Stefan Schucker
Acoustic scientist and field recordist · Solothurn, Switzerland
I build Sonora, record its library, and run the research behind it. Sonoraa Audio Lab is a one-person operation in Solothurn, Switzerland — which is unusual for this category, and worth being open about, because it explains the app's character: every sound was recorded by someone who will also read your support email.
The recording practice is simple to state and slow to do: real places, a Soundfield ambisonic microphone, and long takes. It has taken me as far as Norway for a single soundscape, and it is why nothing in the library is synthesised or AI-generated.
An acoustic scientist building a consumer sleep app is a strange combination on purpose. The sleep-sound category is full of confident claims and thin evidence, and I wanted to build the opposite: an app whose design follows data, published where it can be checked.
Research
Twelve months of anonymised listening data from Sonora became a field study of 77,408 users, presented at Forum Acusticum / Euronoise 2026 in Graz. Its headline finding: there is no universally optimal sleep soundscape — between-user variation was 7–9 times the population-mean effect. A within-user randomised study is planned.
Contact
The fastest way to reach me is info@sonoraa.com. I read everything, though during recording trips replies can take a few days.