I am a new member to this site, just joined a few hours ago, and so far I’ve spent my time reading all four parts of this big brainwave generator thread. I have found binaural beats to be quite fascinating, and have some advice for those looking to use them for various purposes.
Although this thread seems to be mostly dedicated to the BWGen program, I know of two other programs that are free to download and use. SBaGen is a free command line based program for making binaural beat files. Although it is command line based it has some nice interface options when installed on a windows based pc, and the preset files can be written and edited with notepad. Once you have a preset you want to listen to you can double click on it in explorer and it will open a console window and play automatically. In addition to being free and easy to use once you learn the coding format, it comes with quite a few presets ready to use.
The other program is Gnaural. Gnaural is a nice gui based program but it requires the GTK+ libraries to be installed to run properly. It is a little more complicated to learn to use than SBaGen but it has more features as well. One nice feature is that is allows you to add in your own sound files, so you can add inductions or background music to your presets. It does not however come with any presets other than the default that is loaded each time the program starts. Both of the programs are free to download and do not have to be registered to create/save/import preset files.
One thing to keep in mind is that everyone’s mind is different and a preset that works for one might not work for another, and your state of mind when starting greatly affects the results you will see when using binaural beats. I find it is best to pick a program that you find easy to use and experiment with several different beat frequency combinations, but don’t try to use more than a couple at a time to start with until you have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t. It is most effective if you start at a frequency close to your current state of mind and work down slowly to your desired state. Also when experimenting with beat combinations the carrier frequency or audible frequency is just as important as the beat frequency you are using. While trying out the audio files you should keep the volume at a mid to low level just above any background noise in the room. Also it helps to relax in a comfortable position with headphones on and close your eyes and listen to the sound. Pay special attention to any tingling/pulsing/vibrating you feel, and what frequencies they occur at, as these are signs that you are getting close.
A couple sites that can help you figure out where to start with experimenting are:
https://community.ld4all.com/t/bwgen-tutorial/21727 - has a chart that lists optimal carrier frequency for some beat frequencies, and - https://lunarsight.com/freq.htm - has a large list of frequencies and some of their effects.
I hope this information is helpful to some of you looking to use binaural beats to help achieve ld’s and ap’s.