Echoes
Echoes is a mobile app that immerses listeners in geolocated, binaural soundscapes, changing what they hear as they physically move through space. Sound is triggered automatically by GPS or iBeacons as a listener walks into a geofenced area, with no need to touch the phone. Individual sound elements are anchored to fixed GPS coordinates and spatialised around the listener in real time, rendered as binaural audio and rotated according to head orientation for those using head tracking, with ambisonic recordings supported alongside conventional stereo and binaural content. Walks can be streamed live or downloaded for offline listening, and the app is free on both iOS and Android, without ads or data sold to third parties, used for everything from museum audio guides and city tours to accessibility content for visually impaired listeners.
tech specs
history
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Echoes was founded by Josh Kopeček, a composer and technologist with a PhD in music composition who also sits on the board of Walk|Listen|Create and Sound Walk September. What began as a platform for makers and storytellers to publish geolocated audio has grown organically into a global creative community, with the Creator web app for authoring walks and the Explorer mobile app for discovering them. Projects built on Echoes have ranged from a National Trust soundwalk through the dunes at Studland Bay in Dorset to student sound-art festivals in Washington, D.C., and the platform has continued to expand its spatial audio capabilities, adding real-time binaural rendering and ambisonic support as it grew.
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