APPLE SKILLS HOW IT WORKS
Spatial audio and dynamic head tracking
Create immersive effects for music and video
The large, over-ear design of the AirPods Max is ideal for immersive spatial audio.
Spatial audio has been available on
iPhone and iPad for a few years now, since it was introduced with iOS 14 and the AirPods Pro in 2020.
It’s taken Apple a while to extend the tech to a wider range of devices, but you’ll now find it in the latest AirPods and AirPods Max, as well as Macs and the Apple TV box.
Spatial audio is designed to create an immersive sense of space when listening to music or video, allowing music to swirl around you, and also to precisely place individual instruments or sound effects from a film at specific points in space. Spatial audio is a bit like surround-sound speaker systems used in cinema set-ups, but instead of having to place multiple speakers around you, spatial audio is designed to work through headphones. It uses special algorithms, called HRTF (head-related transfer function) that convert two-dimensional stereo sound into a kind of ‘virtual surround sound’ using the earpieces of your headphones.