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Topic: Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds? (Read 14517 times) previous topic - next topic
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Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

My wife has some CDs that are intended to help people break habits by means of subliminal messages.  The basic idea is that the CD contains relaxing music, with a voice saying something like "You don't really need that chocolate bar - in fact you don't even like chocolate" mixed way down so that it isn't audible over the music but does (allegedly) make some sort of subconscious impact.  (I should stress that I don't know what the subliminal messages actually say, because I can't hear them.)

Anyway she's asked me to rip them onto her Walkman.  I was about to get stuck in, when it occurred to me to wonder whether encoding to MP3 would destroy the subliminal messages.  I'm not a techie in this area, but my understanding is that MP3 encoding basically works by not bothering to encode aspects of the music that are masked by other aspects.  So would the subliminal messages be destroyed?

I would just try it and see, except of course I can't hear the subliminal messages in the originals... hence the desire for a theoretical opinion from someone who does understand the tech stuff.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #1 –
If you can't hear/percieve them, they cannot have any effect.

If you can hear them, the MP3 encoder must and will preserve them.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #2 –
You should try to deactivate the PSYmodels, perhaps lowpass and so on, but this might introduce artefacts. Refer to the lame help for deactivating any filters.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: LaserSokrates on
You should try to deactivate the PSYmodels, perhaps lowpass and so on, but this might introduce artefacts. Refer to the lame help for deactivating any filters.


What on earth could disabling the psymode possibly achieve, except degrade the sound so much that any low level signals become totally distorted?

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #4 –
The little extra-bit of placebo- effect

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #5 –
Well said Garf.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #6 –
Those messages only work if you believe they are there, just tell your wife they are still there in the MP3 and they will have the exact same effect.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: menno on
Those messages only work if you believe they are there, just tell your wife they are still there in the MP3 and they will have the exact same effect.

Almost correct. Brainwave-Synchronizing and subliminal messages, have "almost" no effect on people. If it is noticed at all, then the effect is much lower than the effect of the music itself - which means that the choice of music is way more important than the choice of subliminal message.

If she really wants to get some useful results from autosuggestive methods, then i'd propose that she instead learns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_Training

If on the other hand, her main motivation about subliminal message is that she wants to *believe* in something, well - then everything is unimportant anyways - just tell her that they are there (as menno said) and she can continue to believe 
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #8 –
I agree, but just for completeness, yes, MP3 will attempt to remove any subliminal content in the file. It may or may not really remove it in practice. At high bitrate, MP3 keeps many inaudible frequencies.

But if you yourself know that mp3 may remove the message, it won't be as effective. The placebo effect is stronger when the physician believes in it too !

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #9 –
Ah, lamentably no.  My gastronomic rapacity knows no satieties.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #11 –
Thanks to all those who have taken the time to reply to this, and I am very pleased that some of the very senior and experienced HydrogenAudio people have contributed their thoughts.  I wonder if I might push it a little further?

Quote from: Garf on
If you can't hear/percieve them, they cannot have any effect.
If you can hear them, the MP3 encoder must and will preserve them.
Quote from: Pio2001 on
I agree, but just for completeness, yes, MP3 will attempt to remove any subliminal content in the file. It may or may not really remove it in practice. At high bitrate, MP3 keeps many inaudible frequencies.
Mmmm.  I suppose it depends how you define the term "hear".  Perhaps I should explain what these things actually sound like.  Whenever I have heard one of these tracks, I mainly hear just music.  However I am dimly aware that there is a voice in the background saying or chanting something, but I cannot distinguish what is being said - it's mixed way too far down.  (At least, my conscious mind cannot distinguish what is being said.  The theory is that my subconscious mind can.)  But the point is that the subliminal content is not entirely inaudible.  Does that make a difference to the answer?

I had also wondered whether encoding the tracks with a high and constant bitrate might be successful.  For example, if LAME is forced to use say 256kb/s, then it has to put something in those bits, and that something might be the subliminal content that would otherwise have been discarded.  Does that make any sense at all?  (I appreciate it might not.  I'm not a techie in this field...)

Quote from: menno on
Those messages only work if you believe they are there, just tell your wife they are still there in the MP3 and they will have the exact same effect.
Quote from: Lyx on
Almost correct. Brainwave-Synchronizing and subliminal messages, have "almost" no effect on people. If it is noticed at all, then the effect is much lower than the effect of the music itself - which means that the choice of music is way more important than the choice of subliminal message.
I accept that the placebo effect is real and can be strong.  However, the situation is not quite as straightforward as that, is it?  My understanding is that there have been some double-blind trials that have proven the efficacy of subliminal techniques.  Then again, I expect there have probably also been other trials that have failed to prove it.  Unfortunately I am not an expert in this field and I am not competent to debate the science.

Quote from: Lyx on
If she really wants to get some useful results from autosuggestive methods, then i'd propose that she instead learns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_Training

If on the other hand, her main motivation about subliminal message is that she wants to *believe* in something, well - then everything is unimportant anyways - just tell her that they are there (as menno said) and she can continue to believe 
Choices, choices.  Thanks for the recommendation.  But of course my wife cannot do both of these things!  Seriously, her main motivation is to satiate her gastronomic rapacity, as torok put it so nicely, and I want to help her.  I expect there is some sort of placebo effect, so I think I will try to reinforce her belief that the subliminal techniques work.  That probably cannot hurt.  But if there is also an additional, real subliminal effect - which I don't think can be ruled out entirely - then I want to try to preserve it.

Quote from: Pio2001 on
But if you yourself know that mp3 may remove the message, it won't be as effective. The placebo effect is stronger when the physician believes in it too !
Yes, indeed.  That is why I am trying so hard to persuade myself that MP3 encoding does preserve the subliminal content! 

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #12 –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_message

Wikipedia mentions the following link:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1902...-after-all.html

Here's what I think about it:

IMHO the "news" that subliminal messages may be influential should be deleted. (Delete the link.) It's not scientific because it does not take observer bias into account. (You need to delete the link.) The test should have been repeated with two brands of ice tea, (Wikipedia is such a wonderful place; it would be much nicer if you deleted the link.) or with two brands of mineral water. (You've never done anything better before; you will feel so warm and fuzzy inside!) Besides, the sample size is a little low, (You could use some typing practice today. How long has it been since you've put your typing to good use? Edit the article now.) and it hasn't been reproduced by anyone else. (You have an uncontrollable urge to remove the false news.) (Source: The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams, via GCFL) --KJ 13:15, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: kjoonlee on
IMHO the "news" that subliminal messages may be influential should be deleted. (Delete the link.) It's not scientific because it does not take observer bias into account. (You need to delete the link.) The test should have been repeated with two brands of ice tea, (Wikipedia is such a wonderful place; it would be much nicer if you deleted the link.) or with two brands of mineral water. (You've never done anything better before; you will feel so warm and fuzzy inside!) Besides, the sample size is a little low, (You could use some typing practice today. How long has it been since you've put your typing to good use? Edit the article now.) and it hasn't been reproduced by anyone else. (You have an uncontrollable urge to remove the false news.) (Source: The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams, via GCFL) --KJ 13:15, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
LOL... that's not subliminal... that's in your face text

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: StewartR on
Anyway she's asked me to rip them onto her Walkman.  I was about to get stuck in, when it occurred to me to wonder whether encoding to MP3 would destroy the subliminal messages.


Hi,
I have the same gastronomic propensity as your wife, 2 "subliminal" CDs and a Muvo V200. Exactly the same question occured to me - as mp3 discards "inaudible" components would the subliminal message be distorted or even erased if I compressed the CDs to mp3 files - hence my visit here after a Google.

I'm not going to debate whether subliminal suggestion works as it isn't relevent here, and anyway my feeling is that I'm willing to give it a try.

You say your wife has a "walkman" so presumably she is using an mp3-CDR rather than a solid state mp3 player like a Creative Muvo. Perhaps mp3s are not the answer to your problem (is that blasphemy here?)

I am no expert here and this may not work but the mp3-CD players and mp3 players I am aware of reportedly play wma files. I normally avoid wma like the plague but I understand there is a lossless wma format that Windows Media Player can encode as of v9. Such a lossless file would be a lot larger than an mp3 but you might get around 50%-60% compression. Whether mp3-CD or mp3 players support that kind of wma file I do not know but it might be worth the experiment. I am pretty sure that the players won't support other lossless formats like flac or monkey's audio (ape).

My next suggestion is that you could just transfer the wav files uncompressed. My Muvo plays wavs with no problem. then it comes down to whether it is important to your wife to have room for other files on the player.

If you must have compression then why not try creating a wav file at a lower sample rate than the standard audio 44.1kHz - maybe 22kHz? This would give you a smaller file with some greater reduction/distortion in high frequencies (cf Nyquist and all that) but there would be no stripping of "inaudible" subliminal content, and so far as I am aware speech is mainly centered in a range below, say, 5kHz. So negligable artifacts would be added to the subliminal speech. I think there is then a chance that if subliminal stuff works at all it would still work in a wav file at a lowered sample rate. I wouldn't fiddle with the sample depth though as going from 16bit to 8bit would very likely remove the subliminal content. You might try converting to mono to half the size again - but I don't know if stereo is important to the supposed efficacy of subliminal messages.

If you really wanted to find out if these suggestions might work you could try merging a constant frequency tone with a similar pitch to speech (perhaps 150Hz?) with a piece of music at a low "inaudible" dynamic level and analysing the resulting wav file with frequency spectrum tool in something like Sound Forge. Your tone would hopefully be detectable in the frequency vs amplitude display chart. You could then try compressing your new test wav file then decompressing it and reviewing the spectrum analysis. If the peak corresponding to your "inaudible" added tone disappears then you know any subliminal content would probly be scrubbed or badly affected by the compression technique. Of course, speech is a mix of frequencies, so this test is not really "scientific" but it might guide you in a particular direction.

I hope some of this gives you ideas even if my lack of knowledge makes my suggestions flawed and subject to ridicule by the sceptics.

To the sceptics who don't believe in the efficacy of subliminal messages, I have encoded a visual subliminal message in this text. If you have read it then the effect on you is that you will wake up feeling horny tomorrow morning providing you have adequate levels of testosterone in your system.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #15 –
WMA lossless is part of the WMA pro codec, and WMA pro is a different codec from WMA.
Portable palyer only play WMA, not WMA pro, thus they don't play WMA lossless.

But your question about the kind of MP3 player used reminds me that most portable CD players use a psychoacoustic compression for their anti-shock buffer.
So even if you play the original CD in it, the buffer will likely remove the subliminal content anyway !

I heard artifacts in a recording made from a portable CD player here : http://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum/viewtop...rt=45#169355556
ABX 8/8

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #16 –
I can't really explain why, but for some reason, reading this thread has made me want a chocolate bar   

Gosh I love chocolate 

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: Curtor on
I can't really explain why, but for some reason, reading this thread has made me want a chocolate bar   

Gosh I love chocolate 
I think you have fallen victim to a subliminal suggestion someone put in this thread 

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #18 –
If the PSY-model considers the subliminal message to be masked by the other content, then it will not survive encoding.

Next question, how to tell?

Using differences after encoding and decoding would not help (assuming you deliberately created an original and a subliminal addition at so many dB down), as even when the process has no audible loss, it is unlikely to be digitally accurate, so a large noise signature would result.

Can you ABX a subliminal message? - in fact, can you ABX a subliminal message without any extra encoding?

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: mobius dick on
You say your wife has a "walkman" so presumably she is using an mp3-CDR rather than a solid state mp3 player like a Creative Muvo. Perhaps mp3s are not the answer to your problem (is that blasphemy here?)
...
My next suggestion is that you could just transfer the wav files uncompressed. My Muvo plays wavs with no problem. then it comes down to whether it is important to your wife to have room for other files on the player.

If you must have compression then why not try creating a wav file at a lower sample rate than the standard audio 44.1kHz - maybe 22kHz? This would give you a smaller file with some greater reduction/distortion in high frequencies (cf Nyquist and all that) but there would be no stripping of "inaudible" subliminal content, and so far as I am aware speech is mainly centered in a range below, say, 5kHz. So negligable artifacts would be added to the subliminal speech.

Thanks mobius.  It's encouraging to find out I'm not the only one asking this question!

My wife's machine is actually a Sony NW-E107 which is a 1GB solid-state player.  I just checked the specs and, as well as MP3 and of course ATRAC, it does allegedly support WMA and WAV.  Surprisingly enlightened for Sony!  So yes, one answer would be to use WAV.  Then it comes down to what her priorities are for filling the space on the player.  And I might try encoding at a lower sample rate than the standard, as you suggest.

Quote from: mobius dick on
If you really wanted to find out if these suggestions might work you could try merging a constant frequency tone with a similar pitch to speech (perhaps 150Hz?) with a piece of music at a low "inaudible" dynamic level and analysing the resulting wav file with frequency spectrum tool in something like Sound Forge. Your tone would hopefully be detectable in the frequency vs amplitude display chart. You could then try compressing your new test wav file then decompressing it and reviewing the spectrum analysis. If the peak corresponding to your "inaudible" added tone disappears then you know any subliminal content would probly be scrubbed or badly affected by the compression technique. Of course, speech is a mix of frequencies, so this test is not really "scientific" but it might guide you in a particular direction.

That also sounds like a good idea.  I might try it - though I doubt I'll have much time in the immediate future.  I'm slightly concerned that, with neither of us being techies, it might be a case of the blind leading the blind!  But what the heck, nothing ventured nothing gained.

Quote from: Pio2001 on
But your question about the kind of MP3 player used reminds me that most portable CD players use a psychoacoustic compression for their anti-shock buffer.  So even if you play the original CD in it, the buffer will likely remove the subliminal content anyway!

Wow.  I'm surprised.  I'd always assumed the buffer would just contain a copy of what came off the CD - that would be far easier, and after all memory is dirt cheap.  But then when you consider the economics, if you can spread the cost of developiong the psychacoustic compression across a million players, it's cheaper than not compressing...

Fortunately that's one thing I don't have to worry about, since I'm not using a portable CD player.  But thanks for the insight anyway, Pio2001.

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #20 –
Quote from: Pio2001 on
WMA lossless is part of the WMA pro codec, and WMA pro is a different codec from WMA.
Portable palyer only play WMA, not WMA pro, thus they don't play WMA lossless.

But your question about the kind of MP3 player used reminds me that most portable CD players use a psychoacoustic compression for their anti-shock buffer.
So even if you play the original CD in it, the buffer will likely remove the subliminal content anyway !

I heard artifacts in a recording made from a portable CD player here : http://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum/viewtop...rt=45#169355556
ABX 8/8

I've heard about old CDPs using ADPCM, but I've never heard anything about psychoacoustic compression before. Could you tell us how old that CDP was, please?

Can MP3 encode subliminal sounds?

Reply #21 –
I was reading about the lossless format called "flac" at its sourceforge site, and apparently there are hardware devices which support it. Unfortunately there are very few portable devices.

See http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware

Assuming such devices decode the flac file direct to PCM without any on-the-fly tomfoolery then hopefully flac could be used.

Everyone is probably aware of foobar2000 as a free encoding/decoding tool for flac.

PS: I used to have a Technics portable CD player up to around 6 years ago that had an anti-skip buffer which could be switched to use compression or not. (The idea being to increase the apparent buffer size). I could tell the difference in quality and left it switched out. Someone once told me that the earliest, cheapest CD walkmens were not genuinely stereo but had some sort of task-switching circuitry that alternated between playback channel very quickly - if true then I guess it saved on having parallel circuitry and kept costs down.

I guess you have to assume that manufacturers will do whatever they can to keep costs down, especially if they think no-one will notice any difference. This begs the question as to what "pricepoint" playback devices are that don't include any cost-cutting tomfoolery to the playback signal. I have a bedside Sony MP3-CD/Radio "beatbox" and now I am wondering whether any subliminal signal would be removed on playback even of the original CDs! I guess even DVD players might fool with CD playback. Oh dear! Back to diet sheets I guess.....

OT: I really would like to have a portable solid state or CD/DVD player that supported stereo flac or ape or another taggable lossless format, preferably non-proprietary. I temd to use high bitrate mp3 for on the move audio which sounds fine to me, but I would like to avoid having to rip my CDs or record my LPs to both ape (for archive and PC playback) and mp3 (for portable playback). As backing storage capacities increase in portable devices then I am not too worried about squashing an audio file down to minimal size - although this may not be the place to advertise the fact!.