Watch a 5-minute video demo of Around Sound here!
"around sound" is a fully immersive and customizable spatial music player. Load in your own .mp3 files, put on your headset, and jam out like never before. In this virtual reality playground, you can create the soundsystem of dreams by using an unlimited amount of speakers, which are all simulated to have accurate real-time directions, sound profiles, and reflections.
If you want to try the app, the download is free on Itch.io. Around Sound requires a Meta Quest headset and a VR-Ready Windows computer to play. Connect your headset with 2 Touch Controllers to your PC in Link Mode and launch the .exe app. Dedicated headphones or earbuds are recommended while listening!
If you want to check out the code, look at the files above and go to Assets > Scripts.
Built with Unity 2022 and Oculus VR SDK.
Around Sound takes place in virtual reality, where the listener can navigate a simulated indoor environment.
Using Edit Mode, you can place different types of speakers anywhere in your surroundings. Want to focus on bass? Drop some subwoofers nearby to emphasize these frequencies. Want to hear the hi-hats better? Stack some tweeters on top of each other! You can spatialize your music in any physical setup you can imagine, without even having the master files.
Once you hit play, your music will play from all of the speakers that you have created. Try turning your head while it's playing: the music sounds like it's coming from the speakers' position! To enhance immersion even further, the virtual environments in Around Sound have their sound geometry baked in. Plaster walls, wooden floors, and even carpets have their material properties assigned so that it sounds like you're really in that virtual room, listening to your playlist.
On the first time you launch the app, a folder is created in the user's Documents Folder. Head to Documents\Around Sound and add any .mp3, .wav, or .ogg files to load them into the app on next launch. Get ready to rediscover your own favourite music in 3D space!
The VR environment is intuitive: you can check the time of the current song by glancing at the TVs around you. You can even change your environment if you want a different listening experience. Try the Garage, where steel walls and ceramic floors allow for epic levels of reverb.
For listeners who want to tune their experience even deeper, you can edit the frequency ranges emitted by each speaker type for a studio-like experience.
Virtual and augmented reality are fields of software that I am super hopeful will flourish in the future. I'm proud of just how fun jamming out to home concerts is in Around Sound - it's so much more interactible and immersive that sometimes I put down my phone and put on a headset to listen to music instead. I built it because I was disappointed with the quality and non-customizable nature of spatial songs on Apple Music, and because sometimes I get lost in the shower imagining huge speakers playing songs from above me.
Next, I want to make around sound live up to its name. With the release of Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro on the horizon, I want to allow users to place speakers in their real surroundings for even more immersion. With full-color passthrough, I think this experience would be way more enjoyable. And with Apple's Audio Raytracing on Vision Pro, I wonder how realistic Around Sound can get.