OpenSoundLab

Music performance @ NIME (by Anselm Bauer)
Spatial sound installation at home (by Anselm Bauer)
Music performance @ IS2
Spatial sound installation on the go (by Anselm Bauer)
Music performance @ IS2 (by Anselm Bauer)
Workshop at HGK Basel

Inspiration

My inspiration for this project lies in many years of producing music, audio installations, working with Eurorack modular synthesizers and teaching creative technologies at the Academy of Art and Design Basel (HGK). The start was the pandemic and a funding that I received for creating a VR sound laboratory based on SoundStage VR for educating students in sound design via video tutorials at home.

What it does

OpenSoundLab (OSL) is a spatial modular synthesizer and creative toolkit for Meta Quest headsets, designed to facilitate immersive sound creation and exploration in virtual reality. It offers a range of features including over 30 modular devices and spatial sound design, enabling users to craft rich auditory experiences and music within mixed-reality environments.

How we built it

It is an open-source fork of SoundStage VR since that app was abandoned in 2017. OpenSoundLab is built with Unity in C# and audio DSP codes in C/C++ with Meta APIs and Mirror Networking for the multiplayer.

Challenges we ran into

It was challenging to implement the hand tracking since there are several API versions around and we didn't have much time for that. Nonetheless, it was exciting to get it to work as a prototype.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Offering a mixed-reality first, colocative, spatialized sound design and media arts experience that now offers hands as an input modality!

What we learned

Too much to list... :) but it was super interesting to learn how to use agentic coding tools, which really became useful in the last couple of months.

What's next for OpenSoundLab

Store release in Q1 2026, adding more modules and more video tutorials, looking forward to seeing what people do with it! And providing instructions for other developers to create their own modules and modify OpenSoundLab, with a special focus on agentic coding. We will also continue to play gigs with OpenSoundLab and enhance the tool for new art pieces, now with a focus on hands interactions.

http://www.sphericals.io