{"id":418,"date":"2026-08-31T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T08:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.napier.ac.uk\/sounddesign\/?p=418"},"modified":"2026-07-18T05:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T04:42:15","slug":"immersive-audio-virtual-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.napier.ac.uk\/sounddesign\/2026\/08\/31\/immersive-audio-virtual-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"How Does Sound Make Virtual Reality Believable? Varun Nair on Presence, Perception, and Designing for Immersion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Varun<\/a><\/p>\n

Why does virtual reality sometimes feel astonishingly real, while other experiences never quite convince us? Advances in display technology have made virtual environments increasingly convincing visually, yet realism depends upon far more than what we see. The sounds that surround us help define where we are, how large a space feels and whether the events unfolding around us seem believable. Even a visually impressive virtual world can lose its sense of presence if the accompanying audio fails to match the experience.<\/p>\n

Varun Nair explored this relationship between sound and perception in his guest lecture on immersive audio and virtual reality. Rather than concentrating solely on the technologies behind virtual reality, he focused on a more fundamental question: what makes people believe that a virtual world is real? His answer was not a single piece of software or hardware, but the careful combination of perceptual cues that allow listeners to interpret an artificial environment as though they were genuinely present within it.<\/p>\n

A simple example illustrates the point. Imagine standing beside a helicopter as its rotors begin to turn. Even without looking directly at the aircraft, the changing pitch, movement and intensity of the sound immediately communicate what is happening. If those acoustic cues fail to match the visual scene, the illusion quickly begins to collapse. The helicopter may still look convincing, but the experience no longer feels authentic. Sound is not simply an accompaniment to the image; it helps establish whether the world itself is believable.<\/p>\n

This relationship becomes even more significant in virtual reality because the listener is no longer observing events from a fixed position. Every movement of the head changes the perspective, and the soundtrack must respond immediately if the illusion is to be maintained. Instead of accompanying a predetermined sequence of images, audio becomes an active part of the experience, continuously adapting to the listener\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

Sound helps listeners understand where they are, what is happening around them and where their attention should move next. These functions have always been part of effective sound design, but virtual reality places them at the centre of the experience. Spatial relationships that might previously have enhanced realism now become essential for maintaining the illusion that the listener occupies a coherent physical environment.<\/p>\n

This is one reason why binaural audio has become such an important topic in immersive media. By recreating the subtle differences between the sounds arriving at each ear, binaural rendering allows listeners wearing headphones to perceive sound sources as existing around them rather than inside their heads. Yet, as Nair emphasised throughout the lecture, convincing immersion depends upon much more than simply positioning sounds in three-dimensional space.<\/p>\n

Believable virtual worlds are not built from individual technologies. They emerge when every perceptual cue supports the same experience. The challenge for immersive audio is therefore not simply to reproduce sound accurately, but to persuade listeners that the environment surrounding them behaves as a coherent and convincing world.<\/p>\n

The remainder of the lecture explored how this illusion is constructed, why the human brain depends upon multiple acoustic cues rather than any single technology, and what these ideas mean for the future of sound design in virtual reality.<\/p>\n

The idea that immersive audio depends upon many different perceptual cues naturally raises another question. What are those cues, and why does the brain rely on so many of them at once? Popular discussions of virtual reality often reduce three-dimensional audio to binaural rendering, as though placing sounds around the listener is enough to create convincing immersion. Nair argued that this captures only part of the picture. Positioning a sound correctly is important, but convincing listeners that it genuinely belongs within a virtual world requires a much richer combination of acoustic information.<\/p>\n

Binaural audio provides the foundation for this process because it recreates the way sound naturally reaches the ears. Every sound arriving at the listener is subtly shaped by the head, shoulders and outer ears before reaching the eardrum. Over a lifetime, the brain learns to interpret these tiny differences, allowing people to judge whether a sound is above them, behind them or approaching from one side. Virtual reality exploits these learned perceptual cues so that sounds appear to occupy positions within the surrounding environment rather than simply playing through a pair of headphones.<\/p>\n

One of the more surprising points in the lecture was that none of this is particularly new. Researchers have investigated binaural hearing for decades, and commercial implementations existed long before today\u2019s virtual reality headsets. What has changed is the wider technological landscape. Modern processors are now capable of performing the necessary signal processing in real time, while affordable head-mounted displays continuously track the listener\u2019s movements. As a result, ideas that were once largely confined to specialist research have become practical tools for everyday production.<\/p>\n

Yet Nair was equally clear that accurate positioning alone does not create a believable acoustic environment. Standing inside a cathedral, people hear much more than a nearby voice. Reflections from distant walls, the gradual decay of reverberation and subtle changes in tone all contribute to an immediate understanding of the surrounding space. Remove those cues and the voice may still come from the correct direction, yet it no longer feels connected to the environment. A sound can be positioned accurately without ever feeling present.<\/p>\n

This distinction led to one of the lecture\u2019s central ideas: externalisation. Successful spatial audio should persuade listeners that sounds exist outside their heads, occupying the same world as the visual scene. That impression emerges from many different cues working together. Early reflections reveal the boundaries of a room. Reverberation communicates its size and acoustic character. Air absorption subtly alters distant sounds, while Doppler shifts reinforce movement through space. No single cue creates the illusion on its own. Together, however, they allow the listener to accept the environment as a coherent whole.<\/p>\n

Nair also highlighted another element that is easy to overlook because people perform it almost unconsciously: head movement. Humans rarely remain perfectly still while listening. A slight turn of the head provides additional information that helps resolve ambiguities about where a sound is located. This is particularly important when distinguishing between sounds in front of and behind the listener, a challenge that has long accompanied binaural reproduction. By continuously updating the soundtrack as the listener moves, head tracking becomes far more than a technical feature of virtual reality headsets. It mirrors the way people naturally explore the acoustic world, allowing perception itself to become part of the localisation process.<\/p>\n

Many of these mechanisms operate almost entirely beneath conscious awareness. Few listeners actively notice early reflections, frequency-dependent air absorption or subtle changes in reverberation while exploring a virtual environment. Instead, these cues quietly reinforce one another, allowing the brain to construct a coherent interpretation of the surrounding space. Remove one or two and the experience may still appear convincing. Remove several, however, and the illusion begins to weaken, even if listeners cannot explain precisely why.<\/p>\n

Taken together, these ideas challenge one of the most common assumptions about immersive audio. It is tempting to search for a single breakthrough technology capable of making virtual reality sound convincing. Nair suggested that no such shortcut exists. Believable experiences emerge because numerous perceptual cues remain consistent with one another, each reinforcing the listener\u2019s interpretation of the environment. The role of the sound designer is therefore not simply to position sounds accurately, but to ensure that every acoustic detail supports the same perceptual story.<\/p>\n

Seen in this way, immersive audio becomes much more than an exercise in spatialisation. It is an exercise in environmental design, where every decision contributes to the listener\u2019s understanding of the world around them. The objective is not simply to convince people that a sound exists. It is to convince them that the world itself exists.<\/p>\n

Understanding how people perceive space is only part of the challenge. Once those principles are understood, the next question becomes considerably more practical. How should sound designers actually use them? Knowing that reflections, localisation and head movement contribute to immersion does not automatically produce a compelling soundtrack. Technology provides the possibilities; design determines how successfully those possibilities are translated into an experience.<\/p>\n

One of the recurring themes throughout Nair\u2019s lecture was the importance of scale. Although the term is often associated with visual design, he argued that sound is equally responsible for establishing the perceived size of a virtual world. A room may appear life-sized, but if sounds travel too far, decay unnaturally or fail to attenuate in believable ways, the illusion quickly begins to weaken. Listeners may not consciously identify the problem, yet the environment no longer feels internally consistent. Sound and vision must reinforce the same interpretation of the world if presence is to be maintained.<\/p>\n

Nair also distinguished carefully between scale and size. The overall scale of a virtual environment establishes the listener\u2019s relationship with the world, while the apparent size of individual objects determines how those objects should behave acoustically. A mosquito and a passing truck may both move away from the listener, but they do not disappear into the distance in the same way. The truck remains audible over a much greater distance, while the mosquito rapidly fades from perception. These differences are shaped not only by level but also by pitch, frequency content and attenuation. Together, they allow listeners to make surprisingly sophisticated judgements about the physical properties of objects without consciously thinking about them.<\/p>\n

This observation extends well beyond realistic simulations. Sound designers frequently create worlds that bear little resemblance to everyday life, whether they are fantastical landscapes, stylised games or abstract interactive experiences. The objective is therefore not to reproduce reality exactly, but to establish a world whose internal logic remains believable. A listener who believes they are inhabiting the body of a giant should hear the environment differently from someone exploring the same space at the scale of a child. Perception is always relative to the world the experience creates.<\/p>\n

One of the most thought-provoking moments in the lecture came when Nair challenged a common assumption surrounding immersive audio. It is easy to believe that adding a binaural renderer or spatial audio plug-in will automatically transform an ordinary mix into an immersive one. His argument was almost the opposite. These technologies do not replace sound design; they expose it. Spatial audio recreates many of the same perceptual constraints that exist in everyday listening, meaning that weak decisions about balance, distance or attention become more apparent rather than less. Better technology cannot compensate for poor creative judgement.<\/p>\n

That perspective places even greater emphasis on the fundamentals of sound design. Decisions about pitch, dynamics, attenuation and spectral balance continue to shape the listener\u2019s experience, not because virtual reality introduces entirely new principles, but because it allows established principles to influence perception in more direct and immediate ways. Spatial audio therefore broadens the range of creative decisions available to the sound designer rather than replacing established practice. It provides additional ways of communicating meaning, directing attention and shaping emotional response, while relying upon the same careful listening and critical judgement that have always underpinned excellent sound design.<\/p>\n

It also explains why Nair resisted presenting immersive audio as an all-or-nothing proposition. Some elements of a soundtrack benefit greatly from full spatialisation, while others may work more effectively in conventional stereo. Music, interface sounds and other non-diegetic elements all raise creative questions that remain largely unresolved. Rather than prescribing fixed rules, he encouraged sound designers to experiment, allowing the needs of each project to determine how technology should be applied rather than assuming that every sound must be treated in the same way.<\/p>\n

This willingness to experiment reflects the broader stage of development that virtual reality currently occupies. Stereo, surround sound and film mixing each developed their own conventions over decades of experimentation. Virtual reality is still at an earlier stage in that journey. Many of its techniques, workflows and creative conventions remain open questions. For today\u2019s sound designers, that uncertainty represents an opportunity rather than a limitation. Instead of inheriting an established language, they have the opportunity to help create one.<\/p>\n

As the lecture drew to a close, Nair returned to a theme that had quietly connected every part of his discussion. Virtual reality is often presented as a technological revolution, yet its greatest challenges are no longer defined by processing power or display resolution. They concern perception, creativity and the ways in which people make sense of unfamiliar experiences. The technology continues to evolve rapidly, but the language of immersive sound is still being written.<\/p>\n

This places today\u2019s sound designers in an unusual position. Many areas of audio production have inherited decades of established practice. Recording engineers, film mixers and game audio professionals all work within conventions that have gradually matured through years of experimentation and shared experience. Virtual reality offers far fewer certainties. Questions surrounding spatial music, interface sounds, narration, transitions between perspectives and the balance between realism and artistic expression remain active areas of exploration rather than settled practice.<\/p>\n

Nair suggested that this uncertainty should not be viewed as a weakness. It provides an opportunity to rethink long-standing assumptions about how audiences experience sound. Conventional stereo and surround formats are largely designed around listeners who remain outside the action, observing events from a fixed perspective. Virtual reality places the listener inside the experience. They choose where to look, what to investigate and how quickly to move through the environment. Audio therefore becomes less about presenting a carefully controlled sequence of events and more about supporting exploration without overwhelming the listener.<\/p>\n

These ideas also extend beyond entertainment. Training, education and professional simulation all depend upon helping people interpret unfamiliar environments naturally and confidently. The same understanding of attention, localisation and environmental perception that strengthens a virtual world can also improve learning, communication and decision-making wherever immersive experiences are used.<\/p>\n

Another message emerged just as clearly. Progress in immersive audio is unlikely to come from a single technological breakthrough. Better rendering algorithms, more accurate head tracking and increasingly sophisticated hardware will undoubtedly improve future systems, but believable experiences will continue to depend upon thoughtful design. Every new technical capability simply provides another opportunity for sound designers to apply their judgement. Creativity remains the defining ingredient.<\/p>\n

That perspective also reinforces an idea that extends well beyond virtual reality itself. Throughout the history of audio production, advances in technology have repeatedly expanded the possibilities available to practitioners without replacing the need for careful listening. Multitrack recording, digital editing, surround sound and object-based audio all transformed production workflows, yet each ultimately depended upon people deciding how those tools should be used. Immersive media appears to be following the same trajectory. The challenge is not learning a completely new discipline, but applying enduring principles of sound design within a medium that offers new creative possibilities.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this explains why Nair\u2019s lecture felt less like a demonstration of emerging technology and more like a discussion about perception. Virtual reality undoubtedly introduces new tools and workflows, but its success continues to depend upon familiar questions. How do people understand the spaces around them? Which sounds deserve attention? What makes an environment feel coherent enough that listeners stop analysing it and simply accept it as real? These are questions that sound designers have explored for decades. Virtual reality provides a new context in which to ask them.<\/p>\n

The lecture therefore leaves an encouraging conclusion for anyone entering the field. The future of immersive audio will certainly be shaped by advances in computing, displays and signal processing, but it will be shaped just as much by the people who decide how those technologies should be used. As virtual reality continues to mature, its greatest innovations may prove to be neither new algorithms nor new devices, but new ways of making virtual worlds feel believable enough that listeners simply accept them as real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why does virtual reality sometimes feel astonishingly real, while other experiences never quite convince us? According to Varun Nair, the answer has surprisingly little to do with displays or processing power. Instead, it lies in how the brain interprets sound. In this article, we explore why believable immersive audio depends on far more than binaural rendering, how perceptual cues shape our understanding of virtual spaces, and why the future of VR may ultimately be defined not by technology, but by the creative judgement of sound designers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,13,41,6,24,35,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-perception","category-interaction-design","category-mixed-reality","category-online-guest-lectures","category-psychoacoustics","category-sound-design","category-video-games"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Does Sound Make Virtual Reality Believable? 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