Setting Up Audio for a VR Project
The Emotional Infrastructure Nobody Schedules
Most VR teams schedule art, engineering, features.
They rarely schedule nervous system safety.
And that’s why some VR experiences feel like effort even when they look great.
The user is constantly bracing:
For sudden intensity,
For spatial confusion,
For sensory contradictions.
I set up Audio for VR projects around a principle:
Presence is earned through orientation and trust, not through detail.
So before we talk about tools, I want three written specs:
1) Emotional outcome spec (one sentence)
Not “immersive.” Not “epic.” Something testable in human terms:
Grounded curiosity
Calm alertness
Empathy without collapse
Resolve after tension
2) Overload constraints
These are not aesthetic choices. They are ethical and functional constraints:
Where silence must exist
What frequency zones we protect for voice and clarity
How long we keep the user in high arousal
What kinds of motion/audio movement are prohibited in certain contexts
3) Orientation spec
People can’t feel what they can’t locate. So we define anchors:
Stable ambiences that signal “inside / outside”
Consistent direction-of-arrival logic
Coherent reverb behavior per environment scale
Once these are clear, production becomes easier.
Because we stop improvising the emotional physics of the world halfway through.
If your team is starting a VR project, steal this question:
What do we want the body to stop doing inside this experience? What do we want it to start doing instead?
Best wishes,
Billy.
Billy, from a musician’s point of view, this resonates deeply. In music, rests are never empty space. They are intentional, precisely timed, and carry as much expressive weight as sound itself. They shape phrasing, allow breath, create tension, and give structure to time. Silence is counted, felt, and executed with purpose.
When rests are removed, music becomes exhausting. When they are placed well, the body settles and trust builds. That feels closely aligned with what you describe here around nervous system safety, orientation, and overload constraints. Designing silence into VR isn’t absence, it’s ethical structure. In that sense, silence becomes part of the score. I’ve explored this idea in my own piece 4.33, where stillness itself becomes the frame for listening.