used this technique on all of my own files and I've had very positive feedback on it.

ZAP

Can you explain what you mean when you say you tremolo the sound? I know what a tremolo effect is but I can't see how it would replicate the effect of having different frequencies of tones played in each ear. Do you just experiment with the sound or is there a method you follow?

You can still use multiple tones, multiple frequencies of beats, amplitudes of beats and modulate the sound in any way you want with even just a simple dual-oscillator softsynth and a sequencer if you can pan the tones individually. That's what I don't like about using a program like BWG, it's easy to use but much too limited and don't even get me started on Audacity. How can you have an audio sequencer without ASIO support :(

In my experience, there are essentially 2 reasons for using background beats. One, it is something monotonous to listen to. Two, they affect brainwave frequencies. When your brain is highly active, it operates on a high frequency. When you brain is relatively inactive (e.g. during trance), it operates on a low frequency.

When you concentrate your attention on a frequency, your brain converges to that frequency to a degree. Listening to a very slow pulsing tone with your eyes closed will help to induce trance or even sleep. It slows the brain. Binaural beats seem to pulse in your head, usually at low frequencies. It is the pulsing of the sound that causes the effect.

Audacity's tremolo effect varies the volume of an audio track on a certain frequency, meaning that you can make any sound track "pulse", often with the same effect as binaurals, or better.

edit: I realise that for someone who knows about recording technology this must all sound a bit primitive, but I'm only interested in such things as far as they are useful to my projects in mind control. Audacity probably isn't that amazing for home studio use, but I can record with it, edit, generate tones and play around with them, export as mp3 - and it's freeware. I don't even know what ASIO means but I doubt it would make much difference to my files.

in audacity, create a mono channel, generate a tone of a known frequency, adjust the left right balance all the way to one side, create another mono chanel generate a second frequency a few hz different balanced completely to the other side change the channel all the way to the other side, tremelo both chanels a frequency equal to the difference between their frequencies.

or you can google iso tones and download them for free!

I either use SBaGen or the audacity plug-in http://audacity.sourceforge.net/nyquist/bitone2.zip. The former requires you to learn a simple programing language and can produce white noise in the background. I recommend the latter, a good GUI, and it can make stereo surf. Both options allow you to gently slide into a different frequency. :D