Spatial Audio Questions

[RedlegsFan]

Is this something that only works on movies and video. Do the movies have to be formatted a certain way for sound in order to take advantage of the Spatial Audio?

Does Spatial Audio do anything for music listening?

All my devices are on the new betas. My Airpods Pro are on the new firmware. Is Spatial Audio already activated? How do you test it out?

Thanks!

 

[zooole]

Think of it like Dolby atmos for your ears. If your source is Dolby atmos then you get spatial audio. I am trying it now but I haven't found a really good demo yet.

 

[majid23]

Try this...

 

[Ralfi]

Is it actually included in this beta version of IOS14?

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Is this something that only works on movies and video. Do the movies have to be formatted a certain way for sound in order to take advantage of the Spatial Audio?

The Apple executive who presided over Monday's keynote segment (was it Craig?) explicitly said that Spatial Audio was compatible with Dolby 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos sources.

Does Spatial Audio do anything for music listening?

Unknown. This was not covered in the keynote. However, based on the fact that very little audio is encoded in Dolby 5.1, 7.1 or Atmos, I would say Spatial Audio will have minimal effect on music listening.

All my devices are on the new betas. My Airpods Pro are on the new firmware. Is Spatial Audio already activated?

Developer documentation and other resources should cover this. If there is support, most likely you will see large amounts of discussion in the appropriate forums (perhaps not here at MR).

While I am not involved in the developer betas at all, my guess is that the lack of commentary about this specific feature here tells me that it is not yet active for ig Sur/iOS 14 beta testers at this time.

How do you test it out?

Listen to a source that uses Dolby 5.1, 7.1 or Atmos sound. Monday's keynote demo was pretty clear. They had a user play back a movie on their iPad.

 

[Ralfi]

Try this...

That’s not the greatest example of it. That’s a demo made for home theatre systems with Atmos speakers, & it should really be played sans compression. As a result, it doesn’t sound that good.

All these other ‘spacial audio’ demos on YouTube may sound great, but they sound the same with any headphones, so they’re not truly showcasing the spacial audio feature.

 

[Polaroid]

That’s not the greatest example of it. That’s a demo made for home theatre systems with Atmos speakers, & it should really be played sans compression. As a result, it doesn’t sound that good.

All these other ‘spacial audio’ demos on YouTube may sound great, but they sound the same with any headphones, so they’re not truly showcasing the spacial audio feature.

got a good video demo that works?

 

[Ralfi]

got a good video demo that works?

Until we know for sure that Spacial Audio's enabled, we can't really test it properly.

We'll need to wait & see if proper sources pop up that are made for it.

 

[zooole]

I have used HRTF based spatial audio elsewhere (PSVR, Xbox One) and it's very similar now with Atmos sources.

I can't say for sure though because I haven't really listened to the same sources before with AirPods (Netflix, TV+) and there are no interactive sources available AFAIK, which is the best test.

This doesn't need any dev interaction, Apple can just turn it on and I am pretty confident that they won't push it to your face, just like they didn't with Atmos support last year.