Reviewed: AmazeVR Immersive Concerts
Reviewed: AmazeVR Immersive Concerts
A start to something truly magical.
With the addition of a mixed reality headset in my life that doesn’t cause me motion sickness, I’ve been exploring a ton of different apps both new and old. AmazeVR has been around for about a year now and while I tried it on my older Quest 2, I couldn’t fully evaluate it because of motion sickness.
But now that I have a headset that doesn’t make me motion sick, I’m able to enjoy and evaluate the app fairly. And boy do I have thoughts.
So without further ado, here is my review of AmazeVR, a virtual reality music experience.
It’s Different
When I first looked at AmazeVR, I thought that it would be 3D concert videos. It’s not that at all. I would describe it as a series of mini-music videos. The "concerts" are all about 15-25 minutes each and consist of four or five songs by each artist.
I’d say it’s reasonably priced at $13 per concert. Plus, AmazeVR gives you a free song by each artist. So at least that way, you can get an idea of an artist’s set before purchasing.
Rather than a 3D concert film, artists are recorded on a green screen on a soundstage. Other than the artists themselves and potential backup dancers or props, everything is digitally created. For the most part, I’d say that if you like at least 50% of the tracks on the setlist, you’ll enjoy the mini-concerts.
The number of artists is pretty small at the moment, but it appears that AmazeVR is adding a new one every few months or so. That makes sense given the relatively small VR headset market.
The Experience
So far, I’ve purchased two concerts—Zara Larrson and UPSAHL— and have tried all of the free tracks from all of the other available artists. At the time of writing, aespa and KAI are coming soon. I’d admittedly never heard of UPSAHL until seeing her free concert. But that one free song convinced me to purchase her entire concert. Now, all of those songs from the concert sit in my music library.
In that regard, I found UPSAHL’s sets really cool and the music was great. I think the energy on the first two tracks—Drugs and Into My Body were excellent. Especially in Into My Body where she was teleporting in and out along with the beat. The set for Kickflip and Last Supper were excellent, though those were more acoustic-esk sets.
On the other hand, I found the entire Zara Larrson experience quite enjoyable and engaging. I’d say her set was more intimate. There were moments when Zara was maybe a foot away from you. There were a few fan interaction moments, great choreography (both solo and with backup dancers), and an overall great set design. She made use of visual cues lining up with the music quite a bit. During the interlude, Zara blows a flower your way and that flower can be interacted with. That was really cool.
I think my main takeaway from seeing both concerts is the progression in visual fidelity. Although I enjoyed the Zara experience more (I knew of her music before buying), the visual fidelity was substantially better in the UPSAHL experience. In the Zara experience, I was able to see visual artifacting around her hair and in the set.
I’ve also tried the free song from T-Pain. Admittedly, I didn’t know the song, but I did like his set and overall vibe. His overall had noticeably higher resolution and there weren’t as many cuts between different cameras. It was a single camera with very smooth panning. I’m not a huge T-Pain fan so I probably won’t buy the full concert. But it looked pretty great and I’d recommend it to anyone who is a fan.
But I think my biggest disappointment is with the audio. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize that these artists are all lip-syncing to playback. There’s no live band and certainly no live vocals. Also, with the Vision Pro specifically, it’s very clear that the audio was recorded in stereo. And unfortunately, that gets "spatialized" on this headset.
It’s very obvious as everything sounds like it’s coming from inside my head. You can also tell because when I moved my head (mostly when the camera POV started moving upwards) the frequency response changed, amplifying treble and reducing bass a notable amount. Likewise, when the camera panned down, all treble was lost and the bass was cranked a notable amount.
The actual audio fidelity was great. For the most part, it wasn’t really noticeable unless the cameras were panned to those extremes.
Conclusion
Overall, AamazeVR was an incredible experience. Most people won’t ever get the opportunity to get this close to their favorite artists. I certainly enjoy the experience.
If anything, AmazeVR is a proving ground. The tech is still very early days and will only get better from here. That’s very obvious in the fact that not only does the app require an active internet connection to function (DRM, I get it), but it requires you to download the concert beforehand before playing. It likely requires too much data to stream the concert in real time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that you’ll need to make sure you have the concert downloaded if you want to watch it. If not, you’ll have to download it every time.
At the end of the day, I think AmazeVR has a winner here. It’s a very compelling experience once you find an artist you’re into. The price of admission is well worth it. There are only a few artists right now, but my hope is that the list continues to expand and that more artists—both big and small—are added to the list. The concerts are fun, engaging, and personal. It feels like you bought a ticket to see your favorite artists shoot their music videos.
Note: This review was completed after testing AmazeVR Concerts on Apple Vision Pro running visionOS 1.1.1. This review was not sponsored nor did AmazeVR get copy approval before publication. Peter purchased all the content with their own money. The screenshots are not representative of the actual experience due to the Apple Vision Pro’s foveated rendering.