What am I listening to?
Labels in this category are close to meaningless. Titles say binaural when the audio is alternating, and say nothing at all when it is genuinely binaural. Ignore the title and use your ears.
The ten-second test
Put headphones on. Play the track. Listen to the beat itself, not the music underneath it.
Does it move side to side? That is bilateral audio.
Does it sit in the middle and pulse? That is a binaural beat.
Can you not hear anything distinct? Either the track is neither of these, or something in your playback is flattening the difference between your ears. Check that first.
Secondary tells
| What you notice | Most likely |
|---|---|
| Alternating hits, roughly one a second | Bilateral |
| A continuous drone with a slow throb | Binaural |
| Two alternating tones at different pitches | Bilateral, despite appearances |
| Low, warm, unobtrusive register | Either |
| The title mentions bilateral, tapping, or a named therapy | Almost certainly bilateral |
| The title says binaural | Genuinely unreliable. Use your ears |
That third row is the one that catches people. Two tones at two pitches looks like the recipe for a binaural beat written down. It is not, because they alternate rather than overlap, and overlapping is the whole mechanism.
A worked example
This hour-long track is the one that started this site.
It is honest about what it is. The title calls it bilateral music therapy in so many words, on a channel called Destined Dynamics.
It is a good example anyway, because of how it is built. Ambient music sits in both ears, and over the top a beat alternates left and right at two slightly different pitches, low in the register. Written out, that is two tones at two pitches, one per ear. Listen to it and the beat is clearly travelling across your head, and the two tones never sound at the same moment.
That is the trap in a single track, from a video that describes itself accurately.
A caveat that comes with any link like this: we cannot vouch for what is at that address tomorrow. Videos get replaced, made private, or re-uploaded with different audio.