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?
That's the literal original usage. When commercial radios were getting more popular and programs became a thing, the host of the shows would tell their audience to stay tuned to the station while between commercial breaks so they wouldn't miss a second of the show.
@@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.
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!
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 😭
I heard the beating between the 2000 & 2005 Hz frequencies. I have Autism and my sensory perception is well above what is considered "normal" ability. With the tritone paradox, I went back and used my Autism-powered perfect pitch to determine that the first tone was higher than the second by reproducing both tones and comparing them side by side by switching back and forth between them. Listening on my phone without headphones or earbuds, the first baseline came through perfectly clear although a little quieter than the second. This is the first time that I've heard of otoacoustic emission and it finally answers a question that I've had my entire life as I've always had audible sound in both ears my entire life and no doctor has ever believed me when I tried to explain it. The quieter it is, the louder it gets and can range anywhere from mildly infuriating to borderline insufferable. I rely a lot on white noise to help drown it out. The thing to remember about Autism is that the brain of an Autistic person processes information and stimuli drastically differently than non-Autistic people. We have heightened or even overwhelming sensory sensitivity and our brains simply lack the ability to filter out that sensory information. It's comparable to trying to blow out the birthday candles on your cake using a performance jet engine out of an F-22 Raptor as opposed to simply using one's own physical strength. My Autism along with my perfect pitch allow me to perceive and reproduce sounds that almost everyone else around me are simply unaware that exist. Sound information (in this instance) that is considered to be unimportant or unnecessary by an unaffected brain will slap me across the face and grab my attention which makes others around me ask what it is that I'm even reacting to. I try and try to explain that, yes, I can hear the Amazon delivery van pull up on the street while the windows are closed and the furnace is running in the middle of winter while watching TV. From my perspective, it's as noticeable as someone standing 20' behind me and saying my name at normal speaking volume. I hope this description can help at least one person begin to understand what that one Autistic friend or family member is going through.
Also I have a hard time with acoustic or optical illusions, as I tend to see/hear the "components," most of the time, which ought to create an illusion instead of the illusions. For example, instead of vase/face I see both. I can clearly hear the barber shop loops and instead have only a very faint illusion of ever-descending tones. I don't really see the optical lines going up/down, too, when I do not focus really hard. (I am diagnosed with ADHD.)
@@clauslangenbroek9897 It would seem that according to your description, you also have synesthesia which is the occurrence of mixed sensory responses to stimuli. This often comes in the form of seeing colors with sounds or words. But you also might have mild schizophrenia which would explain your visual & audio hallucinations. I'm not a doctor but you might want to consider looking into that. I also have mild synesthesia but it affects me less as I've gotten older.
@@spacecowboy2957 Thanks for the response. 🤓 I think I expressed myself not clearly enough. When I wrote "see/hear" in my response, I meant depending on the kind of illusion, but I didn't want to mix them together, actually. The point I wanted to convey is, that the illusion goes over my head ☺️ I do not hear colors or see tones - that is all in order (I think.) But I can distinguish (most of the time) the components of an illusion right away, when other observers need to concentrate very hard, or aren't even able to. For *visual* illusions: I often only *see* the individual components instead of the illusion. For example, there are those dichromatic pictures, where your brain is supposed to switch between either seeing a vase or two faces. I see both at the same time, instead of just one or the other switching; or, regarding the barbershop poles, I see diagonal stripes moving horizontally, instead of the illusion of eternal upward moving stripes. When it is *acoustic* (in the case of the eternal downward shifting tone,) I clearly *hear* that there is a loop and do not perceive it as ever going down and down. As I said, I have diagnosed ADHD for several months now, but ASD is still on the table, too, per my Doctors. I did just not look into it yet, because treating the ADHD part first seemed more important. I was merely interested if that is something an ADHD or ASD brain would do. I hope this is not to far from your original post. I also have a bad cold right now, so excuse my bad explanation skills 😅 And thank you for your time. 🙏🏼
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...
10:16 I'm not sure if it's just me but actually hearing the 550 Hz combined with the other tones created a pulsing effect(that was earlier discussed) to something oddly heavenly.
I've loved it! 🤩 In binaural beats, when the frequencies are together I can totally hear the "beating" effect. Unfortunatelly when they were separated I heard a flat sound. I tested sound isolation and it's working perfectly on my headphone. Anyway, I can understand the concept of this illusion. I could hear a loop effect in pitch circularity, maybe that's why the effect name, but it's demand attention.
Are you on a phone? If so try this, download the app caustic 3 (its a mobile daw so obviously you can make sounds with it), add 2 "modular" synths and in each one add a "waveform generator" and connect it directly to the output so now you should hear 2 sine waves playing on top of each other, now pan one completely to the left and the other to the right, then on one of them slightly tweak the "cents" knob, then you can hear the bearing and it should be way better and more obvious than on this video
The first illusion is something we practice in band every day, hearing the waves/beating is how we know we're out of tune and we constantly have to adjust to it
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)
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.
@@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.
Hey, here's a technique that'll give you momentary relief when it gets too bad: 1. Cover both ears with your hands 2. Rotate them counterclockwise. Your thumb should be around your jawline and your other fingers should be at the base of your head. 3. Strike where your head and neck meet with your index and middle fingers. It should honestly sound like a timpani drum is being struck in your ear. Repeat this 30 times per ear (I alternate striking with each hand every second for a minute). 4. If you did this correctly, you'll now have perfect silence for a moment. It is only momentary, but it helps in the worst of times.
@@raihidara - While it does have a physical cause in a few rare cases, tinnitus is generally neurological, and physical manipulation of your ears won't make any difference.
@@RFC-3514 @@RFC-3514 I can't post the source due to an "unexpected error every time, but please look up Lifehacker's article "This Weird Trick Might Give You Relief From Your Tinnitus" which is where I found out about it.
if you focus in a quiet place, focus solely on quieting it down, it will work. I do this in the bathroom sometimes, as I have lived with constant tinnitus most of my life. It's a good exercise even if you don't have tinnitus, helps in stressful situations. Listening to "transamorem transmortem" by eliane radigue might help too, it's essentially a recreation of tinnitus, but oddly enough, it's like its scratching your brain of that itch that is tinnitus. It uses a few of the techniques here on this video. Hope this helps.
The first thing is a great example of why panning stereo audio is so important in mixing music. It helps make different tracks distinct by giving them their own space.
Ha! Now I finally have an explanation for the pulsing I hear when I play 2 specific notes together on the guitar. Even weirder is the fact that I can take the whammy bar and as I slacken or tighten the strings, the pulsing will get faster or slower depending 9n which way I go. Thank you!
D'oh -- thanks for pointing that out. It was a rendering glitch having to do with the automation driving the synth software... I'll update the video description with the errata.
I knew something was wrong! I dont have perfect pitch but good relative pitch, i knew that wasnt the tritone. I use the tritone alot in my weird music.. plus i have my guitar split into my headphones with this video, and i played the b5 over it.
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.
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.
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!
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. 😆
My work has always required ear plugs. And i agree. When i visit any place outside city life, where silence is deafening, i clearly hear several high pitch tones. Not super high pitch but the octaves sometimes change. Ive asked people who were with me at times if they hear that. But they dont. Its not bothersome but definitely audible. Cool video
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
I often replay that game for many reasons including the soundtrack, story, characters, and humor. I found the complete soundtrack on Bandcamp. In case anyone is interested, it's listed as "Portal 2: Songs to Test By (Collectors Edition)" from Ipecac Recordings: portal2game.bandcamp.com/
"There she is", "You know her?", "Music of the spheres", "Bots make bots" just a few of my favorite Portal 2 tracks - Great game, humor and music. I lost track of the times I've played it so far..
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
@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 !
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!
This is absolutely wild. As a classically trained musician, I knew some of this.... but as a whole the human brain is amazing and there's got to still be so much we don't know. Thank you so much for publishing this.
Wow, this is a great video. Thanks for making it. The pitch circularity forever descending was much like one of those visual illusions where you see either a rabbit or a duck until you know to look for both. Once I understood what was going on the illusion was broken and I could pick out the higher tones being faded in again.
Sound, and the science of it has fascinated me all of my adult life, that's about 60 years and I still discover new aspects of it. As a church organist, it is vital to understand harmonics and resultant tones. I have a fairly large electronic organ that I use at my church and just for the hell of it, I like to experiment. It just happens that the tone generators do not go below tenor C for the manuals and just for variation, on one piece that I play, instead of using a low 16-foot stop on the pedals I play that same part with my left hand on one of the manuals using an 8' plus a 5-1/3' flute toned stop (they are actually sine waves) and while I physically play just one note, two pitches a perfect 5th apart are heard which means that they produce a 'resultant' tone which is an octave lower than the note I'm playing. In organ terminology, it's producing a 16' resultant tone which sounds as though I'm playing a pedal. This same effect can be had on small electronic or digital organs just by playing the right notes using as near to the tone of a sine wave that you can get. Of course, you must also have a decent speaker system on the instrument for this to work also. Sound has always fascinated me and it's interesting to just listen to a rich toned sound while sustaining it while you pick out the individual harmonics with your ears. On many medium sized pipe organs, there is often a stop for the bass pedals called Resultant Bass 32' or Acoustic Bass 32'. This simply plays two flute-like tones together to produce a simulated 32' sound. Your ears provide the pitch of 16 hz even though it's not really there.
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
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 RUclips so keep it coming. Very talented!
One of the best videos on RUclips. A world of discovery. I think someone needs to explore using these under-recognized aspects of sonic behavior for their aesthetic and musical possibilities.
To be clear, tinnitus usually isn't caused by otoacoustic emissions -- my wording in the video is confusing. OAE can cause tinnitus, but there are like 20 different things that can cause it, and by far the most common is exposure to loud sounds over time.
@@CaseyConnor Yeah, but I seem to have always experienced this, and I'm hardly old, so "over time" doesn't seem like the sort of thing that could have happened, and I've never been near anything particularly loud. It's just that based on what I know of my life, that explanation fit very well. It's not really a "wow, so that's what it is!" It's more of an "Oh that makes sense as at least one possible explanation." Which up until this point I didn't have any of.
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
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
"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.
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
@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
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.
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!
I've been searching for years the sound phenomena that my best friend and I would experience when ever we would practice our choir songs together. We would both get so thrown off at certain point as our voices seemed to intertwine somehow. It was such a bizarre occurrence. Something that still perplexed me 20+yrs later...
Ah, yes, I may know what you're referring to! I think it has to do with the interference pattern of the frequencies (assuming you were singing the same choral part as your friend) actually physically influencing your vocal chords. If you search youtube for "Physics girl Singing this Note is IMPOSSIBLE" you should find a video that details a related phenomenon. As your friend's tone comes in and out of phase with your own voice, it would lock in with or push against your vocal chords (the "intertwining"). Unless you're talking about something else entirely. :-)
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.
7:11 For the English side, UK power is 50Hz, which is somewhere between G and G#. In California power is 60Hz, which is around B. Weird if the dominant background hum somehow imprints onto the ear.
I tried listening to this without headphones and I could clearly hear the pulsing of the binaural beats even the higher frequency ones but my cat also seemed to be reacting to the sounds so I turned it off
I would make my own pulsing beats by humming at a certain frequency along with the window AC unit in my old home. The steady pulsating was really relaxing.
Because sound is the sense most closely associated with fear. If someone comes into your room at night, not making a sound, you can still hear them. You hear the sound that they absorb. Just like when you hold a piece of paper up to your face, you can hear it, even though it makes no sound. This is a big reason why sound is the sense of fear - it tells you when something is close, and otherwise undetected. I.e. a predator. There's also an obvious association with thunder, earthquakes and volcanos, but I'm not completely convinced they happen often enough to have shaped our instincts. In any case, this natural fear of sound can be abused to freak people out, and it is done all the time. Try watching a jump-scare without sound; it's just a changing image. The visuals don't frighten you because the visual change just means the monster is suddenly there. The jump-scare sound being loud, on the other hand, means that it is suddenly close. Again, *closeness* is the issue that we instinctively have a problem with. Hope that helps.
@@DkaraokeD This is also true! Nothing in nature is perfect, but here, he can play you a whole bunch of perfect sine waves, for example. They don't sound natural, they sound horrible, in fact. That is another good reason that these sounds are unsettling. Good call :)
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.)
on that first one i was like "what? we're supposed to be hearing beating when they are split to different ears?" and then i realized that the acoustic illusion just didnt work on me
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.
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!
Excellent piece with some good information . Am a musician. Sang Gregorian, piano lessons for ten years, in a dozen dance bands and ran my own studio…anyway, 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. Some hear the drums and beat first. Other people hear the lyrics first..etc. some musicians only hear their part while playing, others can hear every instrument but can focus on what they need to hear. Cannabis, for some folks, allows them to “hear everything “ all at once. I've played with beginner drummers without a metronome in their head. I've recorded many voices and the rule was the older the person, the flatter they will sing and claim they were singing in tune. I'm waiting for a book called The Sound Mind which explores the role of sound in our total environment…something like that. I heard the author interviewed..pretty cool. Sorry for the length, but this subject has fascinated me for years!
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.
sound is isolated in each ear, can hear 2 different pitches, however when played together I only here one tone not any "beat"?
@@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?
@@beeopper if that happens above 15 kilohertz that's normal
love how it ends with “stay tuned”
Tune
DUDE! SPOILER WARNING!
I *hear* ya.
That's the literal original usage. When commercial radios were getting more popular and programs became a thing, the host of the shows would tell their audience to stay tuned to the station while between commercial breaks so they wouldn't miss a second of the show.
Same bat channel?
Ah, yes, my good friend tinnitus. Not a night goes by without a constant _eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee_ in the dark.
Oi, tell me about it.
Gents....I think you just informed me that I have tinnitus....I just assumed everyone had that constant ringing...
@@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.
@@slipsonic809 I know exactly what you mean, just hanging out when the time completely changes frequency for no apparent reason...how odd
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!
soo true me as a musician it is very interesting to watch/hear!
I need to study this because I am accidentally making audio illusion music
Gold Jerry, GOLD!
The sound at 2:15-20 didn’t best for me I heard the combination without a beat….
V
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.
I had ear purring. It went away, and never comes back. One day, it was absolutely deafening. i couldn't hear anything over a loud "Purr"
@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 😭
I heard the beating between the 2000 & 2005 Hz frequencies. I have Autism and my sensory perception is well above what is considered "normal" ability.
With the tritone paradox, I went back and used my Autism-powered perfect pitch to determine that the first tone was higher than the second by reproducing both tones and comparing them side by side by switching back and forth between them.
Listening on my phone without headphones or earbuds, the first baseline came through perfectly clear although a little quieter than the second.
This is the first time that I've heard of otoacoustic emission and it finally answers a question that I've had my entire life as I've always had audible sound in both ears my entire life and no doctor has ever believed me when I tried to explain it. The quieter it is, the louder it gets and can range anywhere from mildly infuriating to borderline insufferable. I rely a lot on white noise to help drown it out.
The thing to remember about Autism is that the brain of an Autistic person processes information and stimuli drastically differently than non-Autistic people. We have heightened or even overwhelming sensory sensitivity and our brains simply lack the ability to filter out that sensory information. It's comparable to trying to blow out the birthday candles on your cake using a performance jet engine out of an F-22 Raptor as opposed to simply using one's own physical strength. My Autism along with my perfect pitch allow me to perceive and reproduce sounds that almost everyone else around me are simply unaware that exist. Sound information (in this instance) that is considered to be unimportant or unnecessary by an unaffected brain will slap me across the face and grab my attention which makes others around me ask what it is that I'm even reacting to. I try and try to explain that, yes, I can hear the Amazon delivery van pull up on the street while the windows are closed and the furnace is running in the middle of winter while watching TV. From my perspective, it's as noticeable as someone standing 20' behind me and saying my name at normal speaking volume. I hope this description can help at least one person begin to understand what that one Autistic friend or family member is going through.
So glad someone else mentioned this. I swear, it’s so hard trying to explain a noise I’m hearing that other people just don’t even notice.
Not related to the video, but: Isn't the lack to filter information out also an ADHD thing or Is there a relation?
Also I have a hard time with acoustic or optical illusions, as I tend to see/hear the "components," most of the time, which ought to create an illusion instead of the illusions. For example, instead of vase/face I see both. I can clearly hear the barber shop loops and instead have only a very faint illusion of ever-descending tones. I don't really see the optical lines going up/down, too, when I do not focus really hard. (I am diagnosed with ADHD.)
@@clauslangenbroek9897 It would seem that according to your description, you also have synesthesia which is the occurrence of mixed sensory responses to stimuli. This often comes in the form of seeing colors with sounds or words. But you also might have mild schizophrenia which would explain your visual & audio hallucinations. I'm not a doctor but you might want to consider looking into that. I also have mild synesthesia but it affects me less as I've gotten older.
@@spacecowboy2957 Thanks for the response. 🤓
I think I expressed myself not clearly enough. When I wrote "see/hear" in my response, I meant depending on the kind of illusion, but I didn't want to mix them together, actually.
The point I wanted to convey is, that the illusion goes over my head ☺️ I do not hear colors or see tones - that is all in order (I think.)
But I can distinguish (most of the time) the components of an illusion right away, when other observers need to concentrate very hard, or aren't even able to.
For *visual* illusions:
I often only *see* the individual components instead of the illusion.
For example, there are those dichromatic pictures, where your brain is supposed to switch between either seeing a vase or two faces. I see both at the same time, instead of just one or the other switching;
or, regarding the barbershop poles, I see diagonal stripes moving horizontally, instead of the illusion of eternal upward moving stripes.
When it is *acoustic* (in the case of the eternal downward shifting tone,) I clearly *hear* that there is a loop and do not perceive it as ever going down and down.
As I said, I have diagnosed ADHD for several months now, but ASD is still on the table, too, per my Doctors. I did just not look into it yet, because treating the ADHD part first seemed more important. I was merely interested if that is something an ADHD or ASD brain would do.
I hope this is not to far from your original post.
I also have a bad cold right now, so excuse my bad explanation skills 😅 And thank you for your time. 🙏🏼
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...
Hi
Hi Cary kill hitler
you cant wobble a note in your head to create a pulsating effect. you can imagine a wobble, but the true wobble needs to physical waves to interfere.
He lives!
So it's not just me?
I'm going to make a track with an increasing Shepherd tone over a Risset beat and it will give everyone on the floor a panic attack
Suggestion for genre: Hitech Trance
It’s been done. Music festivals where they test new music to tripping people lol
So what your saying, is that your want to cause a panic at the disco?
Made one in phaseplant they sound so frickin awesome
That's the most evil thing ever, I love it
For some reason, after watching this, I feel so blessed to be able to hear. My whole heart goes out to those who have no hearing.
Did you ever figure out that reason? We don't need your heart.
If you didn't write this they wouldn't know they were missing out on anything, jerk.
@atlanticlove8883 You officially have the most random profile picture I’ve ever seen
@@atlantic_love stop being rude
@@atlantic_love Have you always been an asshole or is this something new?
10:16 I'm not sure if it's just me but actually hearing the 550 Hz combined with the other tones created a pulsing effect(that was earlier discussed) to something oddly heavenly.
I could hear the beat at the higher frequency. Subtle, but it is there.
@@lukeriely4468 same
@@lukeriely4468 same.
For some reason it made the blood rushing past my ears more audible
That’s how I felt about the pitch circulatory. Almost felt fear and got goosebumps
I've loved it! 🤩
In binaural beats, when the frequencies are together I can totally hear the "beating" effect. Unfortunatelly when they were separated I heard a flat sound. I tested sound isolation and it's working perfectly on my headphone. Anyway, I can understand the concept of this illusion.
I could hear a loop effect in pitch circularity, maybe that's why the effect name, but it's demand attention.
Are you on a phone? If so try this, download the app caustic 3 (its a mobile daw so obviously you can make sounds with it), add 2 "modular" synths and in each one add a "waveform generator" and connect it directly to the output so now you should hear 2 sine waves playing on top of each other, now pan one completely to the left and the other to the right, then on one of them slightly tweak the "cents" knob, then you can hear the bearing and it should be way better and more obvious than on this video
left sound was both pitches at the same time. right channel was a single note. this test is a lie
"Going to need headphones"
*Sat here with headphones on mono as I'm profoundly deaf in one ear* "Alright! lets see shall we?"
Let's see!! Lol 😆
I'm partially deaf in both ears. My left is worse than my right ear.
This made me chuckle because I'm doing the same as well
The first illusion is something we practice in band every day, hearing the waves/beating is how we know we're out of tune and we constantly have to adjust to it
Actually, thats acoustic beats.
But cool nonetheless
How do you know who is out of tune though?
You can actually tune an instrument listening those acoustic beats
It's been so many years since I last heard a Shepard-Risset tone and yet my brain still notices the transition without fail.
Cool ngl same
Me too!
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)
I think you should listen to Autechre - Fold4, Wrap5 the whole piece is "tempo circularity"
Not just great information, this is also a great example of voice over with very pleasing, well-recorded reverb.
are we not going to talk about how insanely clear and crisp Casey's voice is??? What mic setup do you have like jeez.
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.
Just you aubry.
No
its actually just an illusion
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.
A nightmare where a circularity effect is playing loud and forever in your head
Incomplete sentence
@@connormccullough2226 ??
You mean tinnitus?
@@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.
hell circus
Tinnitus...wish I could forget that noise.
Hey, here's a technique that'll give you momentary relief when it gets too bad:
1. Cover both ears with your hands
2. Rotate them counterclockwise. Your thumb should be around your jawline and your other fingers should be at the base of your head.
3. Strike where your head and neck meet with your index and middle fingers. It should honestly sound like a timpani drum is being struck in your ear. Repeat this 30 times per ear (I alternate striking with each hand every second for a minute).
4. If you did this correctly, you'll now have perfect silence for a moment. It is only momentary, but it helps in the worst of times.
@@raihidara - While it does have a physical cause in a few rare cases, tinnitus is generally neurological, and physical manipulation of your ears won't make any difference.
@@RFC-3514 @@RFC-3514 I can't post the source due to an "unexpected error every time, but please look up Lifehacker's article "This Weird Trick Might Give You Relief From Your Tinnitus" which is where I found out about it.
if you focus in a quiet place, focus solely on quieting it down, it will work. I do this in the bathroom sometimes, as I have lived with constant tinnitus most of my life. It's a good exercise even if you don't have tinnitus, helps in stressful situations. Listening to "transamorem transmortem" by eliane radigue might help too, it's essentially a recreation of tinnitus, but oddly enough, it's like its scratching your brain of that itch that is tinnitus. It uses a few of the techniques here on this video. Hope this helps.
@@raihidara - Ah, yes, Lifehacker, the respected medical journal.
The first thing is a great example of why panning stereo audio is so important in mixing music. It helps make different tracks distinct by giving them their own space.
Ha! Now I finally have an explanation for the pulsing I hear when I play 2 specific notes together on the guitar. Even weirder is the fact that I can take the whammy bar and as I slacken or tighten the strings, the pulsing will get faster or slower depending 9n which way I go. Thank you!
The frequencies on the tritone paradox are a whole step apart, not a tritone.
D'oh -- thanks for pointing that out. It was a rendering glitch having to do with the automation driving the synth software... I'll update the video description with the errata.
@@CaseyConnor Glad I could help😊
I knew something was wrong! I dont have perfect pitch but good relative pitch, i knew that wasnt the tritone. I use the tritone alot in my weird music.. plus i have my guitar split into my headphones with this video, and i played the b5 over it.
Yep, and the second one was definitely lower! I heard it as a re-do. I believe it was a slightly flat F then an Eb
@@SamChaneyProductions actually the first one is a slightly sharp F and the second is a slightly flat Eb
On those infinite ones I can very easily pick out the "imperceptible" addition of new sounds.
me too
I can also easily hear that- BUT my brain still thinks that it is continually speeding up or slowing down
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.
if i focus directly on the descending tone, then it sounds infinite.
otherwise, I can also easily pick out the addition.
@@olik136 my thinks it jups at one point.
The illusions are great, but it makes me most uncomfortable that there is an ever so slight reverb on his voice throughout the whole video
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.
jojo reference 😳
what is reverb?
@@shaykireas it make da "boom bap" go "booom baaap"
@@KrisS602
This is the best description ever
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.
fantastic video! I'm an audiologist an we learn a lot of this stuff but only in theory. nice to be able to actually hear these effects!
Thank you for such a short to the point, with examples, of discoveries in acoustics, electrical engineering & psychoacoustics!
unironically,that risset beat example is amazing. I want to listen to it forever.
You are crazy lol
‘Unironically’ eh.
That one made me nervous
psychosis speedrun
makes me burst out laughing for some reason
this video is completely underrated, this blew my mind!
I is that you
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!
Binaural beats happen a lot when restarting a circle track race. Almost like the engines are running in time. It's super neat to hear and experience
I need to use a tempo circularity on my D&D players. Give them that tension of music speeding up, but the tension never stops...
So good
ach, wen haben wir denn da
Lol hi
Dieser Lümmel
heavy spannend irgendwie
lol was machst du denn hier?
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. 😆
My work has always required ear plugs. And i agree. When i visit any place outside city life, where silence is deafening, i clearly hear several high pitch tones. Not super high pitch but the octaves sometimes change. Ive asked people who were with me at times if they hear that. But they dont. Its not bothersome but definitely audible. Cool video
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
“Psychoacoustic” reminds me of the Portal 2 soundtrack
I often replay that game for many reasons including the soundtrack, story, characters, and humor. I found the complete soundtrack on Bandcamp. In case anyone is interested, it's listed as "Portal 2: Songs to Test By (Collectors Edition)" from Ipecac Recordings:
portal2game.bandcamp.com/
Like when you’re on the propulsion gel and the music ramps up
@@therm0tt0 its available on streaming services and steam itself tho
"There she is", "You know her?", "Music of the spheres", "Bots make bots" just a few of my favorite Portal 2 tracks - Great game, humor and music. I lost track of the times I've played it so far..
9:30.......Sounds like sumthin from a "Mr.Bungle" record!
As somebody who produces music, a lot of these are fascinating, I've experienced the Binaural beats phenomena myself when messing with serum.
Beating sounds absolutely gigantic if you use saw waves and I love it
Yesss! I always do this!
This is sometimes the same with vital
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
oh god
Excited to learn these effects! I'm developing my game right now it has a heavy emphasis on sound design I hope I find something I can use!
@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 !
THIS IS THE MOST BRILLIANT WORK ON SOUND IVE EVER SEEN OR HEARD. THIS SHOULD BE MANDATORY EARLY LEARNING FOR ALL.
You just made me 40% more paranoid than I was before. Thanks. This world is crazy. You're crazy. I'm crazy. And my cup of tea sounds crazy now.
Lol 😆 ... quite a bit of anxiety leading to the paranoia.
Calm down, it's going to be okay..........Maybe!!!!!
What are you talking about, the cup of tea sounds perfectly normal
@@josefabian1133 Don't side with him, he's gonna betray you in the end
the risset beat that gets faster made me incredibly anxious
sorry this is late but same omfg it speeds up my heartbeat sm
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!
This is absolutely wild. As a classically trained musician, I knew some of this.... but as a whole the human brain is amazing and there's got to still be so much we don't know. Thank you so much for publishing this.
Wow, this is a great video. Thanks for making it. The pitch circularity forever descending was much like one of those visual illusions where you see either a rabbit or a duck until you know to look for both. Once I understood what was going on the illusion was broken and I could pick out the higher tones being faded in again.
i'm glad the Algorythym threw me here. this is nuts man.
For sure *mind blown*
Its basic audio engineering
What's up nutsman. I'm dave
Algorithm*
there's this song from autechre's "LP5" album called "Fold4, Wrap5" which actually is entirely a risset beat
Link to Fold4, Wrap5: ruclips.net/video/vUioVGqfu6s/видео.html
Autechre's great - love watching tweekers try to dance to that shit 😄
deep cut
this shit was weird but I dig it.
Sound, and the science of it has fascinated me all of my adult life, that's about 60 years and I still discover new aspects of it. As a church organist, it is vital to understand harmonics and resultant tones. I have a fairly large electronic organ that I use at my church and just for the hell of it, I like to experiment. It just happens that the tone generators do not go below tenor C for the manuals and just for variation, on one piece that I play, instead of using a low 16-foot stop on the pedals I play that same part with my left hand on one of the manuals using an 8' plus a 5-1/3' flute toned stop (they are actually sine waves) and while I physically play just one note, two pitches a perfect 5th apart are heard which means that they produce a 'resultant' tone which is an octave lower than the note I'm playing. In organ terminology, it's producing a 16' resultant tone which sounds as though I'm playing a pedal. This same effect can be had on small electronic or digital organs just by playing the right notes using as near to the tone of a sine wave that you can get. Of course, you must also have a decent speaker system on the instrument for this to work also. Sound has always fascinated me and it's interesting to just listen to a rich toned sound while sustaining it while you pick out the individual harmonics with your ears. On many medium sized pipe organs, there is often a stop for the bass pedals called Resultant Bass 32' or Acoustic Bass 32'. This simply plays two flute-like tones together to produce a simulated 32' sound. Your ears provide the pitch of 16 hz even though it's not really there.
I like how there's this slight echo in this video, makes it sound more natural and not like he's talking to my ear
This was great. I had a few seconds of "quiet" where I couldn't hear my tinnitus. Thank you for that.
It's just like tuning your guitar. You know when the pitches are perfectly matched when the beats go away completely.
Can even use a fifth to tune against..beat is still audible to me.
This comment is so the algorithm recommends this to more people. This is crazy.
that slow beat part was amazing, I couldnt tell what was happening for a sec. Such a good idea.
Why is the shepherds tone so unnerving, idk why but it made me super aware of my heartbeat and I almost cried, fricking creepy bro.
Awesome stuff, feels like watching 3Blue1Brown but with different content - well done, visual, narration - straight into my favourites list.
This should be recommended by RUclips to more people! Such a geat presentation of the non-trivial topic!
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
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 RUclips so keep it coming.
Very talented!
One of the best videos on RUclips. A world of discovery. I think someone needs to explore using these under-recognized aspects of sonic behavior for their aesthetic and musical possibilities.
This is insanely cool! Didn't know half of these existed
same
For the first one I didn't hear it beating when they separated. Just a combination of notes on a piano.
Same.
I didn't either.
To me it just sounded like they added some chorus effect.
I didn’t either.
Me neither.
I can turn it on and off in my brain.
13:30
Holy s*** I've wondered about this for years. THANK YOU.
It's really high pitched and I can only hear it sometimes, but it's definitely there.
To be clear, tinnitus usually isn't caused by otoacoustic emissions -- my wording in the video is confusing. OAE can cause tinnitus, but there are like 20 different things that can cause it, and by far the most common is exposure to loud sounds over time.
@@CaseyConnor Yeah, but I seem to have always experienced this, and I'm hardly old, so "over time" doesn't seem like the sort of thing that could have happened, and I've never been near anything particularly loud.
It's just that based on what I know of my life, that explanation fit very well. It's not really a "wow, so that's what it is!" It's more of an "Oh that makes sense as at least one possible explanation." Which up until this point I didn't have any of.
I have a ring in my ear that is like middle A on the piano
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
4:52 I'm not the only one that had their eyes closed and thought "Heck I am a master of hearing I can literally reverse the illusion with my mind"
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
When you know what to look for and have been explained the trick, Haha. Even knowing it, it can still seem deceiving.
"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.
same
Same for me. I'm using 7.1 headphones so maybe that has something to do with it? I don't currently have another pair to try.
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.
This video is the fundamentals of synthesis used in synthesizers when making music.
Someone should make horror music with this where it sounds like the killer is getting closer and closer but never arrives
You got it! It'll be available on my channel soon! ✌
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
What you're thinking of is utilised in lots of music in horror movies! :')
For the 2000+ frequency I still heard a very fast beat.
Same
same
+1
me 2
You are not using a headphone or the headphone has crosstalk for some reason
2:45 "And you probably don't hear a beat between them"
Except I actually do. It's faint, but it's definitely there.
@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
100% I can hear the beat...much slower but very clear
@Jonathan Tippy the frequency was pretty much spot on for me, it was just very faint.
i could 100% hear it
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.
And I don’t hear the pulsing of the lower tones when their in separate 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.
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!
I've been searching for years the sound phenomena that my best friend and I would experience when ever we would practice our choir songs together. We would both get so thrown off at certain point as our voices seemed to intertwine somehow. It was such a bizarre occurrence. Something that still perplexed me 20+yrs later...
Ah, yes, I may know what you're referring to! I think it has to do with the interference pattern of the frequencies (assuming you were singing the same choral part as your friend) actually physically influencing your vocal chords. If you search youtube for "Physics girl Singing this Note is IMPOSSIBLE" you should find a video that details a related phenomenon. As your friend's tone comes in and out of phase with your own voice, it would lock in with or push against your vocal chords (the "intertwining"). Unless you're talking about something else entirely. :-)
I have always loved optical illusions. I never knew there were also audio illusions! Very cool!
Wait till u hear about audiovisual ilusiona
It's almost as if our brains are in a constant state of illusion.
circular ryhtm stuck in my mind and it irritates me everytime, thanks for the great video tho
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.
Outstanding narration. Clear crisp and right on script. Brilliant.
7:11 For the English side, UK power is 50Hz, which is somewhere between G and G#. In California power is 60Hz, which is around B. Weird if the dominant background hum somehow imprints onto the ear.
I tried listening to this without headphones and I could clearly hear the pulsing of the binaural beats even the higher frequency ones but my cat also seemed to be reacting to the sounds so I turned it off
Your poor cat
interesting, mine didnt seem too fussed
cat's don't like those sorts of sounds
How did your cat react?
@@euantiminey6471 Looked at me sharply with that WTF look cats get just before they bolt from the room.
I have a sudden inexplicable craving for Meow Mix.
It'd be hilarious to have a song riser using one of these audio illusions, but it keeps going and makes the listener wait till the end of the song
lonely island used this in their "wait for the drop" sounds
some musicans already use them a lot. you can look up bach never ending canon. electronic musicans always use it.
I would make my own pulsing beats by humming at a certain frequency along with the window AC unit in my old home. The steady pulsating was really relaxing.
that barberpole illusion is ripping m brain into teensy little shreds... i love it. great video
Why do I get freaked out by majority of the sounds he plays
There must be a certain like for what we consider "natural" or to be found in nature
Right?! Like my fight or flight response kicked in when the circularity started.
Because sound is the sense most closely associated with fear.
If someone comes into your room at night, not making a sound, you can still hear them. You hear the sound that they absorb. Just like when you hold a piece of paper up to your face, you can hear it, even though it makes no sound.
This is a big reason why sound is the sense of fear - it tells you when something is close, and otherwise undetected. I.e. a predator.
There's also an obvious association with thunder, earthquakes and volcanos, but I'm not completely convinced they happen often enough to have shaped our instincts.
In any case, this natural fear of sound can be abused to freak people out, and it is done all the time. Try watching a jump-scare without sound; it's just a changing image. The visuals don't frighten you because the visual change just means the monster is suddenly there. The jump-scare sound being loud, on the other hand, means that it is suddenly close. Again, *closeness* is the issue that we instinctively have a problem with.
Hope that helps.
@@DkaraokeD This is also true! Nothing in nature is perfect, but here, he can play you a whole bunch of perfect sine waves, for example. They don't sound natural, they sound horrible, in fact. That is another good reason that these sounds are unsettling. Good call :)
I thought it was only me 😅
Thumbs up just for the awesome intro warning about loudness
2:35 "here's the 2000Hz tone"
Oh no...Here we go
Prepare your ears
am i the only one that involuntarily smiles when two tones get closer to eachother
When he said"even on an old smartphone with cheap earphones", i felt that.
The circular rhythm one might benefit if the pitch was not also changing
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. :-)
Just listen to Dun Dun Ba Ba by Jacob Collier for a real world example
@@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.)
And side note: it'd be really fun to get a group of people together to try to pull this off live. :-)
the infinitely ascending pitch and increasing tempo ones gave me such bad anxiety
Put on a shirt lmao
on that first one i was like "what? we're supposed to be hearing beating when they are split to different ears?" and then i realized that the acoustic illusion just didnt work on me
Same
I knew about binaural beats before I knew what they were called. Learned to use them to help tune my guitars as a teenager. :)
First test makes my head spin. I knew it could mess with the brain but I didn't know how effective it could be.
8:57 the sound of a bad trip...
The music in my head is weird af
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.
I had the same experience. I am also a musician, so I wonder if that’s why
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.
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!
Excellent piece with some good information .
Am a musician. Sang Gregorian, piano lessons for ten years, in a dozen dance bands and ran my own studio…anyway, 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. Some hear the drums and beat first. Other people hear the lyrics first..etc. some musicians only hear their part while playing, others can hear every instrument but can focus on what they need to hear. Cannabis, for some folks, allows them to “hear everything “ all at once. I've played with beginner drummers without a metronome in their head. I've recorded many voices and the rule was the older the person, the flatter they will sing and claim they were singing in tune.
I'm waiting for a book called The Sound Mind which explores the role of sound in our total environment…something like that. I heard the author interviewed..pretty cool.
Sorry for the length, but this subject has fascinated me for years!
I am glad my 5.1 surround sound speaker work for the "head phones required" ones as well, very cool stuff.