Spatial audio
Directional audio for AirPods Pro
YOU WILL LEARN
What spatial audio is and how it works
SPATIAL AUDIO TRACKS THE
MOVEMENT OF YOUR HEAD AND ADJUSTS WHAT
YOU HEAR
If you have AirPods Pro and iOS 14 you can get spatial audio, which changes what you hear based on the position of your head. It was rolled out to the AirPods Pro firmware in September 2020 and early reviews were effusive: John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote that the effect was “very cool, very fun” and “very natural, not gimmicky or distracting. The spatiality just feels right.”
Spatiality? Let’s discover what spatial audio is all about.
WHAT IS SPATIAL AUDIO?
Spatial audio is a directional audio effect. In real life, if we move our head or our whole body then what we hear changes — so, for example, if we turn our head away from something that’s making a sound, we’ll hear less of it in the ear that’s furthest away. Similarly if there’s a sound above us and we look up, we’ll hear it more clearly because our ears are n ow better positioned to hear it.