Project Overview
M.I.L.E.S. = Music Interactive Learning Experience for Students
The MILES Project is a venture in acoustic design and simulation that explores the relationship between sound and spatial experience through immersive technologies. Its demo version presents three distinct performance scenarios in virtual reality (VR), each set within a shoebox-shaped venue of 30m². The stage is positioned at one end of the space, with audience seating arranged in direct counterposition.
Dry Acoustic Space
Each scenario demonstrates a unique acoustic balance, designed to highlight different qualities of sound propagation, reflection, and perception within the same architectural setting. By engaging with these variations, students gain insight into how acoustic design shapes the auditory and emotional experience of performance spaces, deepening their understanding of both technical precision and creative expression in acoustic environments.
Project Objectives
MILES is a project at Meteor Studio with goals of creating an immersive experience for school of music students to learn and complete tasks in. The experience will cover different music learning objectives, such as how objects vibrate at different frequencies to produce sound, how that sound travels to the ear and are perceived by the brain, and how to distinguish between different sound properties, such as timbre. Students will use spectrograms to visually analyze frequencies.
Pre-Visual conceptualisation
Whether a space is wet or dry refers to the amount of reverb it holds. For this demonstration, we’re representing a space with very little to no reverb present, or a “dry” space. This is achieved in the real world by adding acoustic foam which absorbs sound waves, as can be seen in the example images.
At this point in the process, it was decided that we should scale the space back a bit, while keeping to the sci-fi aesthetics. Resulting in…
A smaller jam-space styled approach, with plenty of sound absorbing materials all around the player! Making sure never to lose our sci-fi aesthetic.
Demo first version – Dry Space
User Interface and User Experience Design
User Interface Design was based on Meta's UI materials. Later, customised to our requirements such as colours, and size of the containers.
Audio Design
Audio Recording + Motion Capture
Post Processing
The sound for this demo is based on a snare drum! The samples were recorded by Kylar in a relatively dry studio space, with one mic on the top and one on the bottom, capturing the full resonance of the drum.
During this session, motion capture data was recorded to be translated into animations!
In order to make our samples even dryer, attempting to emulate an anechoic chamber, a machine learning plugin called “DeVerberate” was employed by Michael. This, along with selective EQ and compression created a convincing simulation of an anechoic space.
“The intro and outro music was specifically inspired from previous futuristic/science fiction compositions. Different materials were utilized to draw inspiration from, such as Gustav Holt's "Mars" and a technique known as the whole tone scale. While taking the concert hall into consideration as a dry acoustic space, I wanted to achieve an atmospheric background that involved typical symphonic instruments, with a lot of the composition being built around the French Horn, as well as the high and low ends of each respective instrument to achieve an almost empty-like aura of the overall background. Additionally, the outro composition in particular was built upon the intro to provide consistency with the intro while introducing a slightly modified end piece for the players to leave with.” - Mackenzie