Floobydust…

Binaural Trap

Not often do I use my ‘office’ machine for working on sessions, but today I had a few spare moments and just wanted to try out something simple with MWS.

Among other things, I wanted a 5Hz binaural beat. Entrainment track to 5Hz, add content, tones, binaural beats. Fired up the session and was blown away by how obvious the beats were. Then I was blown away by the fact that I could hear the beat with either earphone removed. And somewhat suspicious.

In one of my not particularly impressive diagnostic sequences, I decided to delete the binaural track and hand-build one out of two tone only/no entrainment tracks – 180Hz and 185Hz pitch, FX/pan -100 for one, +100 for the other.

Yup. A  booming beat from either earphone. Mute one tones track – ahhh! Single tone.

I’ve long known that it’s important to turn off all the environmental effects on your PC’s soundcard in order to use binaurals. This machine had all the usual ones turned off, all the suspicious looking ones in the soundcard control ap effects dialogue.

Unnoticed by me, however, was a “Dolby” tab. Dolby was on. Now it’s not. Now binaurals work properly.

This is a cautionary tale. If you haven’t run the NP2 or MWS Headphone Testing Tool, you may not be hearing binaurals at all – maybe just monaurals formed by the soundcard effects.

Bright Lights

I’m not sure where I stand with sharing information that could lead to problems for some people. I’m going to ask you here to be grown-up and apply your own discretion in repeating my foolishness. Better yet, I’ll just tell you most sternly, not to repeat my foolishness.

Open-eye versus closed-eye is a level battlefield. There’s a few maybes, but nothing conclusive. My impression is that open-eye is good for theta and beta+, while closed-eye suits delta and alpha. I’ve been shuffling between machines and glasses, trying to work out what really matters in terms of getting great visuals.

Confession… I’m more calm, content and peaceful than I’ve been at any time in my life. I have absolutely no therapeutic use for my AVS at all at this time. The highest commendation of a therapy has to be that it has worked so well it isn’t needed any more. Not needed, but wanted – as a tool for exploring the corners of the brain/mind, AVS induced hallucination is beyond excellent.

Some of the effects I’ve been enjoying have been truly spectacular. I think I’ve finally settled on bright white as being the ultimate weapon for true hallucinations as opposed to optical effects. Varying brightness, open-eye or closed-eye, makes an amazing difference. As much as it is my nature to “go extreme” at every opportunity and crank the brightness up full, doing so diminishes much of the pulse definition and subtlety – backing of a quarter turn can result in a much higher contrast image.

What happens for me is that the visuals have large scale components,a varying number of different scales and complexities of repeated details, and physiological artifacts (floaters, retinal caillaries, surface film, etc.) As near as I can tell, the character of an image is essentially the same, device to device, open-eye to closed-eye, at any given frequency, and at any level of brightness.

All the press is given to diffuse or peripheral open-eye designs. Thought I, “What happens if your stare straight down the snout of an LED?” I did a bit of reading, decided that none of the LEDs in any of my glasses are likely to have brightness levels high enough to be considered hazardous at any distance. Many trials later, I’ve found another whole realm to explore. Basic imagery remains the same, but the effect is of a pair of intensely bright cores, surrounded by a bright auras, fading rapidly to black. Moving the glasses around leads to some interesting illustrations of how binocular vision works, but for visuals, lining them up right in front is best. What I’ve seen is relatively conventional optical imagery in the brighter areas, with the dark area filling with photorealistic stuff – rocking horses, birds, animals, people, buildings, anything it seems even remotely comes to mind.

Anyway. You’d have to be a special kind of fool to stare for extended periods into LEDs in glasses that are sold on the strict understanding that they are for use with eyes closed.

Sensory Deprivation

I’ve been reading about the 8-Coil Shakti device, wondering if such a thing might be the next tool for prying open the doors of the mind. I dearly wish I could believe testimonials, but I don’t. The website reeks of everything hype and scam. Mixed size type, lots of big bold words, techy looking diagrams and animated demonstrations, proper looking anatomical drawings with all the right names, reverent references to the originator of the concept, Michael Persinger, while discretely conveying that the device itself is based on the work of Persinger, but is not the device all his published material was based on. However, his apprentice, Todd Murphy, assures us that his version is strictly new and improved, with some waveforms under license from Michael.

The description of the technology has a few mystical puffs of smoke, but mostly seems to make sense in terms of more general Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation information. The wisp that intrigues me most is the one elucidated in a FAQ item entitled, “How can a sound card play an EEG signal?” It goes on to explain about complex signals that cannot be produced or synthesised in any way other than recording them from real EEG. Two problems – 1. an EEG waveform can be synthesised with the greatest of ease; 2. This is one of only two products with an emphasis on complex signals – the only material I’ve seen that pursues the idea of the brain copying a sample neural waveforms originates from, or is associated with Persinger/Murphy or Chuck Davis (Roshi). Interestingly neither offer any assistance in physically evaluating their products – place your ante or view from the sidelines.

A long and circuitous journey back to the point – it is made extremely clear that the Shakti must be used in conjunction with sensory deprivation – silence and darkness. How easy is that for the average you or me to arrange? There’s even suggestions that you should check the latest geomagnetic and solar wind conditions.  If this form of stimulus is so sensitive, could we expect more from AVS if all other stimulation were more thoroughly eliminated? If I were to get a Shakti and I were to find it ineffective, how could I be confident that it was not just because I failed to use it in the correct environment. Persinger had his subjects sit in a soundproofed, magnetically shielded vault in the middle of Canadian nowhere. As much as I’d like to, I can’t see myself replicating the test conditions.

US$285 for an 8-coil Shakti is much less of a gamble than US$1800 for a pRoshi, but it’s more than I’m happy about shelling out on the sole basis of inventor evangelism and unsubstantiated testimonial. I would really like to hear something about these devices from an independent someone whose opinion I know to have substance. However, a couple of, “I want to know about Shakti.” comments would probably nudge me over the top – if anyone is sufficiently interested, that will be sufficient excuse to be test dummy.

Aaargh. Enough.

Cheers,
Craig