Entrainer

Entrainer is a program which generates binaural beat frequencies using sound and animations for the purpose of entraining brain waves. Entrainer is released under the GPL license - it is free and open source. It can be obtained from the Entrainer Sourceforge project page and the latest version is Entrainer 3.5.0 Final. Screenshots of Entrainer in action are included throughout this documentation.

Entrainer works best with a set of high quality headphones.

About Entrainment

Brain wave entrainment is about stimulating the brain to resonate at a desired frequency. The two techniques used by Entrainer to achieve this is through the use of sound and animations. The lower limit of human hearing is about 20Hz. As many of the more interesting states of consciousness occur at much lower frequencies, these frequencies are generated via binaural beats - two slightly different tones, one in each ear, the difference being the desired frequency.

The following gives a rough overview of the relationship between frequency and conscious state:

Beta Waves: 12Hz - 40Hz - associated with active, busy or anxious thinking and active concentration, arousal, cognition
Alpha Waves: 8Hz - 12Hz - associated with relaxation (while awake), pre-sleep and pre-wake drowsiness
Theta Waves: 4Hz - 8Hz - associated with dreams, deep meditation, REM sleep
Delta Waves: 0Hz - 4Hz - associated with deep dreamless sleep, loss of body awareness

How Entrainer Works

Entrainer works much like the beat of a drum; the beats and changing colours assist in directing the conscious state of the subject. Binaural beats are generated when two sound waves of different frequencies are played together. The difference between the frequencies of the sounds generates a beat of the same difference in frequency - the entrainment frequency.

The Purpose of Entrainment

The human hearing range reaches around 20Hz at its lower range. Below that frequency sound cannot be heard. As described above, the human brain resonates at specific frequencies related to one's state of consciousness, and the frequency related to these conscious states can extend well below the lower range of human hearing. Learning to control one's conscious state can be obtained with activities such as meditation, however the discipline to properly perform this activity can be prohibitive.

One can increase one's alertness at higher entrainment frequencies, and conversely one can enter a states of deep relaxation (and even sleep) at lower frequencies.

Learning to control one's conscious state can be of great help with conditions such as ADHD and autism, and it is the goal of this project to ultimately create a useful medical tool that can assist with the treatment of these conditions. That, and a fun tool with which to learn control of conscious states!

Requirements

Entrainer requires a minimum of JRE 1.6 (Java6) to run. Entrainer does not run under 64 bit JRE's when using the native JSyn sound library ie. Java 6 default on OS X. To run under a 64 bit JRE execute the following from the command line:

java -d32 -jar Entrainer.jar

Alternatively the 'entrainer.bat' (Windows) or 'entrainer.sh' (Unix/Mac) can be used to start Entrainer. A third option for Macs only is to open up Applications -> Utilities -> Java Preferences.app and drag the 32 bit JRE to the top of the list.

These instructions do not apply when using the pure Java JSyn library. See the Running Entrainer page for more information.

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