More about the VH "custom audio" function and binaural beats

I sent the male Silver Robot sessions back to Jukebox for proofing this morning, and since then, I've been doing a little experimenting on other VH-related matters. For instance, I've finally figured out how the custom audio works. I'm going to post my latest discoveries here in this entry, then go back and update my "Virtual Hypnotist 103" entry, as well. And once I have all the VH tutorials online, I might write them up in a single document and make them available here for everyone's use.

So this is what I've found out about the custom audio. It is, indeed, the best way to play an mp3 by Lady Ru'etha (or Follow the Watch, or anyone else) which you're using to replace the scripts and speech synthesizer. But in order for custom audio to work, you have to work through several steps. First, save the mp3 in the VH "sessions" folder. Second, enable custom audio under the "Components" tab (Note that this will disable all the scripts and any other selected audio, because the mp3 is replacing those). Third, go to the "Graphics and Audio" Tab and choose the file under "Custom Audio."

Now, this is where it gets just a little tricky. Note that the default option in the "file name" field is the name of the currently-selected session. You can easily change that by selecting the mp3 you want, but then when you try to save the session, you'll find yourself prompted to save the session under the name of the newly-selected custom audio file. But just switch it back, and you're good to go. See? I told you it was just a little tricky.

And now, on to binaural beats. I've been doing a little more online research, and I've found a neat little meditation site that explains binaurals in layman's terms and lets you test and download different kinds of beats. In doing so, I discovered that I drop like a rock after mere seconds of mid-theta, so I'm going to incorporate that into my Bedtime session tonight and see how it works.

Once I knew a little more about binaurals, I felt more competent to experiment with the "Brainwave Synchronizer" under the "Other" tab. I saw that the default difference between the two tones was six hertz, which is high theta, so I just changed it by a single notch. But testing the result with the "test" button revealed the pitch to be much higher than that of the sample from the meditation site, so I adjusted the frequency of both tones downward until I got what I wanted.

Now, I don't know for sure if it matters whether the tones are loud enough for you to hear consciously; but I did notice that the lower I pitched the frequency, the softer the result sounded. So I kept bumping up the volume, because I want to be able to hear the sound. It might be purely psychological, but hearing those low, vibrating tones makes me feel like my whole brain is buzzing; and that's a really lovely sensation. :-)

So that's the news for now. I'm still exploring options for hosting the Silver Robot mirrors (Thanks to drp for the megaupload.com suggestion, but unfortunately, they don't allow adult content), and the fact that the sessions won't be ready for another day or three gives me more time to find something workable.