The best spirit box apps, by where the audio comes from
The one question that matters when choosing a spirit box app is whether its audio comes from a live, unpredictable source — real radio or a live microphone — or from recordings stored inside the app. The live-source apps are the internet radio sweepers and the microphone loopers; word-bank apps are not spirit boxes however they are named. The airplane-mode test tells them apart in thirty seconds.
Why not a star ranking
Store ratings reward clear voices, and the clearest voices come from recordings. A list sorted by stars puts the sound banks first. This page sorts by the one property the paranormal community itself uses to judge an app, and that you can verify on any phone: the source of the audio.
The community's criteria
- A raw, unpredictable audio source: live radio or a live microphone. The moment there is a stored bank or dictionary, serious investigators class the app as unverifiable.
- No word banks and no text-to-speech.
- A real sweep with adjustable speed and direction, including reverse.
- Raw WAV recording with tools to review it: scrub, slow, reverse.
- Transparency. Developers who state their limitations get more trust, not less.
Signs of the opposite: it works in airplane mode, it charges for "more words", the vocabulary repeats, there is a radar with blips.
Apps with a live audio source
These sweep or capture real, unpredictable audio. Alphabetical; the descriptions are each app's own.
| App | Source | Method |
|---|---|---|
| EchoVox | Live microphone | Records ambient sound and feeds it back through an echo loop in real time. Its own credibility argument: what you hear is what is written to disk. |
| Ghost Box: Spirit Radio | Internet radio | Hundreds of real stations, fast scan, several simultaneous channels, echo and reverb. |
| IP Radio Spirit Box (Spotted: Ghosts) | Internet radio | Downloads a list of live stations, connects to them and sweeps at random. One of the earliest software equivalents of a ghost box. |
| SCD-1 (Steve Huff) | Internet radio | Scans live Shoutcast channels; "nothing preloaded" in live mode. |
| SpiritBox (this site) | Internet radio | Four live streams on a 64-position dial, 50–350 ms dwell, noise between hops, WAV plus a source log naming every station. Android. |
Each can be checked with the airplane-mode test: they go quiet without a connection or, for EchoVox, without a microphone.
Apps that have stated they use stored audio
Only apps whose developers or published investigations have said so. There are many more in the category; we have not tested them and do not list them.
- Spirit Story Box: described by its developer as an algorithmic random word generator; keeps producing words in airplane mode.
- GhostTube: a sensor-triggered word dictionary, with the developer's own statement that no app is scientifically proven.
- Spirit Talker: a word base voiced by the phone's text-to-speech engine.
Classify any app yourself
- Start a session.
- Switch on airplane mode; to be thorough, turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth too.
- If the voices stop within seconds, the source was live. If they continue, it was stored.
- Look for a log or a station name. A live-radio app can tell you what it played; a sound bank cannot.
Questions
So which is the best one?
Among the live-source apps the differences are features and taste: number of channels, sweep control, recording, logging, platform. SpiritBox was built to match P-SB7 behaviour closely and to log every source; others have more effects or an iOS version. All of them pass the test that matters.
Why list other apps at all?
Because the line that matters runs between live sources and sound banks, not between SpiritBox and other live-source apps. Anyone choosing real radio over a word bank is making the right choice, whichever app it is.
Is a free app with ads worse?
Not by this criterion. Price and ads say nothing about the audio source. Judge the source first, then the rest.