Mind Wave review

Mark Mackay

We review Mind Wave, a meditation aid for the iPhone that uses binaural notes to ensure a quality session

Published on Oct 15, 2009

Mind Wave is a meditation aid that works by using binaural notes, which - as the ‘bi’ portion of the word suggests – entails sending different tones to each ear.

Binaural notes are held in high regards as a good way to help accommodate meditation and more positive mind states in general. Mind Wave aims to deliver a bunch of these notes to your trusty iPhone, ensuring you always have them to hand.

The main page of the app consists of a scrollable list of sounds to listen to, each with different names suggesting what they’re for. For example the ‘Deep mediation’ gives the description: ‘4Hz theta range sweep helps achieve a deep meditative state’.

The sound that it makes is like an oscillating hum with what sounds like crashing waves in the background. We didn’t find it especially relaxing though. It sounds like a sound effect from some kind of mind control scene in a 1960’s science fiction movie and it’s a little stressful. When it stops, your ears are left an odd combination of relief and ringing.

The setting named ‘Coffee’ is described as ‘virtual caffeine’ with the subtext of ‘get a boost in mental and overall energy’. The noise starts low, getting increasingly higher to a background of faint, white noise.

After holding at a peak for a while, the pitch of the constant tone starts to descend before slowly rising once more. It might just be our imagination but 10 minutes of listening did feel a little like nailing a double shot of espresso, but then suggestion is a powerful thing.

There are a total of 18 sounds to listen to, some of which are named somewhat ambiguously. For example, ‘Crazy High MindFreek’ is more of a fluctuating harmony of ambient notes. This sound is very cool but hardly the craziness that the title suggests.

We were expecting the feature named visual ‘stimulation’ to be something like the visual effects available on iTunes, but it is in fact an alternating black and white screen with a slider to adjust the rate of alternation. However this is an audio tool and a lot of people that already use binaural notes in meditation will welcome having them to hand all the time.

If you’re looking for something to accompany your Yoga or mediation sessions, at just £1.19 it may we worth a look to see if anything takes your fancy. Just don’t expect to find all of them to your liking.