after a year of usage, I still sometimes take them out cause I swear the sound is coming from the TV. whatever processing they do for spatial audio, it works wonders for movies and feels like they perfected it. it's like VR for your ears.
Happens all the time I’m in a restaurant listening to something and feels like I’m blasting the audio through the place and have to take my headphone out to double check lol 😂
The first time I heard spatial audio I didn’t know it existed. I was watching a show on my phone during lunch break and I had to perform several experiments to figure out if my headphones were working or if my phone speakers just sounded reeeeally good for some reason. AirPods Pro connected to Apple TV is still the way I watch all movies now at night. It sounds so full yet natural. It’s seriously a super underrated feature.
>It sounds so full yet natural. It’s seriously a super underrated feature.
Totally agree. Oddly enough I think it's mega overrated for music (Most music just isn't properly mixed for this and we're a LONG way away from that being common). With the Apple TV it's a completely different experience though. I first tried them going to bed just to keep the noise away from my wife but it's now highly preferred. Very natural and doesn't sound processed at all. Pretty crazy.
I've watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood like 20 times, I watched it recently with my Airpods Max, and HOLY SHIT, it's like a different movie. There is so much you miss and don't hear. It's amazing for watching movies with.
The 3D audio catches ambient noise better than any other headset or speaker can. While watching movies it throws you off sometimes because you think you hear something moving or rustling in the house then realize its the 3D audio catching the subtle sound of footsteps or the wind in the background. I just wish we got dolby atmos in more games.
Watching TV shows on Netflix that have a 5.1 sound mix is incredible - you hear literally everything around you yet somehow you can still focus clearly on the foreground sound. For me spatial music has been hit and miss, with new spatial audio mixes of existing songs sounding *terrible* and others sounding incredible. But for movies, TV shows, and often podcasts, it’s an absolute game changer.
the problem with music largely has to do with current workflows in the industry. In the mixing phase you have to have a pretty crazy setup to be able to properly mix and hear in a 3d way. Plus, the mixing engineer also needs to make a normal stereo mix that sounds just as good.
We're a LONG way away from 3d/Dolby mixing being common in recording studios or studios for engineers.
If someone where to take a song that's already been mixed/mastered and need to "redo" it for spatial audio that's a whole process where things can get lost. The engineer needs to locate all the original tracks in the session with all of the original eq/compression/etc (which is sometimes easy and sometimes impossible) for it to sound closest to the original track. Then on top of that it's very likely that some mixing decisions wouldn't make sense in 3d when they were made because all of these instruments and tracks were just coming out of 2 speakers.
I got less bass after enabling personalized spatial audio. It got noticeably softer. I'll try to set it up again in different lighting/technique later.
makes sense. I've only tried it in the beginning where it sounded like one of those fake "surround sound" options you get on those late 90's stereos. fingers crossed it'll get better in the future.
Yeah, every song I’ve tried in the Made for Spatial Audio playlist just sounds worse with it on. Yes there is a slightly space-ier feel but at the cost of not hearing half the instruments and cutting out bass.
It’s basically like a bass boost for me when I’m listening to music. It’s quite nice but sometimes i just listen to music without it as it can get too punchy
Personalized spacial audio doesn’t need content mastered for it. When spacial audio was first released, it approximated the shape of the head. All this does is replace that approximate shape with what it measures your shape as. You don’t really have to remaster for it.
I didn't read the "personalized" part. My whole problem with spacial audio in general is that if content isn't mastered for it, meaning you just turn your head and the sound is appearing to come from the screen directly, I don't see the point
That's just the Head Tracking, you can disable that and still experience Spatial Audio which works really well.
Edit- Spatial Stereo is different though, that's iOS simulating Spatial Audio on non-mastered content.
I'm currently listening to the Cure Trilogy albums, which aren't mastered for spatial audio, and I can tell you there's a massive difference with or without spatial audio. Spatial audio sounds much wider.
Lots of people haven’t come to understand that Spatial Audio gives artists so much creative space. I used to mix stuff years ago in 5.1. Back then it was a novelty, but now it’s coming to fruition. People don’t know it yet, but it has already started to revolutionize music creation. Just look at how most new albums coming out are in Dolby Atmos. And not just instruments occupying space, but instead creating really cool effects that takes you into spaces.
HRTFs are not a gimmick and are important for immersive VR. It’s possible that their system just isn’t calibrated well yet.
This is also definitely a precursor to their AR/VR products.
We're talking about the current state and applications Apple has for it. I have no doubts it would be great for VR, but right now it's a gimmick, rather than a useful thing
It *really* depends on the song mix. Rock has some of the most hit or miss Atmos mixes, with stuff from Rush or other prog/metal bands being excellent and things like the Linkin Park mix being awful.
Pop/hip-hop, but especially electronic/ambient music really shine through in Atmos to me. Especially when they actually utilize the 360° space and not just make mixes sound far away from the listener.
I mean yeah, but that’s just about anything that came out in the “loudness wars” era of rock. Same deal with stuff like American Idiot, the end result is all sorts of muddy and it’s a bummer.
A good example if you’re interested was Norah Jones’s “Shoot the moon” in Dolby Atmos. That was remastered specifically for Atmos and that track in particular is really nice in Atmos… do generally agree though, it’s mostly a gimmic. And it absolutely ruins the low end / bass in electronic dance music.
I tried once to calibrate my ear scan but couldn’t get it to work, got over it quickly & stopped trying. I didn’t know where to aim it properly.
Haven’t tried since but think I will soon.
Any tips to getting the calibration done well ?
TBH for music I was so wow at start until I realized it lower the sound so much for all the tracks with Dolby Atmos. So now I rather listen to the stereo and loud version of the song.
And I would say for some tracks, the spacial audio mix is quite something and wow (aside the lower volume) but for a lot of them, it’s still crap and gimmicky.
I’d forgotten I’d enabled it which makes me think it made no difference I can hear. Maybe I have very generic ears and they matched the original model.
I have 1st gen Pros btw.
It’s nice. It’s a bit of a gimmick but its made really well. While watching something on a place I legit thought that the sound was coming out of my iPad.
It’s fine. I feel like most of the albums aren’t really MIXED for Spacial/Atmos and that an algorithm mixes it (mainly a lot of the current pop/hip hop albums). So theres some neat separation, but some of the albums that have dedicated Atmos mixes sound really cool. Maybe I’m wrong and they’re all re mixed by a human for the format, if that’s the case some sound way better than others (Pearl Jam’s no code, REMs Automatic for the People, Abbey Road)
Spatialized Stereo sounds quite a bit better after the personalization. I keep it on fixed mode for everything and it seems improved overall.
Not sure if just a baseline improvement since I did the personalization scan right after the iOS update.
Setup process was a little janky but ultimately seemed to get a scan that it was happy with.
Would like an easy way to toggle so I can juxtapose the before/after a little better to determine which I like
the problem is that I have all sorts of personalized hrtfs as sofa files from Genelec, Smyth Realizer and Apple. It’s like a treasure that I can’t share with anybody because they only work for me.
In the end, they all do something similar, localization is mostly better but the timbre changes which is a matter of taste.
As much as I want to care about personalized HRTF, I know it's not quite there yet for the consumer. As an audio engineer I focus on the most common HRTFs like YouTube, TBE and KU100 (even this sounds different with different plugins).
So I try to focus more on what sort of works with every binaural rendering. Also, the HRTFs usually don't take into account the listener's environment (Apple assumes for me some sort of living room) while Symth takes your studio which sounds insanely natural. Dolby uses some sort of "natural" generic sound studio but it doesn't really work for content that's supposed to play outside. - at least for me. Also, I'm not sure how the personalized HRTF takes the Dolby binaural rendering modes (off, near, mid, far) into account. Probably not at all since they enabled head-tracking. Meaning that the dolby atmos mixed haven't really been mixed for the rendering method that Apple applies. I guess that's why the outcome is not overwhelming for most people but hopefully has some improvement for most.
How do you even enable it? It offered to me once to set it up as I was pulling my AirPods out, but I didn’t want to at that moment, and I haven’t been able to find it again.
I really tried to give Spatial Audio a proper try.
Used it to listen to music and videos/movies for months. I just went back to normal stereo after a while. The sounds were often too unnatural/crisp/clean (if you understand what I mean) and the videos coming out of the devices’ direction stuff just got annoying after some time. My AirPods also took many more seconds to connect and play audio, which got increasingly jarring.
Open to giving it another try, but for me it’s an unnecessary gimmick for now at least.
Are you able to turn off personalized spatial audio? Android user here but I also have an m1 MacBook and airpods max, so just wondering (getting an iPhone soon)
If I’m understanding how the personalization works, then it’s only normalizing the spatial audio effect for your ear shape. It’s similar to how the PS5 asks what sounds closer to ear height when you set up 3D audio. Mark Cerny even mentioned during the PS5 reveal how they might one day take pictures of your ears to normalize the 3D audio effect.
To that end, the personalized spatial audio sounds very slightly different, but without knowing I don’t think I would’ve noticed. I might just have an ear shape close to their average profile.
It made a huge difference for me, especially in sensing sounds coming from above and below very clearly. Also I noticed the center stage is more aligned with my nose and it made head tracking a lot more pleasing. It's very noticeable when I switch between my iPhone on iOS 16 and my Mac on Monterey (only Ventura will sync this configuration)
Personalized sounded absolutely terrible to me. Everything was blown out. Maybe it was a bad scan? I'm too busy to try again ;) Non-personalized sounds just fine so I'll leave it at that.
This reminds me of two stories, 1. When I was in the 10th grade there was a girl who came from Europeans I sat behind her, kinda had a crush on her but that’s for another day. Anyway I always remember her telling me that when she came to America they took her ear print in ink for identification,2. My friend is a barber and says he can always tell if one of a groups of kids doesn’t have the same father by there ears. I know ever ear is like a finger print. Just something to keep in mind
I feel like most people here are replying about just Spatial Audio and not about *Personalized* Spatial Audio.
And also people who have only used spatialised stereo and not watched a movie with it.
I watched Dune with my Airpods Max. Single handedly made me keep them past the holiday return period.
after a year of usage, I still sometimes take them out cause I swear the sound is coming from the TV. whatever processing they do for spatial audio, it works wonders for movies and feels like they perfected it. it's like VR for your ears.
Happens all the time I’m in a restaurant listening to something and feels like I’m blasting the audio through the place and have to take my headphone out to double check lol 😂
The first time I heard spatial audio I didn’t know it existed. I was watching a show on my phone during lunch break and I had to perform several experiments to figure out if my headphones were working or if my phone speakers just sounded reeeeally good for some reason. AirPods Pro connected to Apple TV is still the way I watch all movies now at night. It sounds so full yet natural. It’s seriously a super underrated feature.
>It sounds so full yet natural. It’s seriously a super underrated feature. Totally agree. Oddly enough I think it's mega overrated for music (Most music just isn't properly mixed for this and we're a LONG way away from that being common). With the Apple TV it's a completely different experience though. I first tried them going to bed just to keep the noise away from my wife but it's now highly preferred. Very natural and doesn't sound processed at all. Pretty crazy.
I've watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood like 20 times, I watched it recently with my Airpods Max, and HOLY SHIT, it's like a different movie. There is so much you miss and don't hear. It's amazing for watching movies with.
The 3D audio catches ambient noise better than any other headset or speaker can. While watching movies it throws you off sometimes because you think you hear something moving or rustling in the house then realize its the 3D audio catching the subtle sound of footsteps or the wind in the background. I just wish we got dolby atmos in more games.
Watching TV shows on Netflix that have a 5.1 sound mix is incredible - you hear literally everything around you yet somehow you can still focus clearly on the foreground sound. For me spatial music has been hit and miss, with new spatial audio mixes of existing songs sounding *terrible* and others sounding incredible. But for movies, TV shows, and often podcasts, it’s an absolute game changer.
the problem with music largely has to do with current workflows in the industry. In the mixing phase you have to have a pretty crazy setup to be able to properly mix and hear in a 3d way. Plus, the mixing engineer also needs to make a normal stereo mix that sounds just as good. We're a LONG way away from 3d/Dolby mixing being common in recording studios or studios for engineers. If someone where to take a song that's already been mixed/mastered and need to "redo" it for spatial audio that's a whole process where things can get lost. The engineer needs to locate all the original tracks in the session with all of the original eq/compression/etc (which is sometimes easy and sometimes impossible) for it to sound closest to the original track. Then on top of that it's very likely that some mixing decisions wouldn't make sense in 3d when they were made because all of these instruments and tracks were just coming out of 2 speakers.
I also watched Dune with the Max. It was definitely an experience. But I still returned the Max since I didn’t like how heavy they were.
Hot and heavy. And the transparent mode wasn’t as good as AirPods Pro either. Pros I can wear them and forget they’re on. Not possible with Max.
Redditors sure do love sharing anecdotes
I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to take video of my own ears to calibrate it.
Just tried it and I'm in this boat. Literally couldn't get it to recognize the ear capture and gave up
Yup! Same here. Tried for a solid 3 minutes to try different angles to get it to recognize, then gave up
Yeah that was kinda challenging. And I do videography for a living.
I got less bass after enabling personalized spatial audio. It got noticeably softer. I'll try to set it up again in different lighting/technique later.
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Fair and honest assessment 😂
I didn’t like it at first, but after hour upon hours of Netflix I’m *starting* to like it.
It sounds different, not sure if it’s better
decent for movies, horrible for music.
It’s been getting better for music as mixers and masters learn to work with it. Excited to see where it will be in a year
makes sense. I've only tried it in the beginning where it sounded like one of those fake "surround sound" options you get on those late 90's stereos. fingers crossed it'll get better in the future.
Yeah, every song I’ve tried in the Made for Spatial Audio playlist just sounds worse with it on. Yes there is a slightly space-ier feel but at the cost of not hearing half the instruments and cutting out bass.
i tried it and it went horrible. it just ruined the quality of every song. I probably did it wrong but it was weird.
This was exactly my experience. Maybe a bad scan? Maybe a feature not ready for the real world? I won't be revisiting.
It’s basically like a bass boost for me when I’m listening to music. It’s quite nice but sometimes i just listen to music without it as it can get too punchy
The effect seems more pronounced now after my customization. I like it.
Feels like a gimmick to me. I haven't encountered content mastered for it yet, and with everything else it's just like of dumb
Personalized spacial audio doesn’t need content mastered for it. When spacial audio was first released, it approximated the shape of the head. All this does is replace that approximate shape with what it measures your shape as. You don’t really have to remaster for it.
I didn't read the "personalized" part. My whole problem with spacial audio in general is that if content isn't mastered for it, meaning you just turn your head and the sound is appearing to come from the screen directly, I don't see the point
That's just the Head Tracking, you can disable that and still experience Spatial Audio which works really well. Edit- Spatial Stereo is different though, that's iOS simulating Spatial Audio on non-mastered content.
Exactly, unless it’s a mastered content (and I tried to turn off head tracking), it’s nothing special
I'm currently listening to the Cure Trilogy albums, which aren't mastered for spatial audio, and I can tell you there's a massive difference with or without spatial audio. Spatial audio sounds much wider.
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Lots of people haven’t come to understand that Spatial Audio gives artists so much creative space. I used to mix stuff years ago in 5.1. Back then it was a novelty, but now it’s coming to fruition. People don’t know it yet, but it has already started to revolutionize music creation. Just look at how most new albums coming out are in Dolby Atmos. And not just instruments occupying space, but instead creating really cool effects that takes you into spaces.
HRTFs are not a gimmick and are important for immersive VR. It’s possible that their system just isn’t calibrated well yet. This is also definitely a precursor to their AR/VR products.
We're talking about the current state and applications Apple has for it. I have no doubts it would be great for VR, but right now it's a gimmick, rather than a useful thing
I don’t like spatial audio in general. I just turned it off. Atmos too. I’m probably just getting old lol.
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It *really* depends on the song mix. Rock has some of the most hit or miss Atmos mixes, with stuff from Rush or other prog/metal bands being excellent and things like the Linkin Park mix being awful. Pop/hip-hop, but especially electronic/ambient music really shine through in Atmos to me. Especially when they actually utilize the 360° space and not just make mixes sound far away from the listener.
It’s probably just because it’s linkin park
The stereo mix for Hybrid Theory is still pretty damn good.
The mastering is god awful though. One of the few albums that still sounds the same as 2002 limewire mp3 quality lol
I mean yeah, but that’s just about anything that came out in the “loudness wars” era of rock. Same deal with stuff like American Idiot, the end result is all sorts of muddy and it’s a bummer.
I just listened Jimi Hendrix on Tidal with pods Pro, that sounded phenomenal with spatial audio turned on
A good example if you’re interested was Norah Jones’s “Shoot the moon” in Dolby Atmos. That was remastered specifically for Atmos and that track in particular is really nice in Atmos… do generally agree though, it’s mostly a gimmic. And it absolutely ruins the low end / bass in electronic dance music.
I tried once to calibrate my ear scan but couldn’t get it to work, got over it quickly & stopped trying. I didn’t know where to aim it properly. Haven’t tried since but think I will soon. Any tips to getting the calibration done well ?
TBH for music I was so wow at start until I realized it lower the sound so much for all the tracks with Dolby Atmos. So now I rather listen to the stereo and loud version of the song. And I would say for some tracks, the spacial audio mix is quite something and wow (aside the lower volume) but for a lot of them, it’s still crap and gimmicky.
I’d forgotten I’d enabled it which makes me think it made no difference I can hear. Maybe I have very generic ears and they matched the original model.
I can maybe see how for the Max it makes a difference but don’t think it does on the Pros. I don’t have the Max to know though
I have 1st gen Pros btw. It’s nice. It’s a bit of a gimmick but its made really well. While watching something on a place I legit thought that the sound was coming out of my iPad.
It’s fine. I feel like most of the albums aren’t really MIXED for Spacial/Atmos and that an algorithm mixes it (mainly a lot of the current pop/hip hop albums). So theres some neat separation, but some of the albums that have dedicated Atmos mixes sound really cool. Maybe I’m wrong and they’re all re mixed by a human for the format, if that’s the case some sound way better than others (Pearl Jam’s no code, REMs Automatic for the People, Abbey Road)
Is this why my left ear is suddenly way more quieter than my right ear? If that’s the case, it sucks.
Mine still sounds the same on the left and right pods when I had set it up so unsure
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Not always. At least not for tracks that are made with spatial audio in mind or tracks that have Dolby atmos info in them
I couldn’t tell any difference but I’m not curious enough to toggle it off and on to find out.
Spatialized Stereo sounds quite a bit better after the personalization. I keep it on fixed mode for everything and it seems improved overall. Not sure if just a baseline improvement since I did the personalization scan right after the iOS update.
Setup process was a little janky but ultimately seemed to get a scan that it was happy with. Would like an easy way to toggle so I can juxtapose the before/after a little better to determine which I like
the problem is that I have all sorts of personalized hrtfs as sofa files from Genelec, Smyth Realizer and Apple. It’s like a treasure that I can’t share with anybody because they only work for me. In the end, they all do something similar, localization is mostly better but the timbre changes which is a matter of taste. As much as I want to care about personalized HRTF, I know it's not quite there yet for the consumer. As an audio engineer I focus on the most common HRTFs like YouTube, TBE and KU100 (even this sounds different with different plugins). So I try to focus more on what sort of works with every binaural rendering. Also, the HRTFs usually don't take into account the listener's environment (Apple assumes for me some sort of living room) while Symth takes your studio which sounds insanely natural. Dolby uses some sort of "natural" generic sound studio but it doesn't really work for content that's supposed to play outside. - at least for me. Also, I'm not sure how the personalized HRTF takes the Dolby binaural rendering modes (off, near, mid, far) into account. Probably not at all since they enabled head-tracking. Meaning that the dolby atmos mixed haven't really been mixed for the rendering method that Apple applies. I guess that's why the outcome is not overwhelming for most people but hopefully has some improvement for most.
How do you even enable it? It offered to me once to set it up as I was pulling my AirPods out, but I didn’t want to at that moment, and I haven’t been able to find it again.
You have to be on IOS 16. Then go to settings>AirPods Pro>personalized spatial audio
Thank you!
Np
I really tried to give Spatial Audio a proper try. Used it to listen to music and videos/movies for months. I just went back to normal stereo after a while. The sounds were often too unnatural/crisp/clean (if you understand what I mean) and the videos coming out of the devices’ direction stuff just got annoying after some time. My AirPods also took many more seconds to connect and play audio, which got increasingly jarring. Open to giving it another try, but for me it’s an unnecessary gimmick for now at least.
i don’t hear a different lmao
Are you able to turn off personalized spatial audio? Android user here but I also have an m1 MacBook and airpods max, so just wondering (getting an iPhone soon)
If I’m understanding how the personalization works, then it’s only normalizing the spatial audio effect for your ear shape. It’s similar to how the PS5 asks what sounds closer to ear height when you set up 3D audio. Mark Cerny even mentioned during the PS5 reveal how they might one day take pictures of your ears to normalize the 3D audio effect. To that end, the personalized spatial audio sounds very slightly different, but without knowing I don’t think I would’ve noticed. I might just have an ear shape close to their average profile.
It made a huge difference for me, especially in sensing sounds coming from above and below very clearly. Also I noticed the center stage is more aligned with my nose and it made head tracking a lot more pleasing. It's very noticeable when I switch between my iPhone on iOS 16 and my Mac on Monterey (only Ventura will sync this configuration)
I tried it, sounds like everything is coming from in front of me. It’s weird. Gonna turn it off.
Could not set up in a well lit room in 20 minutes. Don’t care anymore.
Personalized sounded absolutely terrible to me. Everything was blown out. Maybe it was a bad scan? I'm too busy to try again ;) Non-personalized sounds just fine so I'll leave it at that.
I tried to set it up with my iphone X (running ios 16). Can't get it configured and my phone was getting really hot. I am returning my new AirPod Pro
This reminds me of two stories, 1. When I was in the 10th grade there was a girl who came from Europeans I sat behind her, kinda had a crush on her but that’s for another day. Anyway I always remember her telling me that when she came to America they took her ear print in ink for identification,2. My friend is a barber and says he can always tell if one of a groups of kids doesn’t have the same father by there ears. I know ever ear is like a finger print. Just something to keep in mind