Back in May we brought you Raining.fm, a mobile app that lets you listen to the infinite sound of raindrops. On loop.
Now, from the same folks behind perennially popular weather app Haze, we bring you Thunderspace, a collaborative project between Germany-based app development studio Taptanium and Emmy-award winning (for the PBS documentary Vanishing Dawn Chorus) nature sound recordist Gordon Hempton.
As with Raining.fm, Thunderspace serves up a blustery weather-based audio experience, designed to help you ‘relax’. But Thunderspace has really gone the extra mile in putting the various soundcapes together, though it is iOS-only.
It delivers stereoscopic 3D audio and light to create the effect of a thunderstorm all around you. Though it works without headphones, given the spadework that went into developing and recording the audio for this app, it’s really recommended you use headphones.
How it works
There are eight soundscapes in total, each varying in their thundery elements.
Two of these are completely free from the get-go, but the remaining six can only be unlocked via an in-app purchase of $0.99, rising to $1.99 after the initial promotional launch period is over – this should be “at least two weeks”.
Once you’ve selected your audio of choice, you’re advised to place your handset “out of sight”, close your eyes and see the peripheral ‘flashes’ of light that accompany the sound.
After more than five months of full-time work, including a promo flick created in LA using 24 people (see the bottom of this post), Thunderspace is now live in the App Store. Although it’s a very simple feature-limited app, it is obvious a lot of care and attention has gone into building this – if you love weather sounds and nice design, it’s certainly worth your time.
“Stereoscopic 3D audio for headphones is like 3D video for 3D glasses – you have two ears for the same reason that you have two eyes, so you can see and hear in 3D,” says Franz Bruckhoff, Lead designer and developer at Taptanium. “Our early testers were surprised about the fact that they were able to hear in 3D over stereo headphones, and we engineered it to sound especially great with Apple EarPods.”
Thunderspace is available to download now for $0.99 which includes two free soundscapes. This will rise to $2.99 after the initial promotional period expires.
Meanwhile, check out the official video below. As far as promo skits go, it’s one of the better ones we’ve seen.
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