Intro

Echoes Creator web app

The Creator is a geoCMS (geolocative content management system) that enables you to create locative experiences from scratch. There are some concepts to get your head around before starting with the Creator. The fundamental ones are Walks, Echoes, and Elements.

What is geolocated sound and audio AR?

Geolocated sound

A soundtrack (or multiple overlapping tracks) confined within shapes on the map, which creates geofenced areas. These will trigger content when your listeners physically walk inside, using GPS or iBeacon technology. Layer sounds in subtle or rich ways, guide your audience, give them directions, surprise and entertain—a completely different way to experience our physical environment, a threshold where the magic happens ✨.

Audio AR (Augmented Reality)

Sound that layers and enriches the physical world without sucking you into your screen. Stay present, appreciate your surroundings in all its richness while experiencing the additional reality layer: learn about history, artefacts in front of you, natural environments, get lost in a treasure hunt, get spooked by a horror experience, don’t miss a landmark or an interesting corner in the city you are visiting, get guidance during an event or elevate your sport experience… 💡 the possibilities are endless.

How do I add content?

Creating a walk

Start by creating a walk in the Creator web app. Choose a location on the map or search for a location in the search bar. Add an echo using the ＋ button (or draw on the map in the more recent versions of the Creator) in the echoes panel. This action will add an echo and centre it in the middle of the map. Reposition the echo to where you would like it. Click the ‘edit’ button on the echo in the list, which will open up a dialogue. Click the ＋ button in the bottom right to add an element. Then you can use the menu bar on the element to upload a sound.

Layering sounds

Echoes works differently from other platforms. It allows you to layer as many sounds as you want, and when each one is triggered, they will all play over one another. This flexibility allows you to create independent layers of narrative audio and ambient sound, for example.

This may not be great for narrative audio (you don't necessarily want people speaking over one another), so we introduced a queueing function which will dynamically add sounds to a queue when they are triggered.

If you want to beat sync loops of audio, we have a beat-syncing feature. Just make sure the sound is the right length for the loop at the given tempo, add it to a sync group and specify the number of beats.

The number of sounds you can layer/play at the same time depends on the device. Most iOS devices will happily play 16 sounds at the same time. For android devices it depends on the capabilities, but most will happily play up to 8. For 3D walks, this increases massively – mostly the system can handle up to about 64 sounds playing simultaneously.

About file encoding

Previously we encouraged people to upload mp4/aac files.

Please now upload uncompressed audio wherever possible, such as wav, aiff or flac. The files will automatically be converted to the right file types internally.

Note that uploading mp3 is not recommended. The resulting audio files are very poor quality, and the conversion often fails.

More

For a deeper dive, head to the Design Guide