Adding spatial sound to our Unity model in HoloLens Part 1

As mentioned last time, upgrading to Windows 10 has opened the door to spatial sound in our HoloLens model.

The foundational step is to set our Unity project’s audio settings to have the Spatializer Plugin as the “MS HRTF Spatializer”: if you don’t see this option then you may need to upgrade your OS (as I did).

At this point we need to think a little about how best to implement spatial sound in this project, particularly as it literally contains a number of moving parts. I see three main alternatives:

1. A single sound is assigned to our robot
   • When the robot stops completely, so does the sound
2. The same sound is assigned to each of the robot’s parts
   • When each part stops moving, so does the sound for that part
3. A different sound is assigned to each of the robot’s parts
   • When each part stops moving, so does the sound for that part

In some ways option 1 is simplest – we only need to attach a single sound to the root of the robot – but in others it’s the most complex,…