Deep focus & sleep music
Long-form instrumental music with engineered frequency layers underneath — binaural beats, monaural beats or isochronic tones. Every session states exactly what is in it.
Live demonstration
Two steady tones, a few hertz apart, one in each ear. Neither tone pulses. The pulse you hear does not exist in the audio at all — your brain makes it from the difference. Put headphones on and try it.
🎧 Headphones required — on speakers the two tones mix in the air and the beat disappears. That is not a flaw; it is the definition.
Full disclosure
That is not a description. It cannot be checked and it cannot be compared. Every Nauralis session publishes its full measured chain instead.
Technique ......... Monaural beats Carrier ........... 180 Hz Beat .............. 18 Hz (Beta) Layer level ....... −20 dB below the music Loudness .......... −14 LUFS integrated (EBU R128) True peak ......... −1.0 dBTP Headphones ........ not required Runtime ........... 1:00:00
These are not label values. They are measured on the finished file by the tool that made it, which also normalises every release to −14 LUFS so sessions sit at the same level as one another.
Publishing them is what makes a session describable — and therefore comparable with anyone else's.
Six listening situations
The beat frequency and the music are chosen together. A slow beat under fast music helps nobody.
Falling asleep, staying asleep
Meditation, winding down
Reading, resting, recovering
Studying, steady work
Focus, coding, writing
Demanding, time-boxed work
Binaural beats need headphones. Each ear receives a slightly different tone and the beat only exists in the brain — on speakers the two tones simply mix in the air and the effect is gone. Monaural beats and isochronic tones exist in the audio itself and work on speakers too. Every session says which one it uses.
How a session is made
The music is never an afterthought wrapped around a tone. It comes first, and the layer is built to fit underneath it.
Composed and mixed as a piece of music in its own right, with the 90–450 Hz range kept clear so the layer has somewhere to sit.
Phase-continuous tones, not samples. Isochronic gating uses raised-cosine ramps, so it pulses rather than clicks.
Loudness to EBU R128, true peak, and the level of the layer relative to the music — measured on the finished file and published with it.
Questions
Short, factual answers. Where the honest answer is “it depends” or “the evidence is mixed”, that is what it says.
Yes. A binaural beat requires each ear to receive a slightly different tone, and the beat itself is produced in the brain rather than in the audio. Played on speakers, the two tones mix in the air before reaching the listener and the binaural effect does not occur. Monaural beats and isochronic tones are different: the beat exists in the audio signal itself, so both work on speakers.
A binaural beat plays one steady tone in the left ear and a second tone a few hertz higher in the right; the pulse is perceived rather than present in the recording. A monaural beat sums both tones into one signal, so the pulse is physically in the audio and both ears hear it. An isochronic tone is a single tone switched on and off at the beat rate, which gives the most pronounced pulse; switching it with raised-cosine ramps rather than a hard square wave prevents audible clicking.
The evidence is mixed. A 2019 meta-analysis of 35 effect sizes reported a medium overall effect on cognition, anxiety and pain perception, with outcomes varying by beat frequency and exposure time. Other controlled studies found no cognitive benefit, and at least one found that EEG did not confirm neural entrainment at the stimulated frequency. A double-blind trial in subclinical insomnia reported only minimal effects. Reproducible effects appear most often for anxiety and mood; neural entrainment as the underlying mechanism remains contested.
Frequencies are grouped into bands by convention: delta around 2.5 Hz for sleep, theta around 6 Hz for meditation and winding down, alpha around 10 Hz for calm and recovery, beta between 15 and 18 Hz for studying and focused work, and gamma around 40 Hz for demanding concentration. These groupings describe the stimulation frequency, not a guaranteed effect, and published results depend heavily on protocol.
For most listeners it is ordinary music listening. It is not a medical treatment and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Do not listen while driving or operating machinery. Anyone with epilepsy or a seizure disorder should consult a doctor before using rhythmic auditory stimulation.
LUFS is the loudness unit defined by EBU R128, measured across the whole file rather than at any single moment, so it reflects how loud a session actually sounds. Normalising every release to −14 LUFS integrated means sessions sit at the same perceived level as one another, and matches the level most streaming platforms target, so no track jumps out when it follows another. The true peak value of −1.0 dBTP is a separate measurement: it caps the highest instantaneous sample level to leave headroom for lossy encoding.
On YouTube
Every upload states the beat, the carrier, the level beneath the music and the measured loudness of the finished file — in the first seconds of the video and in the description.
Two-hour sessions for focus, rest and sleep. New uploads appear here automatically. Subscribe to be told when the next one is out.
The research
There are reproducible effects, mostly on anxiety, mood and some attention measures. They are moderate, they depend heavily on protocol, and whether neural entrainment actually occurs is contested. Our source library lists nineteen papers and says, for each one, what it does not show.
Nauralis is research-informed, not a medical treatment. Nothing here is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Do not listen while driving or operating machinery. If you have epilepsy or a seizure disorder, consult a doctor before using rhythmic auditory stimulation.