{"id":9090,"date":"2020-09-17T17:03:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T17:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aviancetechnologies.com\/blog\/apples-new-spatial-audio-feature-is-a-headphone-game-changer\/"},"modified":"2020-09-17T17:03:40","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T17:03:40","slug":"apples-new-spatial-audio-feature-is-a-headphone-game-changer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aviancetechnologies.com\/blog\/apples-new-spatial-audio-feature-is-a-headphone-game-changer\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple’s new spatial audio feature is a headphone game-changer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Apple’s new spatial audio feature is a headphone game-changer<\/h2>\n

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You can toggle spatial audio on and off.<\/p>\n

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This story is part of Apple Event<\/span>, our full coverage of the latest news from Apple headquarters.<\/p>\n

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When I first updated my iPhone 11 Pro<\/span> to iOS 14<\/span> to try out Apple’s new spatial audio feature, I was a bit mystified. “Not sure what’s going on,” I wrote a colleague. “I seem to have the new firmware [3A283] on AirPods Pro. It says I have spatial audio. But what some people are describing I’m not experiencing. Restarting phone and earbuds.”<\/p>\n

That made all the difference. After I turned the phone back on and reinserted the buds in my ears (after returning them briefly to their charging case), I launched a movie on Apple TV again and was greeted by a completely different audio experience. It’s hard to describe the sensation but my immediate reaction was to check whether the earbuds were actually on because the audio sounded like it was coming from the phone (not the buds), which was sitting on the table about two feet away from me. It was an out-of-bud experience. (For instructions on how to enable spatial audio, go here.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back in July, after Apple first announced the feature, I wrote about how spatial audio had a chance to be a game-changing headphone feature and how Bose and Sony should be worried<\/span>, especially if Apple brings it to the AirPods Studio, its rumored full-size headphones that may get announced next month along with the new iPhone 12<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At that point, I hadn’t heard spacial audio in action, so I wasn’t ready to go out on a limb and declare it revolutionary. Now that it’s out, however, I can say that it lives up to the hype. It changes the small-screen watching experience, adding a bona fide surround-sound experience, albeit one that’s limited by the AirPods Pro’s sound quality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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