Encoding subliminal messages as beat frequencies

[Captain Awesome]

OK. We all know that when you are wearing headphones and you have, say, a 70hz sine wave going into your left ear, and a 74hz one in your right, you will perceive a binaural beat in the form of a 4hz warble as your brain tries to reconcile the two signals.

What I want to do is, starting with identical signals in the left and right tracks, be able to take any waveform, like a message from satan for instance, and encode it with frequency modulation in the signals such that you perceive the waveform when wearing headphones, but it is not actually "there" in the individual left and right tracks.

I mean, if you can hear a warble on the beat frequency, you must be able to modulate the beat frequency to hear other things, right?

Is this possible?

 

[Monkey Allen]

You're not planning to take over the world are you?

 

[NYMorningstar]

who's satan?

 

[HogansHiro]

Here is a program that does what you want.

http://subliminalrecorder.com/

If you'll all excuse I must go buy property with no money down and I don't know why.

 

[Phyl]

What I want to do is, starting with identical signals in the left and right tracks, be able to take any waveform, like a message from satan for instance, and encode it with frequency modulation in the signals such that you perceive the waveform when wearing headphones, but it is not actually "there" in the individual left and right tracks.

I suspect using classical frequency modulation techniques would be out of the question since we're talking about carrier freqs in the mega Hertz range and no DAW would allow those freqs to pass through the AD and DA stages. Amplitude modulation would have the same problems.

I'm curious how the program recommended in the previous post works out for you; let us know. Maybe I can use it on my wife!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

What I want to do is, starting with identical signals in the left and right tracks, be able to take any waveform, like a message from satan for instance, and encode it with frequency modulation in the signals such that you perceive the waveform when wearing headphones, but it is not actually "there" in the individual left and right tracks.

Sounds like a neat idea, but there may be some problems. First, the carrier frequencies in each channel would have to be inaudible. This would mean either a freq above the human hearing range or two signals that were perfectly 180 degress out of phase (easily possible electronically, but a bit difficult physically on the playback systems.). best bet may be to stick the carriers up at, say, 18kHz or thereabouts. Also, the higher the carrier frequency, the better the theoretical frequency response of your IM subliminal message.

The problem with the 18K carrier is that you might have a hard time reproducing that on many consumer playback systems; only a system capable of at least semi-accurate frequency response at 18K would work. Additionally, you need some actual modulation bandwidth. A modulated 18k signal with the frequency response of a typical landline telephone would actually vary in frequency from about 16k to 20k. There you are playing with the fringes of both perceptable hearing and reproducable playback. For some folks, those 16K modulations would shoot through their heads like crossbow arrows.

Actually, from looking at some of the screenshots for that subliminal recorder, it looks like they may be following a scheme similar to this. The spectrograms of their subliminal recordings show nothing but high-freq signal, so maybe this is precisely the method they're using after all.

One last problem...who needs subliminal Satanic messages when we already have a world in which Paula Abdul is a judge on prime time TV?

G.

 

[ecktronic]

Is this for real the Subliminal recording website? Looks like another scam website. And if it really worked shouldnt it be illegal?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

You will give me money...you will give me money...you.....

As far as I can tell, the website and the software are "for real" *and* a "scam". It appears that software does do some signal processing to produce a "subliminal message" effect, very possibly in a manner similar to what I described above. As to whether that effect has any real value is highly debatable, though.

There are some departemnt stores that inject subliminal messages in their Musak that tells customers not to shoplift. And some companies sell weight loss, stop smoking and self-esteem tapes that supposedly work via subliminal messaging. The genral scientific concensus,however, is that subliminal messaging may have some placebo effect (in the case of those self-help tapes), but other than that are virtually ineffectual.

And, as illustrated by the examples above, subliminal messaging is legal in many forms. I think (I'm not all that sure about this, somebody correct me if I'm wrong) is that restrictions on subliminal messaging (here in the States anyway) apply solely to broadcasts that fall under the domain of the Federal Communications Comission (FCC), and I'm not even sure if even they care about such tripe.

G.

 

[giraffe]

Here is a program that does what you want.

http://subliminalrecorder.com/

If you'll all excuse I must go buy property with no money down and I don't know why.

someone needs to take one for the group and buy this,
then tell me if it works.

plllllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeeeeeeee

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

someone needs to take one for the group and buy this.

Good idea, giraffe! be sure to let us know as soon as you recieve it!

G.

 

[mjareo]

As far as I can tell, the website and the software are "for real" *and* a "scam"....
There are some departemnt stores that inject subliminal messages in their Musak that tells customers not to shoplift. And some companies sell weight loss, stop smoking and self-esteem tapes that supposedly work via subliminal messaging. The genral scientific concensus,however, is that subliminal messaging may have some placebo effect (in the case of those self-help tapes), but other than that are virtually ineffectual.

We discussed this in an ethics class in college, and as close as I can remember, it is not illegal, but studies have pretty much proven that it isn't in any way effective, just as you said. So, the program probably would do something similar to what it claims to do, but it won't have any real world effect on people.

 

[giraffe]

Good idea, giraffe! be sure to let us know as soon as you recieve it!

G.

i ment someone with money!!!!!

We discussed this in an ethics class in college, and as close as I can remember, it is not illegal, but studies have pretty much proven that it isn't in any way effective, just as you said. So, the program probably would do something similar to what it claims to do, but it won't have any real world effect on people.

you mean i can't use it to rule the world........


thats no fun