Pricing & comparison
Spatial audio in a virtual office: what it means and why it lowers the barrier to talk
In a virtual office, spatial audio means a voice follows distance on the map: it gets louder as your avatar moves closer to someone and fades as you move away. It lowers the barrier to talk because there is nothing to schedule, send, or join. You see that a colleague is around, walk over, and speak, and walking away ends the conversation.
This article explains what the term covers, why a video link feels like a bigger step than a walk across the floor, and what spatial audio does not fix. The worked example is Hotori, the product we make as a small team in Tokyo, because we can say exactly how it behaves.
What “spatial audio” means here
The term has two meanings, and they get mixed up.
In headphones and films, spatial audio places sound around you, so a voice seems to come from your left or from behind you. In a virtual office, it usually means something simpler: volume depends on how far apart two avatars are on the map. Some products call this proximity audio or proximity chat.
Hotori does the simpler kind. Get within 3 tiles of someone and your voices connect (a tile is one square on the floor map). The closer you are, the louder they sound. Move away and it goes quiet. Volume changes with distance; voices are not placed to your left or right.
The result is that a conversation has a place. You can be in it, near it, or gone from it, as you can in a real office.
Why sending a video link feels like a big step
Clicking a link takes a second. Deciding to send one takes longer, and that decision is where many quick questions stop. A link carries costs that have nothing to do with bandwidth:
- You have to decide it is worth a call. A link turns a 20-second question into an event. So the question waits, or it becomes a long typed message.
- You are asking blind. You cannot see what the other person is doing. They may be free, or they may be in the middle of something hard.
- The other person has to respond. A link asks for a yes or no right away. Ignoring it feels rude, and accepting it means dropping what they are doing.
- Ending it takes words. After a 20-second answer, somebody still has to wrap up and leave the call.
- Nobody else overhears. Only the people you invited are there, so the colleague who solved this last month never learns you asked.
None of this is a flaw in video calls. They are the right tool for a planned review with an agenda. They are a heavy tool for “did that invoice go out?”
What changes when you can walk over
| Step | Sending a video link | Walking over on a shared floor |
|---|---|---|
| Before you start | Guess whether they are free | See who is around and their status |
| Starting | Write a message, send the link, wait | Walk within range and speak |
| If it is a bad time | Wait for a reply that may not come | Turn back; nothing was sent |
| If someone else can help | They need the link | If they are nearby, they hear you and join in |
| Finishing | Someone ends the call | Walk away |
Each step on the right is small and easy to take back. Walking toward someone commits you to nothing, and since nothing was sent, nothing needs an answer. That is where the lower barrier comes from.
The fade helps too. A voice at the edge of the range is quiet and gets louder as the person comes closer, so you get a moment’s notice. On a call, a voice is at full volume from the moment you join.
Here is a small example. A support agent wants to know whether a refund rule changed. With a link, the agent writes a message, waits, and gets an answer after lunch. On a shared floor, the agent sees the billing lead nearby, walks over, asks, and has the answer in 20 seconds. A new hire standing 2 tiles away hears it too.
How Hotori sets the rules
If everyone on a floor could hear everyone, it would be one large conference call. Range and closed places are what keep it usable. These are the rules as of October 30, 2026:
| Where you are | Who you hear | Who can hear you |
|---|---|---|
| Open floor | The 8 closest people within 3 tiles | People within 3 tiles, if you are among their 8 closest |
| Meeting room or private booth | Everyone in the room | Everyone in the room, and nobody outside |
| Focus desk | Nobody | Nobody |
What each rule is for:
- The limit of 8 on the open floor. In a crowded corner you hear the people closest to you, not everyone in range. That keeps a busy spot from turning into noise.
- No limit in a meeting room. Everyone in the room hears each other, as on a video call, with camera, screen share, and room chat. Nothing leaks outside.
- No voice at a focus desk. Voice does not reach you there, and yours does not reach anyone. A knock still does.
- A knock before you interrupt. Walking up to someone is easy, and it can still be a bad moment for them. If you are not sure, knock and add a short note. If they accept, you both move to a private booth. If not, they can tap “Later”.
Voice travels through our servers in Japan. Each voice is passed along as its own stream, only to the people who can hear you at that moment. The servers do not mix voices together. Voice, video, and chat are not saved on our servers, and there is no recording feature. How the servers enforce who can hear whom is covered in a separate technical article, in Japanese, on the developer site Zenn.
What spatial audio does not fix
- The open floor is not private. Anyone close enough can hear you. Salary talks, client numbers, and anything else sensitive belong in a closed room.
- It leaves no record. Hotori has no recording feature, so a conversation nobody wrote down is gone. If your team needs recordings or transcripts, that is a real gap. Gather’s Essential plan includes meeting recordings and transcriptions, and SpatialChat’s Virtual Office plans store up to 7 meeting recordings on Business and 30 on Enterprise (official pricing pages, as of October 30, 2026).
- It needs a computer and audio gear. You need a mic and headphones or speakers. Hotori is designed for computer browsers, and we are still testing phones.
- Distance adds delay. Voice works best in Japan, across Asia-Pacific, and on the West Coast of North America. The farther you are, the more delay you may notice. We are not offering Hotori in the EU, the EEA, or the UK for now.
- It needs people on the floor. Nobody can walk up to a colleague who never opened the tab.
How to judge it in a trial
A product tour cannot show whether this works for you, because the point is what people do on an ordinary day. Use it for a normal week, then ask:
- Did anyone ask a question they would otherwise have typed or saved for a meeting?
- Did anyone join a conversation they overheard?
- Could people find quiet when they needed it?
- Did anyone feel watched? Being visible on a map is a change, so ask directly.
When you compare tools, put the same questions to each one: how far a voice carries, whether it fades or cuts off, how many voices you can hear at once, whether a closed room is really closed, and what gets recorded.
Hotori‘s trial is 30 days with no card, with everything in the paid plans and up to 50 people at once. Test from where your people actually sit, since delay depends on distance.
Does spatial audio change what you pay?
Not directly, but the billing unit affects how well it works. Walking over only helps if the person is on the floor, and per-seat billing gives a team a reason to leave occasional people out.
For example, Gather’s Essential plan is $15 per member per month billed monthly, or $12 billed annually, so 25 members cost $375 or $300 a month, before any applicable taxes (official pricing page and help center, as of October 30, 2026). That counts every member, and the plan includes the recording and transcription noted above.
Hotori charges per space, so inviting one more person costs nothing. You pick how many people can be inside at once: Standard is US$39 a month for up to 25, and Business is US$69 a month for up to 50. Prices are in US dollars for customers outside Japan, and the final amount is shown at checkout. We have no sales team, so nobody will call you.
For worked numbers, see flat-rate vs per-seat pricing for a virtual office. Current prices are in the pricing section.
Company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. Hotori is not affiliated with them.
Sources
- Hotori: how it works, pricing, and FAQ (Inside Sales Co., Ltd.) — https://hotoriplace.com/en/ (as published on October 30, 2026)
- Pricing (Gather Presence Inc.) — https://www.gather.town/pricing (retrieved October 30, 2026; the $15 monthly figure is from the page’s own script module and the help center article below)
- Start & Manage Subscription (Gather Presence Inc.) — https://support.help.gather.town/articles/4876514502-start-manage-subscription (retrieved October 30, 2026)
- Pricing, Virtual Office tab (SpatialChat) — https://spatial.chat/pricing (retrieved October 30, 2026)
- The limit of 8 voices on the open floor and the rule that servers do not mix voices are from Hotori‘s own product documentation (as of October 30, 2026).