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Relaxation

The classic 10 Hz alpha session — the most-studied, least-complicated way to use binaural beats.

Alpha 8–12 Hz

The setup

This is the simplest session on the site: the Relax preset, which is a 10 Hz beat on a 220 Hz carrier — the studio's defaults, untouched. Ten hertz sits in the middle of the alpha band, the rhythm most associated with calm, eyes-closed wakefulness, and it's the frequency that shows up most often in the relaxation and anxiety studies.

How to use it

  1. Twenty minutes, headphones, somewhere you can close your eyes
  2. Add pink noise if a bare tone feels too sterile
  3. Nothing to do, nothing to count — this one is allowed to be passive
  4. Good pairing for a post-work decompression or a pre-difficult-conversation reset

What to actually expect

Anxiety and relaxation outcomes are where the binaural beat literature is least embarrassing: several controlled studies, including a pre-operative anxiety trial, reported modest but real reductions compared to control audio. Modest is the key word — this is a pleasant nudge toward calm, not a sedative. But a reliable, zero-cost pleasant nudge is nothing to sneeze at.

Ready to try it? Open the studio and dial in the settings from this guide.

Open the Studio

Research worth reading

Moderate evidencedeltarelaxationsleep

Binaural beat audio and pre-operative anxiety: a randomised controlled trial (Padmanabhan et al., 2005)

A rare clinical-setting trial: patients awaiting day-case surgery listened to delta-embedded binaural beat audio, the same audio without the beats, or nothing. The binaural beat group showed a meaningfully larger drop in anxiety scores than either control. One study, one context — but the comparison against identical audio minus the beats is exactly the control this field usually lacks, which earns it a place here.

Read the study ↗
Moderate evidencethetaalphabetafocusrelaxation

Efficacy of binaural auditory beats in cognition, anxiety, and pain perception: a meta-analysis (García-Argibay et al., 2019)

The most useful single reference in the field: a meta-analysis pooling controlled binaural beat studies across cognition, anxiety, and pain outcomes. It found a modest overall effect, with longer exposure and beats presented without masking sound tending to work better. It's also candid about the field's problems — small samples and wildly inconsistent protocols. If you read one paper before forming an opinion, read this one.

Read the study ↗