KUULES
Where it started

It began as a tool I needed and could not find.

Kuules is made by one person, in Jyväskylä, out of the work that kept running into the same wall.

Sound art and installations

An installation is a room somebody walks into. The field has to work from everywhere in it, not from one sweet spot, and it has to hold its shape while a person moves through it. That is a different problem from a mix, and it is where the need for tools that shape a field rather than merely place sources in one first became obvious.

Kuules Render, the rig view
An installation is a rig somebody walks through. Render draws what that rig actually covers.

Game audio

Years of Wwise and Unity work leaves you with a particular set of expectations: that a room is an object, that sources know where they are, that occlusion and portals are things the system handles rather than things you automate by hand. Coming back to a DAW after that feels like losing a limb.

Most of what is in progress now — one shared world, with beacons publishing positions and a stage holding the listener and the room they all live in — is that expectation brought inside the DAW, which is where audio drama and film actually get made.

Kuules Stage, beacons and a listener in one room
Stage. Beacons publish where they are; one listener, one room, and everything follows when either moves.

Audio drama

Drama is where spatial audio stops being a technical exercise. A scene needs a voice to be close, then heard through a wall, then in the room again, and it needs those changes to be shaped over a timeline with intent. Not accurate. Convincing.

Which is why physics here is the starting point rather than the law. The accuracy is what makes the departures work.

Kuules Darkness, the per-order taper
Darkness. A voice heard through a wall is the higher orders rolled off before the omni bed is.

Objects and ambisonics together

Real work is never purely one or the other. A recording of a place, a few placed sources, a reverb that has to cover both. Splitting those into two incompatible worlds is a technical convenience, not a creative one, so the end-point plugins handle them together.

Kuules Scene, a room with sources in it
Scene. One room, one listener, and every source living in it — objects and field together rather than in two worlds.

Immersive storytelling through sound

All of it comes back to the same thing: making somebody feel that they are somewhere. Every decision in this suite — the three tiers, the tenth order, the insistence on drawing what a control does — exists because it made that easier to do.

Kuules Verb, the room field view
Verb’s room field — a space drawn in the space’s own terms, which is how you shape one by feel.