Smalley argues that the core of reverberant music lies in the spatialisation of the experience of sound, rather than the focus on elements such as melody and rhythm in traditional music. Space is not only a context for sound in phantom pace is not only a context for sound in phantom music but also an important part of its content and form. He divides sound into several spatial layers, including perspectival space and spectral space. He emphasizes that the listener’s listening position determines the perception of the sound space and that spectral variations in sound can shape different spatial levels of height, distance, and proximity.

Source-bonded space explores how sound is connected to the listener’s perception through its source. For example, a frog’s call is not just a sound, but also contains information about the frog’s environment, creating a ‘behavioral space’. This spatial experience is used to simulate the reproduction of natural or cultural spaces in reverberant music.

The experience of sound is not limited to the sense of hearing; other senses (e.g., sight, touch) are naturally involved. Smalley points out that when listening to reverberant music, the listener supplements the perception of the source of the sound by imagining it, and that this ‘transmodal’ experience gives more dimensions to the spatiality of the sound.