Android Only Spatial Music app.
In 2010, dark ambient avant garde disco comedy artist Jabon created a quadrophonic sound experience for the Lingo Dance Company. This app takes advantage of modern spatial audio techniques to deliver this quad experience without the need of special hardware. All you need is this app, your phone and headphones. Headphones are required to hear the full spatial audio mix.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Gravelvoice.JabonGlimmer&hl=en_US&gl=US
It took 4 months to get it in the store. Mainly because there aren’t that many humans involved in the process. When I first uploaded it, I got rejected because they said I didn’t have the rights to the music in the app. So I made a contract with myself that granted me the rights and listed all the BMI registration numbers. The next reject was that my app contained profanity. There are no lyrics, so I wasn’t sure what that was about. This is where a human got involved. I asked them to be more specific. They sent back screen shot with the word “Hand Job” underlined. I changed it to “Hahnjobi’s Dance” and resubmitted. Then I got the copyright claim again, I resubmitted the contract, then I got the profanity claim again and I had to point out that they didn’t look at the new screen shots. Then I got the copyright claim again then it finally went live.
The production took 5 years though. I did the music in quad in 2010. Originally started producing the app as a Vive only in 2016, then around 2018, when I started working at Oculus, I thought that was too limited of an audience and required expensive hardware which was what the problem was in 2010 when a DVD-A release required a 5.1 setup. So then I started to think of it as an app, but most developers I talked to couldn’t wrap their head around a music player as a stand alone app. My whole point was accessibility but not pirate-able. Each “album” is a different app. They said, 1 app, served content. I said “no”. finally found a student who knew some C to help with the scripting. I had to first rework the UI to look good on mobile, then delivering the audio as a ambisonic file, although 1st order. Turns out Unity has a 48′ 26″ time limit on a single ambisonic file which is funny because that’s the maximum play time or a vinyl record. So I edited the recording to be within that time frame, but that made the app large enough that I would have to have user download the audio on their phone. That defeats the purpose of not be able to steal it. So I had to binauralize it to make it small enough. That worked. It doesn’t sound as good as a true analog quad playback but it’s pretty good anyways. So if I think about all the man hours, it’s probably took a year, but as a template, it would be easy to run new content through it. I want to do iOS too but that has a whole pile of code problems that I just simply don’t know how to solve.
review from Lost Chocolate Labs
Gave this a few spins, absolutely wild.
Love the increased depth and extended soundstage.Nice the way it self-references itself throughout. (especially the end to beginning)Great vibes, laid-back, with tastefully delicious sound design/ effects sparkles.
Nice one!