This pulsating high-tech sound bath washed me of my post-CES 2025 stress
“Are you ready to listen with your whole body?” said the voice in my ear.
After a week in Las Vegas coverage CES 2025growing technology show and harbinger of our future of consumer electronicsI was really ready. Ready to escape the sensory overload of casino floors and crowded convention center halls; ready to get rid of the stress, tension and fatigue I carry in my body and mind; ready to see if technology it could get me out of my own head even for a minute.
And so I went to the New York-New York Hotel to take in “The Hum,” an immersive technological sound bath that promised me a break from the intensity of CES. All week I’ve been on the lookout for technology that could potentially calm my stress levels and I was hoping that was it.
I entered the arms of a giant foam “hostess” and settled into a zero-gravity reclining chair where I dressed eye mask and was draped in a weighted blanket. At first, I could still hear Natasha Bedingfield’s voice echoing across the casino floor through my headphones, but it was soon drowned out by a sonic journey that transported me not exactly to a place of calm, but to a space of mental and physical reset.
How does it feel at The Hum
The idea, says Gen Cleary, CEO and founder of Sound connectionthe company that designed and made The Hum is to create a bridge between music therapy, entertainment and ancestral practices of singing, humming and drumming, all of which filled my ears. At the same time, it seemed like they were inside my body thanks to the 20 transducers in both my chair and chest panels that allowed the sound waves to pass through me.
A voice prompted me to take deep breaths and hum as the bassline built, and I felt like I was being gently kicked in the back, or perhaps being carried prone on a galloping horse. When I put it that way, I know it doesn’t sound too relaxing, but I gave it the same way you would a healthy massage, and it really did induce relaxation.
The feeling of weightlessness combined with the sound waves coursing through my body and the music in my ears transported me outside the casino and plunged me into a multi-sensory journey from the inside out. I was connected to the drumbeat both mentally and physically before it suddenly stopped after hitting a peak, at which point I felt like I was floating in a bubbling spring.
“Pushing energy into the body”
Cleary, who worked for years as a creative director for DJs in Las Vegas, says designing the soundscape was a lot of research combined with intuition to make sure it was the perfect intensity without overwhelming the crowd.
“All the content that we’re going to provide,” she said, “has to be fine-tuned to the point where we know that we’re taking care of our people and that nobody’s going to walk out of there feeling anxious or sick.” Instead, suggests that it feels like it “puts energy into the body”.
The Hum debuted at CES, but Cleary’s plan is to bring it and other sound installations and experiences into different spaces to make them accessible to everyone—a decision based on her distaste for how exclusive and segregated many music spaces have become, such as the clubs in Las Vegas. She spoke to several different airports – notoriously stressful environments for many people – where The Hum will help travelers relax before or after travel.
“If we give you that opportunity to relax, reset in no time, just by connecting that music, not just through your hearing, but through your whole body … then what happens?” she said.
Lifted from the haze of burnout
The Hum experience lasts five minutes, and after doing it twice in a row, I would say that what happened to me was indeed, as Cleary described, a reset. It created a breathing space so I could just exist, suspended in time to a soundtrack that permeated my entire body and took me on a circular journey that ultimately brought me back to a more grounded, peaceful version of myself. I came out feeling like I had come out of the haze of burnout.
Like Cleary, I often find meditation and breathing exercises difficult to master—especially when I’m stressed and taming my mind feels like a challenge in itself. As I see it, The Hum does the heavy lifting of relaxation for you. You can just exist and let technology carry the load.
There is an element of almost silent storytelling in The Hum, and over time Cleary wants to use the technology to create different types of experiences that can take place in the same setting while telling alternate tales. It’s easy for many people to take advantage of, she says, because whether we realize it or not, we’re already familiar with the concept of using music to soothe ourselves. And we may even know what it feels like, whether through a club subwoofer or an acoustic guitar, to be emotionally regulated by sound waves vibrating through our bodies.
“We’re really tapping into something that’s already implanted in everyone’s mind, or something from the practice that people do,” she said. “It’s a movement that encourages people to use music to help themselves in any way possible.”
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