This Throbbing High-Tech Sound Bath Cleansed Me of Stress After CES 2025
“Are you ready to listen with all your body?” said the voice in my ear.
A week after reporting in Las Vegas CES 2025a large-scale science and technology exhibition and omen The future of our consumer electronicsI am indeed ready. Ready to escape the sensory overload of crowded casino floors and convention center halls; Ready to release the stress, tension, and fatigue in my body and mind; Ready to see if technology Something that gets me out of my own head, even just for a minute.
So I staggered over to the New York-New York Hotel to listen to “The Hum,” an immersive tech-driven sound bath that offered a respite from the intensity of CES. I’ve been looking for technology all week to relieve my stress and I hope this is it.
I walked into the arms of a giant foam “hostess” and sat in a zero-gravity lounge chair, where I put on a eye mask and was draped in weighted blanket. Initially, through my headphones, I could still hear Natasha Bedingfield’s voice echoing across the casino floor, but that was quickly drowned out by a sound tour that didn’t bring me to a place of true peace. place, but rather enter a space of mental and physical reset.
what it’s like to be in the buzz
CEO and founder Gen Cleary said the idea sound connectionThe company that designed and produced The Hum aims to bridge the gap between music therapy, entertainment, and ancestral practices like chanting, humming, and drumming, all of which filled my ears. At the same time, it seemed like they were inside me, thanks to 20 sensors in my chair and on my chest panel that allowed sound waves to pass through me.
As the bass line builds, a voice pushes me to take a deep breath and buzz, and I feel like I’m being lightly kicked in the back, or maybe being prone by a galloping horse. I know it doesn’t sound very relaxing when I say it, but I surrendered to it like a firm massage and it definitely did induce relaxation.
The feeling of weightlessness, combined with the sound waves traveling through my body and the music in my ears, transported me out of the casino and into a multi-sensory journey from the inside out. I was connected mentally and physically to the sound of the drums until they reached their peak and then suddenly stopped, at which point I felt like I was floating in the bubbling spring water.
“Injecting energy into the body”
Cleary, who worked as a creative director for Las Vegas DJs for many years, said designing soundscapes requires a lot of research and intuition to ensure the sound reaches the perfect intensity without being too overpowering.
“Everything we’re going to deliver,” she said, “has to be fine-tuned so that we know we’re taking care of our employees and no one is going to leave there anxious or feeling bad.” Instead, it should feel like It’s “pushing energy into the body.”
The Hum debuted at CES, but Cleary’s plan is to bring it and other sound installations and experiences to different spaces, making them accessible to everyone—a decision based on her interest in Las Vegas clubs Waiting for dissatisfaction with how many music spaces have become so exclusive and segregated. . She is speaking to several different airports, which are stressful environments for many, and The Hum will help passengers relax before and after travel.
“What would happen if we gave you this opportunity to relax, to instantly reset, to just connect to this music, not just through your hearing, but through your entire body?” she said.
Get out of the fog of burnout
The buzzing experience lasted five minutes, and after doing it twice in a row, I would say that what happened to me was indeed, as Cleary describes it, a reset. It creates a breathing space for me to simply exist, suspended in time in a soundtrack that permeates my entire body, taking me on a circular journey that ultimately returns me to a more grounded, peaceful self. I feel like I’ve been lifted out of the fog of burnout.
Like Cleary, I often find meditation and breathing exercises difficult to do—especially when I’m stressed and taming my thoughts feels like a challenge to myself. In my opinion, The Hum does the heavy lifting for you. You can just be there and let the technology do the heavy lifting.
There is an element of almost silent storytelling in The Hum, and over time Cleary hopes to use this technology to create different types of experiences that can all take place in the same environment while telling different stories. This is easy for many people to understand, she says, because whether we realize it or not, we’re already familiar with the concept of using music to self-soothe. We may even know what it feels like to be emotionally regulated by the sound waves vibrating through our bodies, whether through a club subwoofer or an acoustic guitar.
“We’re really touching on something that’s been built into everyone’s head, or some of the practices that people do,” she said. “This is a movement that encourages people to use music to help themselves in any way they can.”
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