Happy New Year, Flavio, and thank you for giving us something interesting and challenging to think about!
I can think of several different perspectives to respond from:
- The Idealist/Innovator: I love it! I have just in the last few days experienced a VR demo which focuses on the physical and visual, and it was a bit mind-blowing, and a lot of fun (and involved a lot of expensive processing power). The advancing state of the art of VR, thanks to work like that from Dirac Research, is exciting and stimulating to experience.
- The Realist: So what? The Virtual Reality paradigm can try to mimic the real-life experience but will never get there. The richness and complexity of a real listening room and the body's responses to low-frequency content (love that punchy feel in the solar plexus from kick drum and bass!) will never be surpassed by VR. Add to that the seemingly limitless processing power of the psychoacoustical brain with its mysterious and plastic and teachable capabilities, and there are too many variables to imagine. While many of them can be modeled and others can be ignored with little or no impact, the real critical listening experience will always be more natural and captivating than the VR, and the VR will always seem just a little too virtual.
- The Old School: I hate it! Why mess with something that works so well even when it is far from perfect? Reality is messy, its imperfections are part of what keep our minds active and alive. The only way to remove that messiness is to die! Choose life and celebrate its infinite messiness!
My own viewpoint is probably about a 30%/60%/10% mix of the above. That said, I wish I could be there to experience your demo. Hopefully you will bring it to the upcoming AXPONA show in Chicago in April.
Flavio
