Relax Melodies: Sleep Sounds 4+

-You have heard of therapy through meditation, touch, animals, coloring, smell, accupuncture, heat, cold, and electrical stimulation, but you probably don’t think twice about the idea of sound therapy. At least I didn’t, until I came across Relax Melodies, which clearly has a lot of science-based research behind it and a dedicated staff to continuously refine the effective use of sound therapy. While there is an entertainment factor to this app in being able to select from a large library of sounds, its main utility lies in its ability to truly help reduce stress within just 2 minutes of listening and help prime you for sleep within 5-10 minutes.
-What I truly appreciate about this app is the attention to detail in how the staff curates the available sounds. Most other sound relaxation apps I have tried have a smaller library of sounds which are often times more distracting (sleep-inhibiting) versus relaxing (sleep-inducing).
-Bottom line: If you have trouble winding down at night for bedtime, give this app a whirl and I bet you will find a sound or melody that will help empty your mind of the day’s worries and make your mind more receptive to enter into a state of slumber. (I really like “Piano” and “Zen”).
-One final note: The Customer Service behind this app is outstanding. I messed up my subscription selection and they walked me through how to fix it for the better. There were also extremely responsive to my emails.

I use this app for meditating, as well as background when I’m doing gardening or chores. Layering the various choices, according to my day, is easy and so useful. I’ve also put together favorite combinations and saved them with no difficulty. My main challenge comes when I try using the timer to meditate with — the numbers for setting how many minutes I want timed are backwards and upside down when they come on the screen. I can cope with that little adventure, but once I set the timing for that session, the timer doesn’t shut off the sounds, as it indicates it will. It just resets the timer back to its original length seamlessly, which means I never know how long I’ve been sitting. It worked the first time I used it and hasn’t worked properly since then, but that’s the only glitch I’ve come across. Really enjoy the variety of sounds, controlling their volume as I combine them, etc. Pleased about this app!

I first acquired this app on my iPhone, and there it is a magical, above-and-beyond masterpiece of a program. It’s beautiful, it works flawlessly, and I crave what it does. On the Mac, I still get the sounds that help me do deep work at the office, and which calm me and relieve anxiety when at home - which is very good. But the interface is clunky and it has issues, like that it always seems to have a red dot alert on its icon, as though there’s some message I need to read. But where is it? Heck if I know. It’s ugly (looks like an older iPad app) and doesn’t respond to swiping left or right with my track pad (I have to click the arrows). The fonts chosen, and the buttons are all dated. In the free version, the ads pop-up upside down. I hope the team behind this app can muster the resources to brush it up. I bought the pro version for my iPhone. I’m holding out for some signs of progress for this Mac version, however. But let me tell you, these sounds… they are wonderful and so helpful for setting a comforting mood. You can close the window and just let the sounds play, you can’t do better.