Try out an online tone generator, which produces sounds of specific frequencies to help tune instruments, test your hearing, and generate beats by overlapping tones.

Type out a tone and play it back with this fun game

Compose an original piece of music from your phone or desktop with this simple, super fun interface: Just start typing, discover the various sounds associated with each key or letter, and then press play. Go back, tweak, delete, and revise to your...

Tone Transfer recreates any piece of audio into instrumental recreations

Using machine learning models and Differentiable Digital Signal Processing, this tool can transform any 15-second sound clip into a flute, saxophone, trumpet, or violin reproduction. Researchers behind the open-source experiment hope the technology will enable musical creation through creative sound combinations.

Explore a visual and auditory guide to wave properties and waveforms to learn how every sound imaginable can be created by combining multiple vibrations of air.

Notch music therapy may filter out some tinnitus frequencies

Researchers in Germany have developed a smartphone app-based therapy for individuals with tinnitus associated with hearing loss. Some people with tinnitus can use this Notch app with their hearing aids to at least partially block sound frequencies matching their tinnitus pitch—turning down the volume of their tinnitus.

Some sounds that have been shown to affect mood and noise have been given color names, such as brown, pink, and green noise, corresponding their frequencies to those of light.

A sound's pitch will seem to change if the listener or the source moves toward or away from the other because motion changes the time it takes each successive sound wave to reach the listener.

If hearing is damaged, the brain may amplify remaining sounds, perhaps causing tinnitus

Recent mouse brain and ear imaging revealed that the creature compensates for hearing loss by sending signals to the cochlea in the inner ear. This triggers nerve fibers in the inner ear to increase volume and become more sensitive. Learning about these boosted-sensitivity messages from the brain to the cochlea—if they're similar in humans—might help explain tinnitus and fuel experimental approaches to turn down that sensitivity.

Use generative AI to create a musical track from a text prompt

Suno, a web-based, text-to-music generator, takes a prompt—such as a music style, along with a general lyric idea—and can produce a highly polished, realistic-sounding tune in a matter of seconds.

With sufficiently sensitive hearing and powerful equipment, if a source of music traveled past someone at twice the speed of sound, they would hear the music backward.

Inside the rise of focus music

Any casual YouTube or Spotify user has likely stumbled upon a playlist called "lo-fi beats to study and relax to" while searching for new music. Those "lo-fi beats" actually represent a growing genre of music called "focus music." Spotify, for instance. saw a 50% increase in listening time for focus playlists in its 2023 Wrapped report. This article explains why productivity tunes are on an upswing right now. Read it here.

When struck, objects vibrate at unique rates called resonant frequencies, which makes tapping wood sound different from tapping metal, but providing objects with sound at their resonant frequency can cause them to shatter.

Listen to the 'sounds' of the universe with this sonification library, where astronomers have transformed certain astronomical data sets into audio for broader engagement.

Try to catch the 'sound' of black holes in gravitational wave detector data

In "Black Hole Hunter," users try to listen for gravitational wave signals from black holes in four sample data files that include substantial background noise. With each level, learn more about black holes while being faced with ever-quieter signals.

See this graphic describing what different decibel levels mean for hearing loss.

A cochlear implant stimulates parts of the cochlea directly, with limited pitch and timbre capabilities

People with these devices have to learn or relearn how to train their brains to interpret nerve signals as sound. The range of the type of sounds that the brain can distinguish with a cochlear implant is limited and consequently it's difficult to understand a tonal language or distinguish individual speakers in a crowd.

How radio works

Antennae tune a radio to a particular frequency (determined by the listener on their radio's dial) while tuning out all the other stations being broadcast. AM, short for amplitude modulation, and FM, short for frequency modulation, decode audio signals differently, leading to differences in sound quality and the distance a station can travel.

The three smallest bones in the human body—the malleus, incus, and stapes—amplify the vibrations of sound waves by almost 20 times to help enable hearing.

Noise-canceling headphones use a microphone to identify external sounds, which are then used to produce an out-of-sync version of those sounds to cancel them in your ears.

Hear examples of what tinnitus can sound like to those suffering from it.

Interacting sound waves can create regions where the pressure from each wave combines, allowing objects to levitate in place against gravity or be manipulated for touch-free construction.

A lot of jazz relies on syncopation

The style is when a musician plays a rhythm on the opposite side of the beat. That means notes are played on the "upbeats," or the spaces between the main beats of a musical bar. The effect is music that can sound unpredictable, even if it's been carefully constructed.

The decibel scale measures sound intensity, with hearing damage occurring after prolonged exposure to sounds above 85 decibels—equivalent to a noisy lawnmower.

View a collection of sound animations, which depict how a source of sound waves pushes against particles to carry energy away without matter being displaced.

Tinnitus estimates vary, but may occur in 10%-15% of the population

This video discusses the mechanisms underlying tinnitus and explores the knowns and unknowns about the condition. Tinnitus most commonly occurs among those with hearing loss, suggesting that cochlear damage may be a factor.

Visualizing a synaesthetic soundscape

Artist Michal Levy has chromesthesia, a subtype of synesthesia in which sounds and music trigger involuntary associations with and sensations of color. This condition gives Levy a unique artistic perspective and ability to interact with and interpret music. In this short animation, Levy tries to capture her audiovisual experience of 'Giant Steps," considered a landmark composition in jazz history by musician John Coltrane.

Tornadoes produce inaudible signals to humans hours before forming

Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have found that tornado-producing storms generate specific sounds below the range of human hearing, much like the infrasonic signals produced by earthquakes and avalanches. Although difficult to distinguish from wind noise, scientists hope to build systems that use these signals to improve tornado forecasting.

Musicians are 57% more likely to have tinnitus compared to the general public

Musicians have four times the risk of developing hearing loss, and their risk of developing tinnitus is increased by more than half.