'Hearing History: Bringing to Life the Sounds of the Past Through Virtual Reality' is a research project led by Dr James Cook and co-investigated by Dr Kenneth Boyd McAlpine. The University of Edinburgh has partnered up with Historic Environment Scotland, The Binchois Consort, Soluis Heritage, and Hyperion Records Ltd to produce the first classical CD recorded and produced in virtual reality and to develop a companion virtual reality app for end-users to download additional musical content. The project is also developing VR models to remix and audition the recordings in different historic spaces and at different points in time. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Hearing History is a follow-up project for Space, Place, Sound, and Memory. By working closely together with game developers, musicologists, architectural historians, and acousticians, the research group set out to recreate the sounds and sensations of early music performance in virtual reality, bringing history alive. For this follow-on project, investigators intend to capitalise on their partnership with Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and St. Cecilia’s Hall to create three dedicated public access points, situated at St. Cecilia’s Hall, Linlithgow Palace, and the Engine Shed, HES’s digital innovation centre. Furthermore, they would like to use the follow-on project to explore the viability of their models and experience of anechoic recording in a commercial music production environment.