Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses two microphones, arranged with the intent to create a 3-D stereo sound sensation for the listener of actually being in the room with the performers or instruments. This effect is often created using a technique known as dummy head recording, wherein a mannequin head is fitted with a microphone in each ear. Binaural recording is intended for replay using headphones and will not translate properly over stereo speakers. This idea of a three-dimensional or "internal" form of sound has also translated into useful advancement of technology in many things such as stethoscopes creating "in-head" acoustics and IMAX movies being able to create a three-dimensional acoustic experience.
Ardour is a hard disk recorder and digital audio workstation application that runs on Linux, macOS, FreeBSD and Microsoft Windows. Its primary author is Paul Davis, who was also responsible for the JACK Audio Connection Kit. It is intended as a digital audio workstation suitable for professional use.
Cinelerra is a video editing and composition program designed for Linux. It is free software distributed under the open source GNU General Public License. In addition to editing, it supports advanced composition operations such as keying and mattes, including a title generator, many effects to edit video and audio, keyframe automation, and many other professional functions depending on the variant. It processes audio in 64 floating-point form. Video is processed in RGBA or YUVA color spaces, in 16-bit integer or floating-point form. It is resolution and image refresh rate independent. The GG variant supports up to 8K video, and can also create DVDs and Blu-rays.
This comparison of free software for audio lists notable free and open source software for use by sound engineers, audio producers, and those involved in sound recording and reproduction.
JACK Audio Connection Kit is a professional sound server API and pair of daemon implementations to provide real-time, low-latency connections for both audio and MIDI data between applications. JACK was developed by a community of open-source developers led by Paul Davis and has been a key piece of infrastructure and the de facto standard for professional audio software on Linux since its inception in 2002. The server is free software, licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later, while the library is licensed under LGPL-2.1-or-later.
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrated stand-alone unit, all the way to a highly complex configuration of numerous components controlled by a central computer. Regardless of configuration, modern DAWs have a central interface that allows the user to alter and mix multiple recordings and tracks into a final produced piece.
Robert Allan Monroe was a radio broadcasting executive who became known for his research into altered consciousness and for founding The Monroe Institute. His 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body is credited with popularizing the term "out-of-body experience".
A mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound, flashing light, or a combination of these to alter the frequency of the user's brainwaves. Mind machines can induce deep states of relaxation, concentration, and in some cases altered states of consciousness, which have been compared to those obtained from meditation and shamanic exploration. Photic mind machines work with flickering lights embedded in sunglasses or a lamp that sits above or facing the user's head. The user then "watches" with their eyes closed.
Ecasound is a hard-disk recording and audio processing tool for Unix-like computer operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD.
Sound Juicer is the official CD ripper program of GNOME. It is based on GTK, GStreamer, and libburnia for reading and writing optical discs. It can extract audio tracks from optical audio discs and convert them into audio files that a personal computer or digital audio player can play. It supports ripping to any audio codec supported by a GStreamer plugin, such as Opus, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and uncompressed PCM formats. Versions after 2.12 implement CD playing capability. Last versions produce lossy formats with default GStreamer settings.
Brainwave entrainment, also referred to as brainwave synchronization or neural entrainment, refers to the observation that brainwaves will naturally synchronize to the rhythm of periodic external stimuli, such as flickering lights, speech, music, or tactile stimuli.
LMMS is a digital audio workstation application program. It allows music to be produced by arranging samples, synthesizing sounds, playing on a MIDI keyboard, and combining the features of trackers and sequencers. It supports the Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API (LADSPA), LV2 and Virtual Studio Technology (VST) plug-ins. It is free and open source software, written in Qt and released under GPL-2.0-or-later.
Asunder is a free and open-source graphical audio CD ripper program for Unix-like systems. It doesn't have dependencies to the GNOME libraries or libraries of other desktop environments. It functions as a front-end for cdparanoia.
I-Doser is an application for the playback of proprietary audio content. The developer claims the separately purchasable content aims to simulate specific mental states through the use of binaural beats, some of it is named after various recreational drugs. The I-Doser player has been downloaded millions of times and is based on the audio technology of a GPL-licensed binaural beat generator, SBaGen. The player can be downloaded for free, and includes some sample audio content. Additional audio content can be purchased.
Exaile is a cross-platform free and open-source audio player, tag editor and library organizer. It was originally conceived to be similar in style and functions to KDE's Amarok 1.4, but uses the GTK widget toolkit rather than Qt. It is written in Python and utilizes the GStreamer media framework.
Isochronic tones are regular beats of a single tone that are used alongside monaural beats and binaural beats in the process called brainwave entrainment. At its simplest level, an isochronic tone is a tone that is being turned on and off rapidly. They create sharp, distinctive pulses of sound.
Audio-visual entrainment (AVE), a subset of brainwave entrainment, uses flashes of lights and pulses of tones to guide the brain into various states of brainwave activity. AVE devices are often termed light and sound machines or mind machines. Altering brainwave activity is believed to aid in the treatment of psychological and physiological disorders.
EMMS is media player software for Emacs. It is written in Emacs Lisp. The name could possibly echo XMMS. It may be derived from an earlier Emacs-based player called mp3-player.
Virtual Hammock describes the effect of using structured sound from two isolated, stationary speakers playing into opposite ears to induce the perception of being in the presence of a single sound source which is moving back-and-forth. Rather than relying solely on a variation in sound amplitude of one speaker compared to the other, the Virtual Hammock effect utilizes a shift in phase of the sound wave of one side compared with the other. This stimulates the same physiological response in the Medial Superior Olive (MSO) portion of the brain stem—the first processing stop for auditory nerves—as is induced by an actual moving sound source. Any waveform within certain frequency bounds can be used to achieve this effect. The specific case of playing sinusoidal waves of different frequencies, which creates a continuously varying sensation of the sound source moving from side-to-side, is referred to as a binaural beat. Similarly, playing square waves of two different frequencies will create a sensation of swaying back and forth.
