Each new technology hype cycle tends to bury its predecessor. The current obsession with AI has, therefore, robbed attention from the previous next big thing.
Virtual reality has been out of the headlines for a while now. But does that mean it was a technological dead end? Or is it quietly maturing in the background, poised to return once we’ve tired of having ChatGPT portray family members as action figures?
The TL;DR of VR was that you’d put on a pair of ski goggles and be transported into an alternative reality. But in practice, there wasn’t actually much to do in the virtual world, and the illusion often proved superficial. The idea that one day we’d all be commuting to work in Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse now seems even more preposterous than it did first time around.
Whilst VR isn’t teleporting us to our own personal Abbey Road, it is becoming more relevant in a production context.
Virtual reality is thus quite similar to artificial intelligence, in the sense that it has yet to live up to the grander claims that have been made for it. But that doesn’t mean both things can’t be impressive and useful on a smaller scale. AI might not be building starships or unlocking the secret of free energy, but as Ben McCulloch’s vibe coding feature in this issue demonstrates, it’s quite useful for developing plug‑ins. And whilst VR isn’t teleporting us to our own personal Abbey Road, it is becoming more relevant in a production context.
If reality is ever going to be virtualised convincingly, sound will have a key role to play. And since virtual reality is delivered through wearable devices, the same needs to be true of audio for VR. I’ve tried quite a few products that seek to manufacture a three‑dimensional experience on headphones, and until now, I’d say the benefits have been real but limited. However, Sony’s 360VME really does take things up another level. As it stands, it’s optimised for the specific task of mixing and QC’ing immersive audio. There’s no visual element, and it doesn’t support technologies such as head‑tracking. But Sony have solved one of the really hard problems, and 360VME is wholly convincing in the way that it presents sound as coming from above or behind you.
There are many other really hard problems to be solved before we can all step into our own virtual Studio 2, or whatever the endgame of VR in audio production is. But at least it feels as though one of the essential building blocks is now in place. And, simultaneously, we’re seeing other breakthroughs, such as Neumann’s VIS virtual mixing environment for the Apple Vision Pro. Who knows, perhaps soon you’ll be turning the pages of a virtual SOS on a virtual newsstand.
Sam Inglis Editor In Chief