Beta

Beta rhythms dominate when you're awake and engaged with the world: reading, deciding, talking, working through a problem. It's a wide band, and "more beta" is not simply "more focus" — anxious rumination is also a beta-heavy state. Like every band here, it's a correlate of mental states, not a dial that controls them.

What people use it for

Beta-range beats (most commonly 14–18 Hz) are the standard pick for work sessions and study blocks. One of the earliest controlled studies on binaural beats used beta-range stimulation during a long vigilance task and reported better sustained attention compared to theta-range beats.

In the studio

• Set the beat between 14–18 Hz for focus work (the Focus preset uses 15 Hz)
• A carrier around 200–250 Hz stays out of the way of speech if you work near others
• Low pink noise underneath helps mask office chatter
• The Focus Ramp journey climbs from 10 Hz to 18 Hz and holds it for a 25-minute block

Worth knowing

For focus, the masking and ritual effects are probably doing real work alongside any entrainment: consistent audio marks the start of a work block and covers distracting sound. That's not a bug — it's most of the practical value.