The issue is that we can't control the delivery.
Streaming platforms use adaptive bitrate. If a user's bandwidth dips on mobile, the player might switch to a lower tier where the model starts aggressively quantizing the Side channel (L-R) to save space.
Since the binaural effect relies entirely on that Side channel difference, I wanted to remove the variable entirely.
By generating it client-side with the Web Audio API, we get mathematical certainty regardless of the user's connection speed.
The main difference with ASMR is that it uses multiple spatial cues (reverb, tone) which survive compression well.
Entrainment is more fragile. For a cognitive tool, I wanted to engineer that risk out of the system entirely.
AphantaZach•2w ago
Most codecs (MP3/AAC) use "Joint Stereo" (Mid/Side coding) to save bandwidth. Since binaural beats rely entirely on the subtle phase difference between Left/ Right channels, compression algorithms tend to treat that data as redundant and smooth it over.
I didn't want to leave it to chance, so I moved the stack to the Web Audio API. It generates the sine waves in real-time (client-side), ensuring mathematical precision and perfect channel isolation.
Happy to answer questions about the physics or implementation.