Free Online Player
Heartbeat 01
Heartbeat 01 is the slower and deeper of the two heartbeat recordings here, a soft unhurried thump with nothing else in the file to compete with it. Most of it lives below what a laptop or a phone can produce, so what you actually get depends almost entirely on what you play it through.
Ready to play
Stack this under rain or a fire, keep the blend, and play it with your screen off. Slo, on iOS, Android and Mac.
Whether you hear it depends on the speaker
Small drivers cut off before the part of this file that matters, so on a laptop it shrinks to a soft tap with the body missing. Headphones, or a speaker with a proper low-frequency driver, give you the whole thing. The gap between those two experiences is wider here than for almost anything else on the site.
The thumps have some position without being spread far apart, and the pulse stays regular. That is the point of the file: a slow, repeating low thump, about one and a half a second, with silence around each one.
Choosing between the two heartbeat files
Heartbeat 02 runs about three times as fast, sits a little higher, and spreads a little wider. This one is the slower, darker and more centred of the pair. If you want the pulse to sit back behind everything else, take this file. If you want it defined and present, take the other.
Cat Purr is the nearest thing on the site by character, a low repeating pulse rather than a steady bed. Old Clock gives a mechanical pulse instead of a biological one. Because this file is nearly all bass and nothing else, it layers cleanly underneath other sounds: the Heartbeat 01 and brown noise blend in the free sound mixer fills the space between beats.
About playing it near a baby
Heartbeat recordings get used around infants a great deal, and we are not going to tell you what one does for a baby. We do not put this forward as a way of settling one, and we give no volume guidance for infants. Anyone thinking about playing any sound near a young child should ask a paediatrician or a hearing professional rather than a website.
For adults there is a practical point worth knowing, and it is not a medical one. Low frequencies are easy to under-estimate by ear, and they travel through floors and walls far better than treble does. A level that feels modest in your room may not be modest in the room below.
Frequently asked questions
Why can I barely hear it on my laptop?
Because most of the file sits below what a small speaker can produce. You are hearing the fraction that survives, not the thump itself.
How fast is the pulse?
About one and a half thumps a second across the 32-second loop. Heartbeat 02 runs roughly three times faster.
Is it suitable to play near a baby?
We make no claim about that and give no volume guidance for infants. Ask a paediatrician or a hearing professional before playing any sound near a young child.
Is it a real recording of a heart?
It is a heartbeat recording in the sound library rather than a clinical measurement, and it is not intended for any diagnostic use.