“The carrier wave” is a community term for a buzzing, ringing or humming sound some people describe hearing during a DMT experience, often early on. It belongs to the same small vocabulary as “the waiting room”, “the dome” and “the chrysanthemum”, and the site found no documented first use of it.
Sound is a regular part of DMT reports. A 2022 analysis of 3,778 online experience reports found an auditory ringing-type sound in 583 (15.4%), described with words such as ringing, buzzing, humming, static, droning and an “auditory carrier wave”. A felt body vibration, buzz or tingling appeared in 1,026 (27.2%) (Lawrence et al., 2022). Those figures count only what writers chose to mention.
A 2026 lab study adds detail. In interviews with 23 people given DMT during brain scanning, auditory experiences were described in 78% of interviews, and participants separated plain sounds, such as buzzing or ringing, from the sounds of recognizable things, such as chanting or laughter. Sounds usually arrived after bodily and visual effects (Sanders et al., 2026). The name describes how the sound felt to listeners; it says nothing about a signal outside the brain.
Sources
- Lawrence et al., 2022, Scientific Reports: 3,778 coded DMT reports
- Sanders et al., 2026, Neuroscience of Consciousness: micro-phenomenology of immersion
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