Rockbox Technical Forums

Rockbox Development => Feature Ideas => Topic started by: MoggyM on July 06, 2008, 08:23:20 PM

Title: Brainwave generator
Post by: MoggyM on July 06, 2008, 08:23:20 PM
How about a feature that generates these "brainwave-generator"-sounds?

Like this app:http://www.bwgen.com/

and this:
http://www.brainsync.com/

I dont know if I believes all they say, but they are quite cool to listen at.

Would be nice to have a MP3-spelare that could generate such sounds. The configfiles for each soundprogram is quite small with lists in textformat of frequences or something like that. There are quite expensive mindmachines that do just the same thing...


Title: Re: Brainwave generator
Post by: Zardoz on July 06, 2008, 09:10:11 PM
what the hell is brain wave therapy??? I'm all for trying stuff but this smacks of nonsense
Title: Re: Brainwave generator
Post by: MoggyM on July 06, 2008, 11:05:22 PM
what the hell is brain wave therapy??? I'm all for trying stuff but this smacks of nonsense



There is quite much to read about it on the net.

In short, there is a way to stimilate the brain and trigger some functions in the central nervous system by using sounds with a frequency similar to the brain waves.  For exemple, usning sound of same frequency that the brain has when we are tired could be used to make one tired as a solution to sleeping problemes. (very simplyfied)

It is far away from being a respected science but there are some studies on it that indicates that it could work. Also, people are paying lots of money for "Mindmachines" that stores several presets of sound for diffrent mood and ever altered states like taking a drug or a shortcut to reaching states of meditation.

Maybe it works, maybe not. But it is something that lots of ppl are intressted in and generating this sound is really simple for some who knows programing, just letting a soundchip generate some frequences that changes thru time. Like sinuxwave, squarewave etc.

I am sure there would be a great interest in developing presets if people got get a mindmachine for free in a MP3-player.

Would be great to hear some commants about this from a developer here...




Here is a company that sells these mind machines. It costs $150-$300 depending on model, and it is not advanced at all. A few MBs of flash and a simple soundchip.

http://www.mindplace.com/productsLS.htm



Title: Re: Brainwave generator
Post by: cool_walking_ on July 06, 2008, 11:26:11 PM
Can't you just use of these PC programs to create music files, then play them on Rockbox?
Title: Re: Brainwave generator
Post by: Zardoz on July 06, 2008, 11:36:09 PM
Well let me know if you find something. I have tinnitus in my left ear. No hearing loss or apparent damage but a low pitched, sensational 'hiss' there all the time - threatens to make me insane. Anyway all of this has nothing to do with rockbox haha.
Title: Re: Brainwave generator
Post by: weehooherod on July 07, 2008, 01:52:31 AM
a simple port of SBaGen would be great. SBaGen has very great Binuaral Beats and it is already ported to ipod linux. The source is included and it is a very simple program.
Title: Re: Brainwave generator
Post by: mcuelenaere on July 07, 2008, 11:10:01 AM
AFAIK a dev (forgot his name) has been working on porting SBaGen to Rockbox, search the logs for it (or was it in #rockbox-community?).

Also markun told me once he's interested in making something like this for Rockbox.
Title: Re: Brainwave generator
Post by: nonano on July 07, 2008, 04:05:31 PM
Reminds me in this talk by Mitch on the brain machine. Really woth a look:
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/camp2007_m4v_1949.html -- cool :D
Title: Re: Brainwave generator
Post by: MilitantlyUnhelpful on July 17, 2008, 06:38:11 AM
I wouldn't call myself a dev until I've actually contributed something to RB. I'll try to get to serious work on porting sbagen this week or next. The major issues will probably be writing GUI for RB to display the status, and adapting things (sound output and time, mostly) to the RB plugin API. I talked with some of the devs, and it looks like a viewer plugin is a more reasonable target than a codec, mainly because some sbagen scripts won't have a limited play duration.

The main reason for wanting a sbagen port, rather than files, is that they can take up rather a lot of space that way. I'm not confident that the the "spinning" pink noise effect survives lossy compression, and lossless compression of noisy sources is very inefficient. Even using lossy compression, the files can easily be tens to thousands of times larger than the script that generated them.