Seeing the world through sound: Echoes creates location-based sound experiences

Echoes is an app that lets users discover the world around them through sound. The app offers listeners sound maps related to geographical areas. Sounds are triggered as listeners move inside a designated zone, and each map may contain several zones to explore.

Right now, Echoes has two sample sound maps ready to be tested, one for Hanoi and one for Copenhagen. The startup’s concept is to crowdsource content from sound creators all over the globe. Following a few simple guidelines, creators are invited to submit sound maps as diverse as audio walking tours, museum guides, but also contextual sound information and experimental sound pieces.

Created by a musician

Joshua Kopecek is the co-founder of the startup, along with Jörg Henning. The two, originally from Europe, met in Hanoi. Kopecek is a musician and says he found his way into tech through music. “We created Echoes out of a passion for the concept, and because we see a niche in the market,” says Kopecek. The idea solidified in 2013, but Kopecek and Henning only started developing it into a startup late last year.

“I’m still an active musician, although Echoes has taken over my life now,” says Kopecek. His partner Henning manages the technical side together with a small team of app developers based in Hanoi. The two co-founders designed the platform themselves.

On the backend, Echoes consists of a web app, through which content creators can upload sounds and arrange them into sound maps by determining the precise location and radius of the sound-triggering zones.

On the consumer-facing side, there’s a mobile app which gives listeners access to the available sound maps. Using GPS, wifi, cell towers, Bluetooth, and the accelerometers and compass in mobile phones – whatever is available to determine location as accurately as possible – the app notices whenever a listener enters a zone and plays back the soundtrack contained within.

Audio tours for museums, cities, or festivals

How interesting, experimental, and entertaining Echoes’ listening experience will be depends on the quality of content uploaded by sound map creators.

“These creators could be individuals that have existing content that they would like to make available to a wider audience,” says Kopecek, “for example individual tour guides that want to access a mobile-ready market and casual travellers. Or they could also be organizations that want an easy and cheap way to create a guide for their museum, festival, city, and so on. Thinking about this in the broader sense, the platform is a way to connect with people through contextual content.”