How and Create

Sounds of Street View is a digital explorative 3D sound experience in a street view environment produced by Amplifon. Find out how it's made and create your own.

Curious?

Creative?

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explanation

Placement

We use latitude and longitude to 'place' a marker just like any Google Maps marker, but invisibly.

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Code: Placement

I'm distant.
A bit quieter.

I'm close.
Loud and proud.

I'm a sound.

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explanation

Distance

We calculate the distance between the user and a specific sound as if Street View was a sphere (Earth).

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Code: Distance

North

Heading

A sound

Left Ear Angle

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explanation

Bearing

We find the angle at which a sound is lying at from the user to generate stereophonic sound.

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Code: Bearing

The pinna (1) catches sound waves and your outer ear points forward, containing a number of curves. This helps you determine the direction of a sound.

If a sound is coming from behind or above you, it will bounce off the pinna in a different way than if it is coming from in front or below you.

This alters the pattern of sound waves. Your brain recognizes distinctive patterns and determines which direction the sound is coming from.

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explanation

Ear Imitation

To imitate human ears we apply a ‘low-pass filter’ to the sound gradually, the further behind the user it is.

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Code: Ear Imitation

Sphere Area4πr²

More on inverse square law at Hyperphysics

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explanation

Inverse Square Law

Finally, we apply the Inverse Square Law of sound which truly demonstrates distance from a sound.

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Code: Inverse
Sound Law

We collect all of the calculated aspects...

... to gain two outcomes entailing separate volume and
filtering from ear imitation for each ear.

Create your own sound experience with the sosv framework.

Competition

Think you have the skills to craft an interesting, stunning or innovative Sounds of Street View project? Send us your project and you will have the chance to win a trip of your choice! Terms and Conditions apply.

Your project will also automatically be placed into our Sounds of Street View Gallery. Send us your entry simply with a URL of your project in one of two ways:

Tweet us the link @amplifon_uk

Email us the link with your details

Giving the World Sound

The Sounds of Street View Framework gives developers with minimal coding experience the opportunity to create bespoke soundscape experiences with ease, through the completion of just 6 easy-to-follow steps.

The framework includes all of the calculations used to create the full 3-dimensional Sounds of Street View experience, as explained within this page. This means that by simply Downloading the framework and selecting a few options, you have the power to craft life-like sound-scapes in a 3-dimensional environment, almost anywhere in the world. For an in-depth process, you can view the development ReadMe. See what others have made.

Now we’ll take you through, step-by-step what you need to create.

Download Framework

The first thing to do is to download the S.O.S.V framework we have supplied. This includes all HTML, documentation and JavaScript involved with calculating the volumes which your sounds will output.

Download the Framework

View on Github

Find lat/long
by postcode

View location suggestions

Location Input

Next step, select a location to be used in your experience. You then need to find the latitude and longitude values of your Street View.

Find location in Google Maps

You can find the values in the URL bar:

Lastly, place these two values into your file 'location.json', in the fields located at line 8.

Download / Create Sounds

1 Source the sound

There are a large variety of ways of doing this phase, including creating sounds yourself using free audio recording software such as Audacity or sound recording apps on your smartphone. You can also purchase a huge variety of sounds from a number of sites which are showcased below.

2 Post-production

Audacity can then be used to easily alter, loop, crop or otherwise finesse your sounds.

3 Export Files

For the Sounds of Street View projectyou just need to export an MP3 file for each sound.

Audacity® is a free audio software for recording and editing sounds. Easy to use for beginners and deep enough for pros.
Visit Audacity
AudioJungle offers royalty-free music and sound effects for a few dollars. Home to a bustling community of audio producers.
Visit Audiojungle
Pond5 a vibrant marketplace for creativity. Media makers find the content they need, and make money doing what they love.
Visit Pond5
123RF is a royalty-free digital media library that offers a wide variety of budget-friendly commercial and editorial audio.
Visit 123RF
The world’s first online commercial sound effects and production music library, with over 670,000 sound files online.
Visit Sounddogs
AudioMicro provides royalty free sound effects by Grammy award-winning composers and Oscar winning sound effects artists.
Visit AudioMicro
Created by sound designers for sound designers, you'll find over 100,000 cutting-edge and imaginative sound samples.
Visit SFX Source
Flash Kit provides a host of useful and often rare sounds, with an ever growing list of freeware sounds for you to download.
Visit Flask Kit