Origin, not effect
The Solfeggio frequencies
The nine numbers come from a book published in 1999.
Not from the Middle Ages, not from a measurement, not from a lost manuscript. They were published in Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse by Joseph Puleo and Leonard Horowitz — derived from a numerological reading of a chapter in the Book of Numbers.
This page does not tell you what to listen to. Where a number comes from does not decide what it does to you — you decide that, and nobody has any business telling you otherwise. It only tells you where the number comes from, because that is stated wrongly in a great many places and because it can be checked.
What happened when
- um 1025Guido of Arezzo takes the opening syllables of the hymn Ut queant laxis as names for scale degrees: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. That is where the word Solfeggio comes from. No frequencies appear in it — the concept does not exist yet.
- 1636Marin Mersenne measures for the first time how often a string vibrates per second. Only from here on can a note be written as a number at all — six hundred years after Guido.
- 1834 · 1859Stuttgart settles on 440, Paris fixes 435 by decree. The pitch is argued over because it differed everywhere.
- 1930The unit gets its name: hertz, after Heinrich Hertz. So every number with “Hz” after it is younger than that.
- 1999Puleo and Horowitz publish six numbers — 396, 417, 528, 639, 741, 852 — and assign them to Guido’s six syllables.
- späterThree more are added: 174, 285, 963. They are not in the original book and come from others.
Nearly a thousand years lie between Guido and the numbers. That is not a detail at the margin — it is the heart of the matter. A medieval syllable cannot carry a frequency when in its own time there was neither frequency measurement nor a unit for it.
How the numbers are built
Puleo describes obtaining them through a digit-sum calculation from figures in Numbers 7. You do not have to believe that in order to check it — the numbers carry the arithmetic themselves.
| Number | digit sum | and again from that |
|---|---|---|
| 174 Hz | 12 | 3 |
| 285 Hz | 15 | 6 |
| 396 Hz | 18 | 9 |
| 417 Hz | 12 | 3 |
| 528 Hz | 15 | 6 |
| 639 Hz | 18 | 9 |
| 741 Hz | 12 | 3 |
| 852 Hz | 15 | 6 |
| 963 Hz | 18 | 9 |
Three, six, nine — over and over, without a single exception. No measured value in the world comes out like that. This is not an accusation; it is an observation about the kind of number: they are constructed, not found. Anyone who wants to continue the series needs no laboratory for it, only the rule.
528 and 432 do not fit together
This is where it becomes practical — and the reason this page sits on a 432 site. The two most popular numbers contradict each other. You cannot have both at once.
If the A sits at 440 Hz, the C above it sits at 523.25 Hz.
For the C to sit at 528 Hz, the A has to sit at 444 Hz.
So 528 is the C of a tuning with A = 444 — a tuning that sits higher than the usual 440, not lower. It is the opposite of what 432 stands for.
The gap is no hair’s breadth: between 528 and the C of a 432 tuning lie 47 cents, almost a quarter tone. Anyone who plays both one after the other hears it.
Set your track to 432 and you do not have 528 in it. You have 513.74.
And the sentence about DNA?
It stands on thousands of pages, usually without a source. It traces back to the same book of 1999, which in turn relies on work that never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal and that nobody has repeated.
We do not make that claim — because it is not evidenced, not because we take it for a quiet secret. What you experience yourself while listening is another matter: that belongs to you and needs no evidence.
What we do not do: promise you an effect. The Tuner is not a remedy and does not want to be one. It shifts pitch, and what comes of that is yours to decide.
What you can check yourself
Does your 528 file even sit at 528? Many recordings sold that way are ordinary material at 440. Drag a file into the measuring tool — it tells you in a few seconds where it really sits, and nothing is uploaded.
Can you hear the difference? In the listening test you get the same passage twice, tuned differently, and you guess. Five rounds, honest arithmetic — even when the result goes against us.