Archive 2020: Music in VR: Spatial Audio with Google Resonance

A fully immersive VR experience that lets the listener see the spatial placement of individual audio sources inside a virtual underground space. Each instrument in the mix — synth strings, acid bassline, beats — is assigned to a physical speaker object positioned in the room. Walk around, look up, move closer to a stack: the sound shifts accordingly, revealing the architecture of the mix in three dimensions.

The visual environment is deliberately stylised rather than photorealistic. Dark concrete panel walls, overhead industrial lighting cutting through haze, and clusters of speaker cabinets mounted at different heights and depths. The aesthetic is not meant to replicate reality — it aims to evoke the feeling of an underground rave: the weight of concrete around you, the way low frequencies reverberate off hard surfaces, the sense of being enclosed in sound.

Spatial audio design

Google Resonance Audio handles the spatial rendering inside Unity. Each audio source carries its own properties — position, directivity, and channel configuration. The synth strings are split into a stereo pair, floating left and right. The acid bassline runs as a single mono source from a central speaker. The beats are placed one meter from the concrete walls, with the room's acoustic properties set to simulate the dense, reverberant reflections of a concrete enclosure. The result is a mix that changes depending on where the listener stands — not a flat stereo render, but a spatial composition that surrounds and responds.

Visual language

The speaker labels visible in the scene are intentional. They expose the spatial configuration to the user — source name, channel assignment, distance from walls, acoustic surface type. The goal was transparency: let the listener understand how the sound is constructed in space, not just hear it. The visual consistency of the environment — monochrome concrete, colour-coded drivers (blue for strings, red for bass and beats), minimal geometry — reinforces the focus on sound rather than visual spectacle.