SHADOWBAND / THE ROOM
The night
A room that stays on
A low hum that does not stop, a beat inside it, a slow chord over the top, a little air. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is recorded: the sound is made here, on your phone or computer, for as long as the page is open. Pick a shape, put headphones on, press start.
On iPhone: Share → Add to Home Screen. It then opens like an app, even with no signal.
WHAT IS PLAYING
Four layers, no secret
- DEPTH
- The hum. Two sawtooth waves almost at the same pitch — the difference makes the sound throb slowly, once every four seconds — through a filter that wanders on its own. It is the sound of a machine working in the next room.
- BEAT
- One pure tone in each ear, one of them shifted by the number of Hz you choose. The brain hears the difference as a beat: that is the binaural beat. It is kept quiet and inside the music on purpose, and it only exists on headphones.
- MUSIC
- A four-voice chord, slightly detuned against itself, with a filter opening and closing over almost a minute. It changes with the shape you choose.
- AIR
- Pink noise — equal weight in every octave — filtered and breathing slowly. It is what most people call rain or wind when they are not listening closely.
WHAT THE STUDIES SAY
Less than the internet says, more than nothing
This room promises no outcomes. What follows is what the peer-reviewed literature supports, uncertainty included; the full source list is on Sound and state.
Binaural beats: the 2019 meta-analysis found small effects on cognition, anxiety and pain perception that depend on the frequency, the time under exposure and the moment; a 2026 review says small, heterogeneous studies limit the certainty.
Garcia-Argibay, Santed & Reales, Psychological Research, 2019 · Elnazer, Acta Neuropsychiatrica, 2026Continuous noise for sleep: the 2021 systematic review rated the quality of evidence as very low, and warns that badly designed noise can harm sleep or hearing. That is why AIR here is quiet and filtered.
Riedy, Smith, Rocha & Basner, Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2021Music and insomnia: the 2022 Cochrane review found moderate-certainty evidence that listening to music improves subjective sleep quality in adults with insomnia symptoms — and no effect shown on objective sleep measures.
Jespersen et al., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2022Pink noise and deep sleep: in the lab, sounds delivered in phase with slow sleep waves increased that activity and next-day recall — in samples of 13 to 40 people, with equipment reading the brain in real time. A web page does not do that.
Ngo et al., Neuron, 2013 · Papalambros et al., Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2017The bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma) exist, but their exact Hz cut-offs vary between authors. The numbers on the four shapes are conventions, not prescriptions.
Newson & Thiagarajan, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2019432 Hz, “solfeggio” frequencies: one double-blind pilot with 33 people, whose authors call for larger trials. Not established science, and this room is not tuned to it.
Calamassi & Pomponi, Explore, 2019
CARE Moderate volume: the WHO reference is under 80 dB for 40 hours a week. Do not listen while driving or operating machinery. The bands on screen move slowly and do not flash. This is not therapy and not medicine. It is sound. If you are having a hard time, talk to a doctor or to someone you trust. WHO-ITU, 2019
THE LIVE NIGHTS
This is the empty room. The nights fill it.
Long sessions built live on synthesisers, on top of this same sound. One message before each one, and nothing in between.