With the release of the tvOS 15 beta last week, we finally got our first taste of what Apple’s spatial audio sounds like when you combine an Apple TV 4K with a big-screen TV and the head-tracking built into the company’s AirPods Max or AirPods Pro. The result? A virtual home theater experience that will put a 65-inch smile on your face.
Apple launched spatial audio on the AirPods Pro in 2020. At the time, it made use of head-tracking technology to create a highly convincing 3D effect that turned your iPhone or iPad’s screen into a virtual movie theater. If you held your iPhone in front of you and moved your head from side to side, dialogue and other key soundtrack elements stayed pinned to the iPhone’s location. Turning your head to the right meant that these sounds seemed to still be coming from your phone.
Apple
With the release of tvOS 15, that same trick now works on an Apple TV 4K, on the biggest screen in the house. Does Apple’s virtual surround sound effect work as well when watching a 55-inch or larger screen? In a word: Yes.
Using a set of AirPods Max (it also works with AirPods Pro) and a second-gen Apple TV 4K, I fired up a variety of movies on Apple TV+, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix. Apple says the feature will work with Dolby 5.1 but you should get the best experience from Dolby Atmos content. Starting with Avengers: Endgame on Disney+, I was immediately taken by how real spatial audio sounds.
Surround sound in your head
What I mean is that, if you’ve got a 5.1 or better home theater setup, you’re used to hearing sounds coming from the different speakers — that’s what makes surround sound what it is. Head-tracking spatial audio manages to replicate that sensation using just two small speakers attached to your head. It’s so convincing, I had to keep taking the AirPods Max off to check if the sound was also being piped through my regular speakers.
But it’s not just sound direction that gets preserved; spatial audio also does an admirable job of creating a sense of distance to the sound source. This is where spatial on the big screen outdoes spatial on a phone or tablet. When using spatial audio on an iPhone, you get the same immersive effects, but because you’re holding a small screen in your hand — often only inches away — your brain senses a mismatch between the size of the image and the size/distance of the sound you’re hearing.
When using an Apple TV 4K with a big TV, that mismatch is resolved and your brain is handily fooled into thinking the sound is coming from its normal locations around the room.
Not a perfect substitute
It’s not a perfect substitute for conventional speakers. It’s hard to replicate the feel-it-in-your-chest bass of a subwoofer, and Dolby Atmos height channel sounds (the classic helicopter flying overhead effect) aren’t quite as thrilling. But on the other hand, dialogue is easier to understand and you get to benefit from Apple’s outstanding active noise cancellation on the AirPods Max and Pro.
If you live in a condo with thin walls, or you like to do most of your movie watching when the rest of the house is asleep, I can’t recommend spatial audio for Apple TV 4K enough. For $729 or less ($180 for the Apple TV 4K, $549 for AirPods Max), you’ve got a private listening experience that comes incredibly close to rivaling a sound system that can cost thousands.
At the moment, head-tracking spatial audio requires:
Apple TV 4K (gen 1 or gen 2)
tvOS 15 beta or higher
AirPods Pro or AirPods Max
Dolby 5.1 or Dolby Atmos content from:
Apple TV+
Disney+
Amazon Prime Video
What about Netflix?
Netflix will also likely benefit from spatial audio, but right now tvOS 15 beta does something odd with Netflix content. Regardless of whether your chosen movie is presented in 5.1 or Dolby Atmos, it gets down-converted to two-channel stereo when listening via AirPods. The Apple TV control center will indicate that spatial audio is available, but turning it on and off doesn’t seem to make a noticeable difference, and there is no relative change in audio direction when you turn your head.
Wondering about Dolby Atmos Music from Apple Music? Apple has said it plans to add head-tracking spatial audio to this content, too, but that doesn’t arrive until this fall. My experience with Apple’s spatial audio treatment of Dolby Atmos Music has been a bit hit-and-miss, so I’m anxious to see if the addition of head-tracking does as much for immersive music as it does for immersive movie soundtracks.
Sony updates WH-1000XM5 with head-tracked spatial audio and better multipoint
Sony has released a software update for its flagship noise-canceling headphones, the WH-1000XM5, that enables head-tracked spatial audio -- a feature the company first debuted this week on its new WF-1000XM5 wireless earbuds.
The update also includes an enhancement of how Bluetooth Multipoint works on these wireless headphones. Previously, you had to choose between connecting two devices to the XM5 simultaneously or being able to use the company's LDAC hi-res Bluetooth codec. Turning on one of these features would automatically disable the other. Now, you can leave LDAC enabled and take advantage of simultaneous connections, even if one of the devices isn't LDAC-capable (like an iPhone).
As is often the case with Apple's major press releases, some of the more interesting (if obscure) details often are tucked away toward the end, or even in the footnotes. Case in point: Support for third-party VPNs is coming to Apple TV when tvOS 17 is released this fall.
For most normal folks, that's probably not a huge deal. You plug in your Apple TV at home or wherever, and it just works. But for some folks, it's going to open up a world of fun.
YouTube TV details fixes for audio sync, better 1080p quality
YouTube TV — the most popular live-streaming service service in the U.S. with more than 5 million subscribers — this week gave an update on Reddit on some bug squashing and upcoming features, plus some welcome improvements. It's an interesting bit of transparency in an age in which app changelogs are all but useless.
Probably the most interesting is that YouTube TV is "testing transcoding changes, including a bit rate increase for live 1080p content." Resolution — that's the 1080p number — is just one part of what makes up the quality of the picture on your screen. Bit rate is another. Basically it refers to the amount of data being pushed to make up that resolution — like the difference between a 1,080-piece puzzle with a picture made up of five colors, or one made up of 500 colors. Think of it like that. The higher the bit rate, the better the picture. And as we've discussed before, we'll take a 1080p stream with a higher bit rate over a bad 4K stream any day of the week, particularly when it comes to sports (which is exactly what we've seen with Apple's excellent MLS streams).
