January/February 2007, 13(1): 25-32) have shown that they can The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Helané Wahbeh, Carlo Calabrese, and Heather Zwickey. Please remember the tone generator is currently only compatible with Firefox 4 or later.ĭisclaimer: Binaural beats are widely available, simple in concept and published studies (see e.g. Please note, headphones must be used for the effect to work (you will hear a beat if you use speakersīut this is a physical phenomenon as opposed to a psychological one). Use the Binaural Beat Generator below to investigate this effect yourself, and feel free to add your favourite frequency combinations to the comments section.
If the two tones are played through headphones (one frequency in the left ear, another in the right ear) each ear receives a pure tone and no physical interference can occur.Īmazingly, the majority of people will still perceive a beating sound which is a purely psychological effect and is known as a 'binaural beat'. Reaches your ears, the waves will have physically added together and this superposition results in a wave at a frequency of (f1+f2)/2 which beats at a frequency of f2-f1. When two sine waves of slightly different frequencies (eg f1 and f2) are played on a loudspeaker, the waves will undergo interference.
