Apple’s new spatial audio feature is a headphone game-changer
When I first updated my iPhone 11 Pro to iOS 14 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."
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.)
[Spatial Audio] 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.
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/news/apples-new-spatial-audio-feature-is-a-game-changer/