Vibe to the beat: A guide to sound-activated vibrators for syncing with music or audio porn
Designed to simultaneously enhance your listening experience and amplify your pleasure, sound-activated sex toys are innovative sex tech for those who want to combine the pleasures of music with the thrills of sex. Whether you’re listening to your favorite tunes or even indulging in some audio erotica, these vibrators sync up with sound to create a unique and immersive experience.
So, get comfortable, turn up the music and explore the erotic world of auralism with these sound-activated vibrators.
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How do music-responsive vibrators work?
Either by using a microphone in the remote control or via an app. Sound-controlled vibrators are designed to pick up sounds and mimic the frequencies by converting them into vibrations.
Like most toys, many sound-activated vibrators will have pre-set patterns, and while the sound feature is the unique selling point, if you’re not a fan of the music functionality you can always revert back to using it as a normal vibe.
How can I use sound-activated sex toys?
By incorporating sound, we add another technological dimension to the experience of masturbation and sex.
Pleasure feedback loop
In the 2017 London Sex Tech Hackathon at Goldsmiths University, one of the entries led by Co-founder of Creative Coding Amsterdam and Live Coding Sessions Sabrina Verhage was a personalized vibrator, called Fake It ‘Till You Make It. This prototype was conceptually designed to generate Pavlovian conditioning in order to feel pleasure at the sound of your own voice. By hooking a cheap vibrator up to an Arduino controller, Verhage explains that the prototype is controlled by moaning, “and as you moan more, you receive more reward,” essentially creating a pleasure feedback loop.
As a creative technologist, Verhage is excited by the auditory aspect of sex and moaning as a form of human communication and how our tech advancements could lead to a toy that listens to moaning and responds to that. “In mass-media porn, the auditory and visual aspects are always so exaggerated, and in real life, we do moan. It’s a natural response, while not for everyone, a lot of people get turned on by the sound of moaning.”
She ponders: “What can we learn from moaning? Can we assume moaning means enjoyment? And if so… can we have a sex toy that gets driven by moaning?”
The idea behind this concept is that it encourages you to express yourself vocally during solo sex, which may have additional benefits of connecting you to your body on a deeper level and creating new pleasure associations with your own moans. “You moan because you like it, you like it because you moan.”
To vibe in the club
Another exciting possibility for sound-activated vibrators is the opportunity to go to your favorite music concert, DJ, or club night, and to literally vibe along to the music, live.
While listening and dancing to live music can already have a deeply pleasurable experience thanks to the release of dopamine and endorphins. Musician and meditator, Darin McFadyen, believes “that there is a connection between the exalted states on the dancefloor and the spiritual states achieved in meditation.” Add a layer of erotic stimulation, along with the oxytocin and serotonin release, and you can only imagine how physically and aurally orgasmic that could be on the dance floor. Do, of course, check out our sex tech consent guide before using any toys in public though.
For enhanced sexy times
Popping on a sexy playlist while getting down and dirty isn’t anything new to our ears, but as music has been found to reduce stress levels (essential for feeling more arousal), incorporating sound-activated vibrators to sex can have a whole host of benefits to the experience.
As toys are increasingly moving away from just humanoid aesthetic design (like phallic shapes), and moving towards tactile design (incorporating movement or pulsation), Verhage adds they are also beginning to add “more and more senses e.g. auditory,” it doesn’t just look nice and feel nice, it also “sounds nice, and all of these features contribute to the overall arousal.”
And if stress is something that gets in the way of your sex life, you can also use the vibrations to help you move, thrust, lick, or suck in time to the music, using the multi-arousal sensations to distract you from negative thoughts; helping you to feel more mindful and present in the experience.
To add an element of play
In the kink community, sex is often referred to as “adult play”. And that’s exactly what it is. With new novelty ways to bring fun into the bedroom like a sound-activated sex toy, there is a chance to be playful.
During partnered play, you may want to experiment or explore interesting ways to use sound technology. For example, putting on karaoke or beatboxing competitions where maybe the partner has to guess the song from the vibrations. Or experiment with some DIY BDSM by tying up your partner and putting on some porn they have to watch, listen, and vibe to — inducing forced orgasms (consensually of course).
Sound responsive sex toys
Top music & voice-activated sex toys
OhMiBod
Possibly the most well-known of music and voice-activated sex toys, are the OhMiBod range of ClubVibes. You have the clit vibrator 2.0H, which is a panty vibrator that comes with its very own pocketed black thong to slip the vibrator into. As well as the 3.0H Hero, which is a remote-controlled prostate vibrator designed to be inserted into the anus. Both come with a small black remote with an integrated microphone to pick up sounds that transfer into simultaneous vibrations.
As well as the ClubVibe range, OhMiBod has a G-spot sound-activated vibrator called the Freestyle G. This toy, however, comes with a wireless transmitter that you plug into your iPod or another sound system to enjoy the synced sensations.
Lovense
No matter what Lovense toy you have, as long as you download the Lovense App (via iOS or Android), you will be able to connect your Spotify account to sync your toy up to your favorite song or playlist.
Music transfer platform MusConv explains that “the vibrations from your device will match the beat of the song, creating a more immersive and enjoyable experience.”
While Spotify is the only platform that is currently compatible, Lovense is working to add Apple and Google Music to support a wider range of music lovers. However, there are other ways you can sync up to sound using the Lovense Music Feature.
Lelo
Well-known sex toy store Lelo has also taken a stab at sound sex tech with Siri2. A handheld clitoral vibrator, it has eight different settings “inspired by music”, or alternatively you can choose the option to “pulse along to any beat you choose.”
Whisperz
The remote-controlled Butt-Plug has a “whisper” function which means that your partner can activate the vibrations with their voice up to 7 meters.
Vibrators for listening to and syncing with audio porn
Vibes Only
Using in-app audio porn, Vibes Only has a range of vibrators, including the Analise, that sync up and vibrate in time to juicy parts of the app’s erotic stories.
Satisfyer
With the Satisfyer Connect app feature came the Remotyca project, a collaborative campaign with the adult erotica site Berlinable. This means that some Satisfyer devices, including the Curvey 1+, can be synced with erotic short stories.
Sex toy-activated music… what’s that?
Now you know that sound-activated sex toys exist, are you surprised to discover that the sex tech hacker, Kyle Machulis, aka qDot, was able to make music with a sex toy? In one YouTube video Trombone Champ & Interactive Fleshlight, you can see him turning the Fleshlight into an interactive musical instrument for the online game Trombone Champ.
A future of hyper-personalized audio sex tech
Verhage shares that if you want to get into custom-controlling sex toys she really recommends using qDot’s Buttplug Sex Toy Control Project to control your own Bluetooth-controllable sex toys. “So if you’re a techy like me and know some programming you could write the code for your own sex toy e.g. to respond to your own moans.”
Going forward, we can imagine toys will become increasingly personalized, audio-responsive sex tech devices “that learn what you like and respond to that,” says Verhage.
Already we are experiencing a dramatic acceleration in AI, and “you can now generate the sound of moaning just from a computer — computer-generated moaning.” Verhage ponders how “we can have a model trained on your own personal moaning sounds for hyper-personal moaning analysis. Or maybe specifically your partner’s moaning.”
Will you sync up your sex life?
While sound-activated sex toys may be considered a novelty, there are some benefits to their technology that shouldn’t be overlooked.
As Verhage emphasizes, arousal isn’t just focused on a body part, “it’s an all-encompassing complicated sensation, and we’re learning more and more about that complexity.”
With more mindful and embodied sensual exploration that tunes us into the present moment, music, voice, and vibration are just some of the ways we can enhance our sexual pleasure. Not to mention, offering a new and creative dimension to intimacy and connection for couples.
So, it might be worth considering, what’s your vibe?
Oli is a freelance sex tech researcher based in London. With an MA in Sexual Dissidence, researching sex tech, and a BA in History, researching gender and sexuality, she has a keen understanding of the past, present and future of sex. In addition to SEXTECHGUIDE, you can find Oli's work on titles such as shado-mag, QueerMajority, UnicornZine and more.
