From the lab to the concert hall, virtual reality plays a growing role in acoustics studies

At the Speech Accommodation to Acoustics Lab, researchers are trying to solve a common problem for teachers and vocal performers. How can they be heard and understood without straining their voices? 

Pasquale Bottalico, associate professor of speech and hearing science, runs the Speech Accommodation to Acoustics Lab, which investigates the acoustical conditions of rooms—classes, restaurants and concert halls alike—that lend themselves to intelligible speech with minimal vocal effort from the speakers. 

Over the last 5 years, the lab’s research has steered toward virtual reality and auralization, a technique to replicate the sound conditions of different spaces, to simulate these indoor conditions and make their studies more applicable to real-life scenarios. Here, Bottalico expands on his SpAA Lab’s recent projects and VR experiments.

When did your lab begin using virtual reality? What compelled you about this type of technology for your area of research?

Our lab began working with virtual reality (VR) in 2020 as part of our broader research on how acoustic environments influence voice production and communication. In many traditional speech and voice studies, experiments are conducted in quiet laboratory settings that do not fully represent the complex environments people encounter in everyday life.

VR provides a powerful way to bridge that gap. It allows us to recreate realistic environments—such as classrooms, concert halls, or social settings—while still maintaining precise experimental control. For example, VR makes it possible to manipulate room acoustics, background noise and visual cues independently and observe how speakers adapt their voice. Research has shown that both auditory and visual environmental information can influence voice production and perception, highlighting the importance of studying communication in multisensory contexts rather than purely auditory ones.  

For virtual reality studies you’ve worked on, could you describe what these experiences look, feel, and sound like for participants?

Participants wear a virtual reality headset and headphones that immerse them in a simulated environment. For example, someone might find themselves standing in a classroom, a concert hall or a restaurant while speaking or singing. The visual environment allows them to look around the space, while spatialized audio reproduces how their voice would sound in that particular room.

This means participants hear realistic acoustic effects such as reverberation, reflections and background noise. Studies using these methods have shown that speakers and singers naturally adjust their vocal production depending on the acoustic properties of the environment, even when those environments are simulated.  

What equipment or tools do you use to simulate these experiences?

To create these simulations, we combine several technologies. 

Participants typically use a VR headset for the visual environment and high-quality headphones to deliver spatial audio that reproduces realistic room acoustics.

Behind the scenes, we use auralization techniques, which allow us to simulate how sound propagates in real spaces such as classrooms, concert halls or lecture halls. We use real measurements to simulate the acoustics of the environments, like a University of Illinois classroom, or venues at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. 

Microphones and acoustic analysis tools are also used to measure vocal parameters such as sound pressure level, pitch, and vocal effort while participants interact with the virtual environment.

Tell us more about VR as a training or therapy tool. How might virtual reality benefit professional voice users and individuals with voice disorders?

VR has enormous potential as a training and therapy tool, especially for professional voice users such as teachers, singers and public speakers. These individuals often need to communicate in demanding environments for long periods of time, which can lead to vocal fatigue or voice disorders.

One challenge in voice therapy is that exercises performed in a quiet clinic may not transfer easily to real-life environments. VR can help address this problem by allowing people to practice communication in realistic scenarios—such as teaching in a noisy classroom or speaking in a crowded social setting—while still being in a safe and controlled therapeutic environment.

Because VR can replicate the sensory conditions of real communication environments, it may help improve the transfer of therapeutic strategies from the clinic to everyday life.

What are some examples of virtual reality studies you’ve performed? What did you learn?

Our lab has been exploring VR applications for voice and speech research through several projects and doctoral dissertations.

For example, the doctoral work of Charles Nudelman, Ph.D., supported by the Raymond H. Stetson Scholarship, examined how visual aspects of an environment—such as room size and occupancy—affect voice production using immersive virtual reality. His research demonstrated that visual characteristics of a room can influence acoustic voice parameters and self-perceived vocal fatigue and discomfort, highlighting the importance of visual cues in voice production.  

Similarly, the doctoral research of Ümit Daşdöğen (now at CSD University of Delaware), funded through an NIH R21 grant, investigated how auditory, visual and audiovisual sensory inputs influence voice perception and production in immersive VR environments. This work showed that multisensory factors can significantly affect vocal loudness, vocal effort, and acoustic voice parameters, helping establish a scientific foundation for the use of VR in voice training and therapy.  

Another related project is the doctoral research of Carly Wingfield at the Illinois School of Music in collaboration with Professor Yvonne Gonzales Redman, which was supported by the prestigious Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship. Her work explored the use of VR simulations to help singers rehearse in virtual replicas of performance venues. The results suggested that practicing in VR environments allowed singers to better adapt to the acoustics of the real performance space and feel more confident when performing in unfamiliar venues.  

We also currently have a new project underway in the lab focusing on virtual reality–based voice therapy and communication training. This study involves Giulia Fusari, a visiting scholar from the Politecnico di Milano, and Mariah Bates, a master’s student in Health Technology at the University of Illinois completing her capstone project with our lab.

The project is developing a human-centered VR platform designed to simulate realistic conversational environments, such as social interactions in restaurants or other everyday communication settings. Participants complete weekly sessions over several weeks, and we evaluate usability, communication effort, realism of the environment and overall user experience. The goal is to better understand how immersive environments can support communication training and voice therapy in ecologically valid contexts.

In future developments, these types of VR environments could also be adapted to support individuals with neurological conditions that affect speech and voice, such as Parkinson’s disease, where patients often struggle to generalize speech therapy skills from the clinic to real-world communication settings.

If there are studies open to participants, how can they reach out?

Individuals interested in participating in research studies in our lab can contact us directly at pb81@illinois.edu. We regularly recruit participants for studies involving speech perception, voice production and immersive communication environments.

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