BINAURAL BEATS: First, note that some people (not most) don't hear the binaural beats at all, or do hear them at the higher frequencies, and AFAIK (I'm not a doctor) that's just part of normal human variation and doesn't mean you're about to die or that there's anything wrong with you. Lots of people have commented here with experiences all over the map. (Also some of that is no doubt due to playback issues -- see below.) Understand that "beats" are not the same as binaural beats. E.g. what you use to tune a guitar is just "beats". The "binaural" part only happens when the two tones are presented separately to each ear. If you hear the beats through your speakers, that doesn't mean the demo worked on your speakers -- it just means that you heard regular beats. You need to listen on headphones or earbuds to try that demo. There have been a lot of comments about the binaural beats working or not working when they should or shouldn't -- one issue seems to be that on some systems (not sure if it's some versions of the video that youtube serves, or an operating system configuration thing, or an audio playback system thing, or a headphone thing) the left and right channels are "polluting" each other. In the actual audio there is only a single tone in each ear at 2:20. If you take out an earbud (and if you're sure you can't hear the earbud you took out through the air at all), you should definitely hear no beating at 2:20. You can test your system by taking one earbud out and playing from 2:12: when the audio plays one channel and then the other, you should hear total silence in the single earbud for one of those tones. If you hear even a little bit bleeding through, it means your system is not separating the channels properly (and in fact this may explain a lot of the cases where other illusions in this series don't work!) Even my Focusrite Scarlett 18i8, a dedicated prosumer audio interface, has bleed between the headphone channels (but not the speaker channels). I wish I knew this was so common before making these videos. :-) Try finding a playback system that isolates the left/right signals perfectly at 2:12, and then watch the videos again. You also need to listen to the 720p version or better -- the lower-quality streams degrade the audio (including the stereo separation). I'd also appreciate reports under this comment about whether your system does or doesn't perfectly isolate the left/right channels on your headphones. Similarly, the McGurk effect depends on accurate audio/video synchronization, and A/V synchronization (on basically every system and operating system and device outside of an acoustics lab) is a total disaster. Also wish I knew that ahead of time. :-)
Hello, I did confirm that the sound is isolated, but funny enough, my wife and I both heard the beating very clearly. There was no mixing of sound, either. We're both very autistic though, and very sensitive to all stimulus and respond very differently, so I am assuming that is why.
@@beeopper Above 15khz, others can't hear beats where I can. If you mean you can't hear the beats at all, when isolated, you may just have audio processing issues
@@pilotavery I have no idea what you are on about, in my head phones the right tone is different to the left tone but when played together in the video is hear one tone not the beat like the video says?
@@TwentyTwoThirtyThree That's how I found out too haha. I had it since I can remember. It only bothers me if it changes tone, which it does sometimes when I'm really tired or some other unexplainable reason.
@@slipsonic809 I once concentrated in a very quiet room and started counting the various tones that I hear, and I lost track at well over 100 different frequencies.
about that last part ... as a kid I was learning how to play a piano and I really often told my teacher I heard this weird almost like a "white noise" sound in my ears at all times. There has not been a single moment I've not hear that for my entire life... She told me it's just from the loud sounds that piano makes, but I tried to explain I hear it all the time. When I'm outside, at school, in bed, all the time. I then talked about it with my mom and she took my to a doctor that inserted numerous things into my ears and they played various tones. From really low freq. to really high and ear tearing ones. I remember sitting in front of a monitor and since I was a kid, the doctor told me we are gonna play "catch the mole" since the little spectrum of the sounds on the monitor made little hills like a mole does on your garden. The point was just to entertain me so I always looked at the monitor and told the nearest number to the center of the little hill. I remember I went there couple of times and the last time I was there he inserted these little things into my ears, played the tone and ... The "white noise" was gone. He then turned it off and just looked at me, I could hear it again and then he talked with my mom for about 20 minutes while I was there sitting confused, how come did I not hear the noise for the first time? I don't remember WHAT EXACTLY then they told me, it's been so many years and mainly I don't really know how to translate diseases into english from my language so I'd have to look that up too... BUT! I stayed with music and kept playing the piano for several years, then high school came up I started playing drums and my friend invited me to a practice where he learns to play drums. They had this "anti-noise" booth for playing any kinds of instruments and it was the quietest place I've ever been to, apart from that white noise. Everyone who went in there with me, told me they hear literally NOTHING. So I just threw around "Not even the white noise in your ears?" And everyone threw me a weird look like what am I talkin' about? Years later I got to know it's pretty normal that people hear this kind of a white noise in their ears, but in my case my ears have another weird thing going on, where additional to that white noise I still hear that one frequency at all times. For example if I'd try and fall asleep without NO SOUND in the background? I just can't do that :^) If you put me in a bed and there is no sound around me I won't fall asleep until I'm really really tired ... Over the years I've learned to listen to whatever I can on my phone. I put one earbud into my ear, play someting on my phone really really low and I fall asleep like a little baby, but if by any chance I have to sleep somewhere where I can't do that or there is nothing to listen to, I ain't sleepin'. It's been a real problem for me over the years, almost my whole high school there wasn't like single day I came to school rested, when I started to work my first work was really shitty one and I was there for 4 months, every single shift I had I was sooo tired until my boss thought I'm doing drugs and fired me. Then I took a job at a hotel as a receptionist and it was the same story, so tired through out the day and I got weird looks from people I worked with, BUT then my boss came to me and asked me if I could do a whole month of night shifts since the girl that was doing night shifts was scared because some drunken asshole came to the hotel and ... well she was just scared to do them anymore. So I agreed and it was perfect ... whenever I came from a night shift I was so god damn tired I always fell into my bed onto my face and passed out. I worked there for 3 years and never had a day shift ever again... then I changed my work where I'm now for 2 years and I'm doing night shifts only ... I'm actually "working" right now while I watched the video and wrote this whole essay. So yeah, my ear hears this one frequency at all times (or produces it I still don't really know) so I don't know what DEAD SILENCE is like...The one time I heard absolute nothing was at the doctor when I was like 6? Well, I don't even know why I wrote this, have a wonderful day and thanks for reading my stoopid story I suppose :^)
I've been told it called tinnitus. I always hear either a sound like a diesel engine revving up and down way off in the distance, or I hear what sounds like a sink that's barely turned on. It's irritating when I have to ask someone to repeat themselves and I have to explain that a hearing aid wouldn't help. My hearing is fine, I just can't hear over the other noise.
@edwardclark6731 I get that a lot. It's like a flutter in my ears that causes an uncomfortable sensation deep in my ears. I can actually make it happen intentionally by flexing certain muscles in my ears, but for a while now it's been happening on its own. I think I'm just getting muscle spasms in my inner ear. It can last for hours once it's started, and it goes between constant spasms back and forth, to a few seconds between each spasm. Muscle relaxers help, thankfully, so I can take them when it gets bad enough. Apparently, grinding your teeth can lead to issues with the joint in your jaw, which can then affect the muscles in your ear. I grind my teeth at night and have issues with my jaw, so I'm pretty sure that's the cause. Maybe you also have that.
I've never been able to sleep in silence either because it's too loud 😭 the quieter a room is the louder it is for me i just always listened to music sometimes i get this weird feeling too like music is uncomfortable and too loud even if it isn't like some songs i think have certain tones that make me hear weird sounds if that makes sense i completely feel what you're saying bro and idk what it is either but i honestly until reading your comment just thought it was normal 😭
The coolest and most effective use of Tempo Circularity that I've heard is in the song "Emergent One" by Comaduster. The tempo sounds like it continuously slows to an utter crawl, and then some, yet ends up at the exact tempo it started in. Yes, once you break it down, it's just a clever trick, but it's done effectively enough that your first time hearing it, you don't realize it until it's already happened. And even knowing what's happening, it's still a really cool effect, imo. If you don't mind electronic music, it's worth a listen. (timestamp after the break) (It occurs around 1:48 into said song, for the impatient)
This series is an INCREDIBLE resource for any serious musician or producer. Can't find this sort of info any where else compiled into such clear examples. Pure gold, excellent work, and thank you!
I remember I would experiment with beating in my high school orchestra class. The teacher would play the 220 Hz tone on the piano for the students to tune their instruments, and I would try to hum something like a 225 Hz note in my head, to try hearing the pulsating effect in my skull. But maybe that's why my violin was always out of tune...
@@fabricioteixeiradasilva2720 he probably means, that you just mentioned a nightmare, and described it, and didn't say anything else. It's like saying a random word without any context, but wider. I guess you just have to insert "imagine" before your sentence and the nazi will be fine.
Christopher Nolan used one of these in The Dark Knight, where the sound in the background gets more and more intense without actually getting any higher/lower. It's just our ears that think so :D
Shucks, thanks. It was a while ago when I recorded it, but I believe it was a Roswell Pro Audio "Aurora" mic (no longer made) with a stand-mounted shield on a mic stand. And some basic processing in the computer, of course, including some iZotope RX magic to cleanup mouth noises and breaths and so on.
Yeah it's the editing not the mic. Any 100$ + studio mic will have this quality but it's more about how far away he stands, where the walls are in his room. What they're made of.
Right!? I kept finding myself just focussing in on his voice again and again to double-check I wasn't going crazy. Kept hearing the time of the room, then would focus in and only stop briefly when I'd hear a bit of splash on the sibilance. Or the edits that ended without a room tail.
When discussing the combination 2 or more tones, we need to be aware of the difference between linear and non-linear mixing. If we combine tones in a linear device or system, we may hear beats, but no new frequencies. For instance, when we combine 200 Hz plus 205 Hz, we will hear a 5 Hz modulation but not a 5 Hz tone. In other words, there will be a tone at about 200 Hz that is fluctuating at 5 Hz. Likewise with a 220 Hz tone plus a 330 Hz tone in a linear system, there will not be a sum and difference frequency created. This is why audio amplifiers and speakers are carefully designed to be very linear. I first became aware of this phenomenon when I visited a museum that had a circus air calliope, which is an instrument with very loud high pressure whistles intended to be used outdoors. I heard a lot of discordant notes that were being generated by the sums and differences. This is called "intermodulation". which only occurs at high levels. Radio engineers are very familiar with this effect on radio signals. Even air is non-linear at very high volumes (due to adiabatic expansion). I don't know whether the effect I heard was due to non-linearity of the air or of my ears.
I thought the same. It was especially clear for me on the tempo one. I was more frustrated the fascinated becuase I could distinctly hear different tempi playing on top of eachother.
This video might be about a auditory illusions but I stared at that Barber pole so long that my brain adapted to it and now it looks like my keyboard is trying to turn itself inside out
this is the first time i’ve ever been introduced to something like this and I love it. I was researching to find out how I could possibly make a track in a song I’m working on In garage band feel like a surrounding audio and then i stumbled upon this. Audio Illusions are so crazy cool and I think I’m gonna get obsessed with this soon lol. great video!
I remember listening to examples of these illusions before I took critical listening/ear training classes and developed my ear for my B.S. in Audio Engineering. I remember being so amazed. Coming back to them now almost none of them work... at least not completely. My guess is the hundreds of hours spent troubleshooting issues that make things sound weird has turned into the ability to not only realize something is weird immediately, but *what* specifically is weird and the reason for it. I'll have to check out the rest of the series and see if there are any illusions that still work as intended for me. Edit: Definitely some just in part 2 that still affect me! Obviously the vast majority of things under the "Phenomena" category will affect most people, but I'm glad there's still some stuff under "illusions" that keep me feeling normal. 😆
Band director, HAM radio communicator, musician, physicist, nearly all of my hobbies and professions have made me aware of these enough for them to not even happen, or to know what is happening and "listen the other direction". Super useful for tuning a band by ear!
The tempo circularity beat was the trippiest one by far. It kind of made me unsettled trying to follow it and pick out the different tempos. It reminded me of scary circus music or something I enjoyed it though! This whole video is incredibly fascinating
@Ricky Still working on it haven't really got to the stage where I'm happy with with it as my life is filled with other stuff I need to keep track of (family and work). In fact something very soon could happen that will prevent me from working on it for half a year or indefinetly. It saddens me that I may have to release the game way too soon or otherwise it may not be released at all.
Great video, thanks ! About tinnintus, if my experience can help ... : As a sound engineer, tinnintus, when it appears, is very annoying. So I have been working deep on the subject. We hear through a very thin "harp" of so called ciliated cells. Think of it as a microscopic wheat field, where wind (aka sound) blows. Each wheat stem is irrigated by microscopic blood vessels. Too loud sounds (or aging) lead in permanently damaging some of the cells. Hence tinnintus. But most of the tinnintus I have encountered is due to a bad vascularisation of the cells. This one can be fixed : - by drinking more water - by reducing overall fatigue and stress - by eating less sugar - by correcting your posture - by easing the muscles of your neck and shoulders - by any kind of relaxation. For example, play this game : think of your ear as a cave (grotto), a labyrinth where you wander with a torch. You choose your way according to the direction of the tinnintus. As you approach, the sound gets louder and more clear. There, you find it ! You stay there, enjoying the found. The sound is pure and intense. The walls of the grotto are made of wax, and they begin to melt because of rhe heat of your torch. The sound fades out. (In fact, through focusing and relaxing, you have eased the way for blood into a ciliated cell) Soon, you will discover that other frequencies are ringing, and you go on chasing them in the labyrinth, until you feel better (or fall asleep) Other suggestion : think of your body as of the body ok the kid you have been : think how smooth and relaxed is every muscle. How easy your neck and shoulders move. How your eyes move rapidly, how your forhead is smooth, how your jaw is loose. And see : even your ears open up themselves, very naturally. You might experience a sensation of swalling. Let it happen ! It is healing ! Third suggestion : close your eyes and imagine they are falling in an infinite well (pit ?). You let them fall, offer no resistance at all. Feel how your eyebrows relax, your sinuses, your cheeks, and now, imagine your ears are two verical disks, under your skull. Two thick plates, like 15cm diameter and 2cm thick, centered on your ear holes. Every sound you hear is mapped on a point of these plates. Now, let the plates spin slowly, from the top to the front and so on. Let them go ease the movement and enjoy the dizziness a while. Feel how the plates get bigger as you focus on them. Let it fill all the space. Fourth suggestion : massage the very point where your spine and your skull meet, on each side of the spine, in the hollow where the muscles are attachee Last one, be cautious, this is medication and has to be approved by your doctor : one drop of Ravintsara per day on a piece of bread (boosts the bloob circulation) Hope it helps !
@Jonathan Tippy I can hear the beating very distinctly even when they are separated, about twice per second, even if I stop listening to it and come back after a while with no expectation or recollection of what the beat sounded like
This video looked like something different to me at first and almost clicked out of it but I heard a clear voice from someone who spoke well and to my surprise kept my interest. The subject material is out of my league but you made it interesting and I enjoyed it so I thank you sir! Good job and I plan on checking out more of your content on RU-vid so keep it coming. Very talented!
"You still hear a beating, even when there is only one tone in each ear". Seems this is not necessarily the case, as soon as you panned them the beating stopped for me.
If you focus on it, you can hear it, and it goes in and out for me. If I focus my attention to the "center channel" I hear the beating, if I focus on the side channels, (L and R) It blends.
Me too. I have noise cancelling headphones on, and figured that was why, so I turned the noise cancellation off, but it still sounds the same for me.. Little to no beating. I'm going to have to ask my wife to listen and see what she hears..
It hasn't worked for me either. :( I even listened to it with one earphone out and added it back in when both tones were playing and just heard the two tones simultaneously with no beating.
13:00 Otoacoustic emissions are supposedly the basis behind a brand of headphones that began on Kickstarter called Nuraphone. I bought in & own a pair. The pitch (excuse the pun) is that they can set up your own personalised equaliser for the best possible listening experience based on your Otoacoustic emissions. However, I am firmly of the belief that it was an idea that sounded great in theory, but after taking everyone's money and looking into it, they realised it couldn't be done but decided to pretend they were doing it and push on. I don't deny they have an elaborate system for varying tonal quality, but I debate that 'your' setting is better than someone else's. They are just different and it depends what you are into at the moment as to whether you like it or not. The problem in evaluating it is that the results are entirely subjective. If you paid close attention to their updates & literature like I did, you realised that whatever Otoacoustic feedback they were getting (If any), there was no right answer as to what tonal control that should be mapped to, so effectively the entire output is arbitrary. I would add that the headphones are comfortable for about 5 minutes, after which the built in earbud thingys start to hurt my ears.
One of the best videos on RU-vid. A world of discovery. I think someone needs to explore using these under-recognized aspects of sonic behavior for their aesthetic and musical possibilities.
I remember taking acid and watching a video with a cool pitch circularity effect and a constant zoom in to a infinite Mandelbrot set... watched that shit on repeat for like 4 hours
1:50 _of course, Bob Monroe was the one who discovered this. At the Monroe Institute, this is used to create out of body experiences in a regularized, scientific fashion. When the brain hears the two pulses, the prefrontal cortex attempts to compensate for the difference it hears, and this induces a pulling sensation, which is furthered by suggestions that you can be free from your body. Hopefully, you think this is something worthwhile. "You can move mountains with your misery, if you don't."_
I actually do hear the pulsing effect of the 2000 and 2005Hz tones when they're separate, but it's a slower pulse than when they're played in sync in both ears.
@@mrarchaicworld You both should check if you really hear only one sound in each ear when he demonstrates that with 500 and 504Hz. Spatial or surround sound mix the channels for you, this only works in stereo.
Most of the looped sounds such as the one that goes down or slows down forever it is possible to pick up the beginning of each cycle and thus illusion breaks appart as you start to hear 2 cycles at the same time, with some displacement between each other
I think combination tones just explained to me a phenomenon I observed throughout life and watching some people sing. Some people seem to have the inclination to harmonize instead of sing along to the melody.
2:10 turn up the volume and take off your headphone, you can also try to slowly spread the left and right side of the headphones to hear the difference with blending and unblending of the sounds.
Yeah, I started trying to make a risset beat by hand via MIDI, etc, which would have had that nice property, but in the end I ran out of time and patience trying to figure it out and ended up using a script which also did the pitch shifting. Maybe some day. :-)
@@CaseyConnor Couldn't you make the MIDI parts at a constant tempo and then modify the tempo ruler in your DAW to create a linear change before rendering any audio? That way there's no pitch shifting, only note duration changes.
Yes that's essentially how I started: a few MIDI parts using short-duration sounds only, a linear tempo ramp, and then you duplicate all the MIDI parts a couple times and half-time them and double-time them and lay them over the same tempo ramp, but you need to extend it for several more loops than that because at any given moment you're hearing ~8 versions of the same loop at different rates and levels: the 1/8th time version, the 1/4, the 1/2, the 1, the 2, the 4, and the 8, etc, all at once and fading in/out appropriately. I can't remember now what the problem was, but I ran into some tech issues making it work and ended up going the easier route (which is also cool because I could use a more sophisticated piece of audio.)
The stereo panning effect on the binaural beats demo reminded me of something I noticed years ago. When I played Donald Byrd "A New Perspective" on vinyl in my den, the room acoustics and speaker placement gave a fantastic extremely vivid stereo effect where the individual instruments and vocals all took up a unique position in the room. Later I got the CD release (probably not a remaster, just a digitization of the master) and it did the same thing. I made an MP3 rip of the CD for portable use which sounded the same to me, but the stereo magic was gone!
Fascinating stuff. The combination tones are also known as 3rd order intermodulation products, and are generated when two frequencies pass through a non-linear system. They occur at 2f1+/-f2 and f1+/-2f2 and they are every communication engineer's nightmare as they fall close to wanted signals and are therefore hard to filter out. If you drive any amplifier hard - audio or radio frequency - it will generate them. Moreover, if the 2 original tones double in amplitude, the 3rd order products increase by a factor of 3. If the ear is presented with only the 2 tones, then it must be non-linearities in the ear that generate the additional tones that we perceive.
Thanks - yeah, I've been digging a little deeper on the combination tone thing while doing research for another video and it seems like you are correct; the term seems a little loosely define but it does seem like what they are talking about is actually intermodulation distortion products in the ear.
About three quarters of these worked for me. I'm a musician and was listening on really good headphones through a Focusrite interface, so there was no distortion happening before it reached my ears. For example I didn't hear the missing fundamentals - I perceived the notes as an octave higher when the fundamental was removed. Also the two tone test that was supposed to generate sum and difference tones - no. Didn't hear those. And finally the beats when the 500/504Hz tones were played in separate ears. No - no beats. I suppose we all have slightly different physiology and these things are to be expected.
Also a musician. After many years of trying to figure out why some folks can hear subtleties, others cannot, I am convinced that no two people “hear” exactly the same thing. Hell..as a bass player hearing a new song, I hear the chords and tonics first. Other people hear the lyrics first..etc.
Hans Zimmer used the shepherd's tone/pitch circularity in the Dunkirk soundtrack. Also, Jacob Collier did a cool demonstration of a "Shepherds Rhythm" / tempo circularity
I think lots of these illusions are used in rave types of music to create a sort of Insanity effect within the songs, thus creating an out of body experience combined with the substances they are taking, and almost seemingly like a religious experience that ppl can't describe afterwards
That first "beating" technique is so amazing on an electric guitar with a fuzz pedal to enhance that pulsating sustain, it's an effect we use on almost every song!
one night i was alone in my room it was just dead silence but i started hearing the ringing sound and it wouldn’t stop, it usually doesnt get loud but that night it got so loud i didn’t want to believe that it was just my ears, i got anxious and extremely paranoid, playing some audio on my phone wouldn’t even stop it until i full on blasted a bass boosted song on my speaker
Me too. On DIY pseudo-retro "vintage hifi" speakers. Speakers intentionally build out of old drivers, just for fun. However, with a properly designed crossover for a decent result.
That was so cool, at 10:20 I didn't even hear the simulated 550hz tone when he played it like I heard the 110hz tone. I guess my simulation of the tone was as real as it gets!
Do you wear headphones or listen to loud music a lot? It could be tinnitus, I used to get it bad back when I was playing the clubs, it can be a nightmare
@@KumaBean nope, especially as a kid. I almost never wore headphones when I was really young but I always remember that noise. I also hear actual ringing sometimes, and it is much lower pitched and temporary.
This is exactly how a professional group of musicians can sound louder and more powerful than a larger group of less experienced. Powertones, overtones produced by performing perfectly in tune can quantify a group's ability. I remember listening to the Canadian Brass live, only 5 members but could fill an entire theater with no amplification easily.
@@DrMoofK I call this "increased resolution of the cochlea". My hypothesis is that our ear hairs are more closely spaced wrt their resonant frequencies and probably more numerous
I don't hear pulsating, but a sort of shimmer, don't know what adjective to use: how can 'shimmer' pertain to sound? Edit: pulling away one headphone, the effect is in the sound itself. There might be some youtube artifact. Compression algorithm? ("Compression artifact" is always a handy thing to blame.)
I heard this as well, it was slightly different to the center-panned version but there was a clear pulse moving between each ear. I also tried pulling away one headphone and the effect went away for me.
As a autistic person with auditory sensitivities, this was a fascinating experience. I identified a number of illusions that cause me discomfort, and I found that strangely helpful. Knowledge is power?
You are also able to replicate an otoacoustic emission experiment with some external tones, just play a root note of a major chord on a speaker, say C6, and then whistle the third (E6) enough in tune, so then you are able to hear the fifth, but two octaves lower, so you might hear a G4 that might sound really unpleasant. You can try playing the tone with a Hertz player app
are you on headphones? need to be. If so, you may just not have the physical resolution in your cochlea/ear hairs to differentiate 5 hz at that pitch. I think with the hard panned you need to have different signals created in your cochlea for your brain to interpret them into beats.
@@Pyroscity do you know your resolution at say 500Hz? Mine is under 1 Hz, but I've met people who can't tell the difference between semitones at 440Hz, so about 30Hz. This is 5Hz. So i'm guessing people without good audio resolution don't perceive the different frequencies and so don't hear the panned "beats". P.S. the beats is a volume variation, as in the first non-panned example at 1:55
The "Missing Fundamental" auditory illusion is so useful in music production it's not even funny. It's able to magically create more frequency space with little to no loss of audio perception so that more detail in the spectrum can magically fit it. This is why vocals can still sound full and clear despite having frequencies below 200-300 Hz removed and still sound present in the mix. It's so fascinating to see this otherwise simple trick in the concept of an illusion as opposed to a common production tip.
This is gonna be so much fun in my music career! I'll always refer back to this vid when people ask about it! Very clear and well explained with great examples! 10/10 vid
