Binaural beat frequencies: what the claims leave out
Search for a binaural beat frequency and you will find lists pairing a number with a result. This page does not add another one. It explains which numbers are being talked about, where the best-known claims come from, and why the research does not support choosing between them.
We sell audio, so it is worth saying plainly what this page is doing. A frequency table is the format that ranks for these searches and it would be the easy thing for us to publish. We have decided not to, because we would be recommending numbers on a basis we do not have. What we can do is explain the subject accurately.
Two different numbers both get called "the frequency"
A binaural track carries at least two numbers, and the popular lists run them together as though they were one.
The carrier pitches are the actual tones playing in each ear — say one ear at 440 Hz. That is a pitch, the same kind of number as a note on a piano.
The beat rate is the difference between the two carriers. If one ear receives 440 Hz and the other 446 Hz, the difference is 6 Hz, and 6 Hz is the rate of the pulse you perceive. Our how to use the app page uses exactly that example.
Claims about 432 Hz and 528 Hz are claims about carrier pitch. Claims about delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma are claims about beat rate. They are not the same subject, and a page that presents them in one column is not describing one thing. It is also worth knowing that a carrier pitch is audible on any speaker, while the beat rate depends entirely on keeping the two channels apart — the reason headphones are required.
The 432 Hz claim
432 Hz refers to a proposal to tune music with the A above middle C at 432 Hz rather than at the 440 Hz international standard. The difference between the two tunings is audible, and anyone is entitled to prefer the sound of one over the other; that is an ordinary musical preference and we have no argument with it.
What does not follow is the further claim that this tuning is more natural, more harmonious with the body, or better for a listener in any measurable way. None of the research listed on our evidence page tested a tuning standard, and we have not found a peer-reviewed study that establishes such an effect. Where a claim of that kind is made, the thing to ask for is the study, the sample size, and the limitation the authors stated.
The 528 Hz and Solfeggio claims
528 Hz circulates with the label "love frequency" and, more seriously, with an assertion of "DNA repair". We are not going to restate that in softer language: there is no evidence that listening to a tone at any pitch repairs DNA, and our source pool contains no study that tests the proposition. The same applies to the wider set of "Solfeggio" tones with which 528 Hz is usually grouped, and to the "healing frequency" framing generally. These circulate without a research basis we have been able to find, and hedging them with "said to" or "traditionally associated with" changes the wording rather than the evidence.
This matters more than a pedantic correction, because these are exactly the claims we removed from our own store copy rather than carry over to this site.
The brainwave-band story rests on the least established part
Lists that map a beat rate to a mental state depend on an assumption: that setting a beat rate reliably moves brain activity, and the listener with it, into a matching state. That assumption is the part of this field with the weakest support.
A 2023 systematic review of 14 EEG and MEG studies found five results consistent with entrainment, eight contradictory results and one mixed result, across samples ranging from 4 to 47 people. Its conclusion was methodological heterogeneity and inconclusive evidence, not an established mechanism. A controlled physiology study found that binaural beats entrained the cortex more weakly than monaural beats and produced no modulation of mood; its limitation is that it measured laboratory physiology rather than any everyday outcome.
Delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma are descriptive labels for ranges of activity in an EEG recording. They are useful vocabulary for describing what an instrument measured. Turning them into menu options for a listener is a much larger step, and it is the step for which the evidence is thinnest.
There is no evidence-based way to choose a frequency
That is the honest answer, not a gap we intend to fill later. The research that exists does not compare frequencies closely enough to rank them. The most-cited meta-analysis in this field pooled 22 studies and 35 effect sizes and reported an overall Hedges' g of 0.45, while noting that results varied with beat frequency, exposure timing and comparator. Read carefully, that makes frequency one of the sources of the disagreement between studies rather than a settled finding sitting on top of them. Research on binaural beats is mixed, and most studies are small.
So the practical advice is dull, which is usually a sign it is honest: pick something you can leave running at a comfortable volume, and judge it on whether you want it playing again tomorrow.
Why the lists exist anyway
A table of numbers and outcomes is easy to skim, easy to share, and it is what currently ranks for these searches. It is also unfalsifiable in practice — nobody checks. Publishing one is the path of least resistance for any site selling audio, ours included, and that is the whole reason it is worth naming rather than quietly declining.
What we say about our own settings
Our sessions have audio settings and we describe them as settings. The app groups its tracks into four families, each built around a different tone-difference range and labelled by the situation people reach for it in; those labels name the families, they do not state what a range does. About Binaura lists the four ranges, and the FAQ gives the short answers to the common questions. For what the app is and what it does not promise, see what Binaural Beats - Brainwaves FM is. Whether a track is binaural at all, rather than monaural or isochronic, is a separate question covered on binaural, monaural and isochronic beats.
What would change this page
A pre-registered, adequately powered, sham-controlled trial of a specific frequency against a named outcome, published in a peer-reviewed journal and independently replicated, would change what we can say here. Rising search volume for a claim, and a competitor ranking above us with a table, would not. This is audio, not medical care, and nothing here is a substitute for advice from a clinician.