Sound Frequency Files a Remote Viewing Enhancement

[CrystalCrushed]

So I found a really neat post here:

http://www.thebookofaquarius.com/for...hp?f=14&t=1681

The OP is talking about a sound frequency that she's used for an apparent remote viewing episode..

"As the track began to play I was shocked that my eyelids began to flutter madly and uncontrollably. A strong floating sensation took over my body as well. All sorts of images began to flash inside my mind. A blueish silver ball morphed into view, then a tall glowing blue man with a white glowing plane stretching out from his eyes. Soon after a small forest glade appeared, as well as fairies, gnomes and a beautiful woman with long wavy brown hair. (I have NEVER experienced a meditation like this before in my life. Nor do I go around thinking about fairies and wavy brown haired women or giant glowing blue men...)

After the 10 minutes were over I reported all of this to my friend. He was shocked at the images...especially the last 'fairy tale' like ones. They were the same images he was looking through while I lay meditating. He had been looking through clips online of the movie Legend, one had never seen nor heard of.
He then told me that the file was a partial model of the average sensory reaction of the mind to the substance Salvia Divinorum.
I'd like to hear from others to see if they have experienced the anything similar in effect from other sources. This is a rare sound file collection. I believe these files can be used for great things if such feats as remote viewing can be triggered for a novice such as myself."

Sounds pretty interesting to me.


-Crys

[Doc]

Hi, Crystal Crushed and welcome to The OutPost. If you have more information about sound and its effects I would love to see it posted here. A friend of mine did her dissertation on the effect of music on depression in geriatric patients in nursing homes. I think the whole field of sound is under-researched. I look forward to seeing more!

[Neuru]

If anyone is (still?) interested in this, there is this site [link] which offers many (free) "isochronic tones" for download. They are supposed to put the listener into various altered states.

Isochronic tones are regular beats of a single tone used for brainwave entrainment. Similar to monaural beats, the interference pattern that produces the beat is outside the brain so headphones are not required for entrainment to be effective. They differ from monaural beats, which are constant sine wave pulses rather than entirely separate pulses of a single tone. As the contrast between noise and silence is more pronounced than the constant pulses of monaural beats, the stimuli is stronger and has a greater effect on brain entrainment.

[Source]

Curiously, the site that is mentioned on that other forum does not seem to mention anywhere what effect those files actually are based on. I.e. whether they are binaural beats, monaural beats or isochronic or some completely different mechanism. However, it does say that you don't need headphones -- that would narrow it down to isochronics and monaurals.

Furthermore, it talks a lot about "vibration". Isochronic tones don't "vibrate" -- they are bleeping sounds that click on and off. So those files (the ones mentioned on the website) are probably monaural beats, which is basically a pulsating tone. Maybe with a lot of harmonics and background noise/sound effects added so it sounds more like music. Regardless, it is a very bad PR move that they don't give out any free samples.

[Doc]

Does anyone know of any similar websites where these sounds or anything similar can be sampled?

[Neuru]

Some links to free downloads:
- http://peacefulprosperity.com/binaur...-they-work-if/
- http://grasshopperx.com/mind-games/brain-flex/

As for whether this kind of technology could be used alone to produce psychic phenomena, I doubt it. The most important thing is that if you or anyone in your family has (or had) epilepsy you should not use any kind of brainwave entrainment. Especially not flashing lights.

Brainwave entrainment
I used to visit this guy's website [link]. He has a very extensive list of brainwave frequencies that allegedly correspond with certain mental states [link]. He compiled this list from a lot of sources. I'd say, though, that the validity of some 99% (okay, 80%) of these frequencies is dubious, to say the least. It might be worth checking the bibliography [link] to see which sources could be counted as credible ones, whatever the criteria might be for that. You might also want to check out his "Sonic Alchemy Logbook".

What are these frequencies though? Under their normal operation, nerve cells in the brain produce electromagnetic fields, constantly. Wikipedia has a pretty long article on electroencephalography. This is a relevant part here [link]. It explains that when certain parts of the brain are active, they each produce various electromagnetic fields that have different frequencies. These electromagnetic waves are called "brainwaves" in layman's terms.

If you're awake then normally you have a mixture of them, that is, some in the "alpha" range, some "theta", "beta", etc. However, different states of consciousness have a different mixture. For instance, in the dreamless part of sleep, there is an abundance of "delta" waves (about 4 to 6 Hz). If you are awake and alert then most of your brainwaves are in the 15-30 Hz range. And so on.

Allegedly, it has been observed that if you present something to a person that has a certain frequency -- for instance, a strobe light that pulsates at 4 Hz, or a sound wave that pulsates at 4 Hz, their brain will start "imitating" this. It will (allegedly) start producing more of this frequency. This would imply that brain structures that output this frequency while they operate would rise to an elevated level of activity. In this case, 4 Hz will make them drowsy and put them to sleep.

This phenomenon is called the "frequency following response". The idea of "brainwave entrainment" pretty much relies on this response. A bad analogy: suppose your dog wags its tail when it's happy. Brainwave entrainment is when you grab your dog's tail, wag your dog by its tail and expect it to suddenly become happy.

Binaural beats
One (alleged) way to achieve entrainment is to use binaural beats. Basically, you play two pure tones (sine waves) in the two ears (sound channels). One of the tones has a frequency that is a bit higher than the other one. If you listen to this with headphones, you will hear a third, imaginary tone in the center. That tone is produced (probably) by the I-don't-know-which part of the brain that processes hearing. It has a frequency that is exactly the difference between the frequency of these two tones.

The idea is that by "hearing" this imaginary tone you will also get brainwave entrainment. Wishful thinking much?

If any of you wants to try binaural beats for free, you can use Gnaural [link] (open source). Michael Triggs, the guy whose homepage i linked, used Brainwave Generator which is a commercial product so I won't link that one. If you do a search for "brainwave generator" you'll find it quickly.

To me, the binaural beats thing is very much snake oil territory. The most success I had with them was with a file that supposedly alleviated headaches. It did, several times, quite quickly, in fact. (For reference, it was one of the demo presets in Brainwave Generator.) It is most likely pointless to try presets for more exotic things like astral projection, remote viewing or tele-whatever.

Isochronic tones and monaural tones
It is very, very simple to produce these two kinds of tones. So if it's not a problem, next I will post up how to make binaurals, isochronics and monaurals.

Sorry for the long post but most sources on this topic are advertisements. However, There is a wikipedia article on brainwave entrainment [link].

[Neuru]

This is a long post and overly wordy since it spells out everything. Hopefully that way it is easy to follow along.

The actual process takes some 2-3 minutes at most and can be learnt very quickly.

IMHO spending money on pulsating bleeps is a waste, especially if said bleeps might not even work. So here you get to learn for free how to make pulsating bleeps that may or may not work. There's a chance that brainwave entrainment is bollocks though I had some noticeable results with it. Anyway...

To follow any of these guides, you first need an audio editor.

Audacity [link] is one such program and a very adequate one. It is free, open source software. I base these instructions on it so it is recommended you download and install it before following on with these.

--- Before you do any of this, you'll have to decide what your file will do. ---

1. Pick a frequency from the list I linked above, preferably one that does not have an overly fishy description. Here, I'll call this frequency value the "beat." For the examples below, we will now assume you want to use 4 Hz beat. That is in the lower theta range and it will induce a meditative/drowsy state. (Yeah, it's wrongly stated in the previous post that 4 Hz is in the delta range -- it's more like the upper limit of delta.)
2. Next, pick a "carrier frequency." This will be the sound that you will actually hear. I recommend that the carrier frequency
   - should be a multiple of the beat
   - should be between 200 and 1000 Hz. A tone below 200 Hz may be less audible in a noisy environment and tones above 1000 Hz tend to (read: will be) annoying pretty soon. So for this example we will use 400 Hz as the carrier frequency.

--- Monaural beats ---

1. Start Audacity.
2. Choose Generate -> Tone from the menu.
3. In Frequency (Hz) enter 400.
4. Right click the Duration combo box and select the option hh:mm:ss + milliseconds.
   time display format.jpg
   
   Now, calculate the value of
   
   1 / [beat]
   
   In this case, we get 1 / 4 = 0.25. Enter this in the Duration box.
   enter tone parameters.jpg
5. From the menu apply:
   - Effect -> Fade in
   - Effect -> Fade out
   - Effect -> Normalize
6. Now, repeat the following sequence:
   
   Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, End, Ctrl+V
   
   You will see that the length of the recording will double every time. For an effective session, you will need at least 10 minutes. So mash these keys until the length of the file is more than 10 minutes.
7. You are ready. Select File -> Export.

You'll see that you cannot directly create an MP3 file. This is because MP3 is a patented format and royalties must be paid for everything that can create or play back MP3s. LAME is a free encoder and its creators do not pay any royalties, so it is illegal to use in every country that recognizes software patents. (That includes the US and most of the Western world, like Japan, etc. For country-specific information, check this article [link].) If you don't want to bother with installing LAME (or you can't), you can still export to Ogg, which is actually a better (more efficient) format. If you use Windows Media Player or something that is based on it (for instance, many movie players are actually using Media Player's functions), download this [link] to get Ogg support. Other popular players like Winamp support it out of the box. (AFAIK Mac does not.)

--- Isochronic tones ---

1. Start Audacity.
2. Generate -> Tone
3. In Frequency (Hz) enter 400.
4. This time we have to calculate
   
   (1 / [beat]) / 2
   
   or in other words
   
   0.5 / [beat].
   
   In our case, (1 / 4) / 2 = 0.125
5. Now hit End and choose Generate -> Silence. Enter the same value, 0.125 here as well.
6. Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, End, Ctrl+V until you reach at least 10 minutes.
7. You are ready.

--- Binaural beats ---

1. Start Audacity.
2. Click Generate -> Tone
3. In this case, you can enter right away how long the session will be in the Duration box. Depending on what format you set the box to, enter 600 seconds (or 10 minutes if you set the box to the hh:mm:ss format).
4. In the Frequency (Hz) box, enter
   
   [carrier frequency] - ([beat] / 2)
   
   In our case, 400 - (4 / 2) = 398. Click OK.
5. Click Tracks -> Add New -> Audio Track
6. Click Generate -> Tone again. Enter the same length (600) but this time, add half of the beat value to the carrier. So this one is 400+(4/2) = 400 + 2 = 402.
7. Click on the upper track's left side where it says "Audio Track" and choose "Make Stereo Track"
   make stereo track.jpg
8. You are ready.

--- Notes ---

• Resample before you start
  You'll notice that longer session files tend to get large. A way to drastically reduce their size is to turn down the sample rate. (Project Rate (Hz)) to 8000 before you start. Also, when you export, click Options and pull the slider to the left (0).
  
  project sample rate.jpg ogg quality.jpg
  .
• Cut down the length of your file
  Suppose you want a session that is exactly 10 minutes long.
  Before you export, hit End to go to the end of your file. Then, in the Selection Start box, enter your desired length, 00 h 10 m 00 s. Then, press Del.
  
  A sudden stop at the end would be unpleasant if you wanted to bring yourself to a calm state of mind. So after you have cut it down, hit End again, subtract 10 from the length and enter that into the Selection Start box. That would be 00 h 09 m 50 s. Now, click Effect -> Fade out.
  
  You are ready to export.
  .
• Why the carrier should be the multiple of the beat
  This is just supplemental information.
  In digital sound editing, a sound wave is basically a series of fractional values between -1 dB and +1 dB. But you probably already know that. The point where the wave crosses 0 dB is called a "zero crossing." If audio playback stops at a zero crossing, you don't hear anything special. However, suppose that, right before playback stopped, the last value in the sound wave was, for instance, 1 dB, or -1 dB or anything other than 0. Then you would hear a "pop". This happens because the electromagnet underneath the speaker's membrane suddenly loses voltage (since we weren't on a zero crossing, the voltage wasn't 0 to begin with) and the membrane jumps back into its resting place -- and that is quite audible. If the carrier is a multiple of the beat, the isochronic tones will miraculously end on zero crossings.

The above is mostly all I know about this sound-based "brainwave entrainment." You'll notice that most of the iso-tones.com sounds are pretty elaborate. That is a good thing (aesthetically), but most of it is probably unneeded, since imho using sound for brainwave entrainment is a very crude technology -- so it does not make much of a difference. You may also want to try isochronics with speakers turned up to a reasonable volume if headphones don't work. Just don't turn it up too much as it might damage the speaker.

I'm interested to see if anyone has actual, very strong results with specific frequencies. I mean, results that rule out the placebo effect. For the record, with isochronics I've found that with 3 Hz makes me fall asleep (how surprising...) and after listening to a 4.5 Hz beat for some 10-15 minutes, the afterimages I got after I closed my eyes lasted longer (several seconds instead of less than a second). Not the kind of afterimage you get after you stare into a light, probably this [link].

[Garuda]

Hi Neuru,

Thanks for posting all of this, much appreciated!

I often use binaurals, and they work wonderfully well for me.

[Neuru]

Hi Garuda,

that is interesting. If you don't mind, could you elaborate on what you have used binaurals for? Specifically, besides achieving general states (sleepy, meditative, focused, alert) can you achieve specific effects? Perhaps spontaneous psychic phenomena, enhanced memory recall or enhanced (physical or non-physical) perception?

The user GentleJungle from the Book of Aquarius forums, linked in the first post, also posted an account of the same experience here [link] and a different one here [link]. It might cast a shadow of doubt on the veracity of them, though, that she didn't post much about anything else. So she could be just advertising the site. Whatever, I won't be calling unknown people names.

It might be that one has to be an active psychic, even if on a low level, to experience things like this -- i.e. such phenomena cannot be reproduced on people who are "asleep". That might explain why binaurals reportedly don't work on some (otherwise healthy) people at all. This is all just idle speculation though.

Meanwhile, for those interested, there is also a different method for producing binaural beats. It involves manipulating an existing sound file, such as a music track. This is the method preferred by evil reptilian overlords who want to erode the sheeple's willpower with muzak.
Here [link] is a program that can do exactly this. It is a predecessor to Cool Edit, which was a general purpose audio editor. Beware, this one is a 16 bit application, meaning it won't run on 64 bit operating systems. Also, it is prone to crash.

[Garuda]

Hi Neuru,

I've been involved in altered states work through different forms of meditation for nearly 20 years, and don't really use the binaurals for those purposes.

I use them mainly for
- sharpening my focus before ,e.g., doing programming work
- sometimes I will use a 'deep meditation' binaural (alpha then theta) when I'm experiencing difficulties meditating
- it's also surprisingly effective to undo a 'wooden head' sensation, which I typically get when my afternoon siesta is interrupted for some reason. You probably know the sensation: when you are woken up at the 'wrong time' and everything remains in a mental haze.

I've done several of the Monroe Gateway Experience CDs but found that overall I get better results with my meditation than with the CDs.