Show HN: Phantas – A browser-based binaural strobe engine (Web Audio API)

28•AphantaZach•1mo ago

Hi HN, I’m a new developer with Aphantasia (no mental imagery).

A side effect of this is that regaining focus after a distraction takes me a long time (the "23-minute lag"). I tried standard binaural beats, but I discovered a technical flaw: streaming compression (AAC/MP3 on Spotify/YouTube) often muddies the specific phase differences required for effective entrainment.

I realized that to get effective entrainment, I needed lossless audio. Since I couldn't stream lossless easily, I decided to generate it locally. I built Phantas – a browser engine that uses the Web Audio API to generate raw sine waves in real-time on the client side. This ensures mathematical precision with zero compression artifacts.

For audio it uses Native AudioContext for dual-oscillator generation (Left/Right channel split).

For visuals I pair the audio with a 490nm Cyan strobe. The hardest part was syncing the visual flash (using requestAnimationFrame) to the audio pulse without "drift" caused by JavaScript's event loop latency.

I built this primarily for myself. Subjectively, it has reduced my "ramp-up" time from ~20 minutes to about 5 minutes.

I’m releasing the generator for free (no login) to see if this works for others or if it's just my specific brain chemistry. I’d love feedback on:

- Audio/Visual Sync: Does the strobe feel tight on your specific browser/refresh rate?

- Intensity: Are the default 14Hz flickers too aggressive?

Comments

dvh•1mo ago

ERROR> https://phantas.io/_next/static/chunks/f60f633011df6d3a.js(5...: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'cancel')

AphantaZach•1mo ago

Good catch. That’s an unguarded speechSynthesis call in the cleanup function. likely crashing on browsers that block the Speech API (or in privacy mode).

Just pushed a fix to wrap it in a conditional check. It should be live in ~2 minutes. Thanks for the stack trace!

aeon_ai•1mo ago

Any evidence supporting “higher performance”?

AphantaZach•1mo ago

Totally fair question. "Higher performance" is definitely a subjective claim, so I should clarify the mechanism I'm relying on.

The core concept is Photic Driving (the "Frequency Following Response"). There is decent literature (e.g., Herrmann, 2001) showing that the visual cortex effectively synchronizes its firing rate to match high-amplitude external flickers (like a 14Hz strobe).

My goal with this tool is to induce Transient Hypofrontality (down-regulation of the prefrontal cortex), which is often associated with "Flow States" (Dietrich, 2003).

To be clear: I haven't run a clinical trial. I built it to replicate the "Ganzflicker" effects (Reeder, 2021) in a browser environment to help with my own Aphantasia. Subjectively, it helps me clear cognitive noise faster than silence, but I'm releasing it for free to see if that holds true for others or if it's just placebo.

aeon_ai•1mo ago

All good - just interested in what the theory is behind it, and how effective it is purported to be.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

AphantaZach•1mo ago

Apologies to anyone who got flash-banged by the white screen earlier. I pushed a hotfix that accidentally nuked my Tailwind config and the animation engine. The site should be fully restored now. Thanks for your patience.

cantalopes•1mo ago

It looks like a fun toy and i don't mean to disrespect but isn't this kind of a snake oil that's bordrline with placebo?

I mean, strobing light at specific hz will definitely have some effect on increased hz activity in your brain somewhat, and perhaps even relax me, but whether would that translate to "deep work" or just flshing light in my face would vary from person to person. And the gained benefits would be probably very dimnishing (like the whole "premium bineural beats" scams)

Plus the "unlock pro for targeted emotional regulation" souns veeeeery far fetched and fishy.

But if it gets popular i'm pretty sure some people would buy it (hell, people buy "good energy stones for good aura" to protect from reptilians or something)

AphantaZach•1mo ago

Fair critique. The wellness space is definitely flooded with 'quantum energy' nonsense so the skepticism is appreciated.

I look at this tool less like a 'magic brain pill' and more like a metronome for a musician. A metronome doesn't make you play better, but it mechanically forces you to stick to a tempo. This app just saturates your visual cortex with a steady rhythm so your brain stops scanning the room for distractions. It’s essentially a distraction-cancellation for focus.

As for the 'emotional regulation' bit—I do admit that comes off as marketing speak(not my background!) It really just refers to wavelength impact: Red light avoids triggering melanopsin (good for winding down), while Cyan/Blue light triggers wakefulness (good for mornings). No magic stones involved

seblon•1mo ago

My thoughts:

- Allow enter/leave Driver mode even while sound is playing

- Hide the "tab to minimize" after several seconds

- Allow customize the pattern. Now it's hard coded perlin noise animation, before it was blank screen white/black without texture.

- Cannot enter email address to unlock private beta while sound is active (chars getting deleting while typing).

- Loses Focus rapidly on multi monitor setup, even when not touching the browser. It seems it's sensitive to focus/unfocus events, not sure what's the exact cause. PS: Regular full screen videos form for example youtube never lose fullscreen with my browser.

- Fullscreen does not full whole screen, there's black border left and right, it seems you're animating a square, not the full landscape rectangle.

- The jump from gain 1 to gain 2 is quite big, so i have to reduce the volume on the system sound, that's quiet annoying, since it's for all browser tabs then / even the whole system, depending on mixer settings.

And several more bugs, i do not remember them all.

One important question, that comes in mind all the time: Is this project vibe coded? Don't get me wrong, i also startet to begin vibe coding my projects, but it seems there's a little mess in the code (without looking into the obfuscated code).

AphantaZach•1mo ago

This is awesome feedback, thank you. Some of this I have been trying to dial in, and I just pushed an update to almost everything you mentioned:

Fixes Deployed: Ghost Typing: You were spot on. I was defining the modal inside the main render loop. Moved it out, so the input is stable now.

Audio Focus: Removed the visibilitychange listener. It should now persist on multi-monitor setups without cutting out.

Texture Toggle: Added a specific button to toggle between "Neural Grain" (noise) and "Pure Light" (solid strobe) so you can customize the pattern.

Volume Taper: Switched the gain slider to logarithmic scaling so the jump from 0-10% isn't deafening.

UI Clutter: The "Tap to Minimize" overlay now fades out automatically after 3 seconds.

On Vibe Coding... guilty as charged.

This project evolved rapidly from a hacky passion project to help myself focus, into an attempt to build something worth sharing with others. I built the initial engine to prioritize the DSP/audio math, and the React architecture definitely suffered

Would love to know if the multi-monitor issue is resolved on your end now.

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

First Proof

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

The Waymo World Model

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

France's homegrown open source online office suite

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

Software factories and the agentic moment

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

72M Points of Interest

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

Where did all the starships go?

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

Learning from context is harder than we thought

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

British drivers over 70 to face eye tests every three years

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

An Update on Heroku

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

What Is Ruliology?

Show HN: Kappal – CLI to Run Docker Compose YML on Kubernetes for Local Dev

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

First Proof

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

The Waymo World Model

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

France's homegrown open source online office suite

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

Software factories and the agentic moment

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

72M Points of Interest

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

Where did all the starships go?

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

Learning from context is harder than we thought

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

British drivers over 70 to face eye tests every three years

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

An Update on Heroku

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

What Is Ruliology?

Show HN: Kappal – CLI to Run Docker Compose YML on Kubernetes for Local Dev

Show HN: Phantas – A browser-based binaural strobe engine (Web Audio API)

Comments