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Spatial Audio— this should be an easy one

R

Russ-n-the-Woods

macrumors newbie
Original poster
So very basic but I’m having trouble with setting up SA to work as advertised and promoted.
I’ll try and be complete in all I’ve done. To the best of my abilities I’ve done all per Apple guidance.
To start. I love to the max my new earbuds pro 3. Out of the box and into my ears and connected to my iPhone 17 pro and selecting music that is downloaded and purchased from iTunes. PURE HEAVEN! unbelievable quality and noise cancellation. And fit.
But. I kept noticing that when vocalists and instruments were separated, everyone and every thing seemed to come from behind me. No biggie the music was so good I just let whatever be, be.
Yesterday I got energized to set up SA properly and what I should have done from the beginning.
Set up personalized audio using my iPhone 17 pro. This I did, and my phone indicated it was successful. All was supposed to be done and working perfectly.
Sadly not to be. Now as I sample tracks from my iPhone I have yet to find any with “Spatial audio “ all are now 100% in my head and there is now no separation at all or minimal even with very recent recordings. What am I missing?????
(The reason that I don’t stream music is because I am frequently unable to have any internet connection. So I only listen to what is downloaded to my phone.. BTW this may be the reason I may not respond to your help immediately. Doesn’t mean that I don’t really appreciate any help you might provide.)
 
The files (music) you are listening to must be recorded as Spatial Audio. Which is why the streaming service from Apple Music will notify you that the track you are listening to is Spatial encoded or not. In my case such as yours I listen to my Personal library ripped from old CD Audio so those tracks will never be replayed as SA. So, the bottom line is you must subscribe to Apple Music in order to listen to tracks encoded as Spatial Audio, there is no way I am aware to re-encode a non SA track to an SA track.
 
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I should also have added that Spatial Audio I believe is a proprietary format to Apple Music.
 
Soondae said:
I should also have added that Spatial Audio I believe is a proprietary format to Apple Music.
Click to expand...
Many thanks for your reply. I’m slowly recalling that the SPATIAL AUDIO versions are only available via Apple Music subscription. I think I pursued this issue several years ago when it was first introduced. Most of my music is PURCHASED from Apple and you would think that any such music would be the COMPLETE and best version.
To me this is just another nail in Apple’s greedy coffin.
Again, my sincere thanks for taking the time to remind me of this issue and pointing a reply.
 
Check out purchased movies if any. Most movies on there are updated to 4k for free, and most of them (especially marvel/star wars) are in atmos, so they give you a really good idea of what’s possible.
 
Russ-n-the-Woods said:
Many thanks for your reply. I’m slowly recalling that the SPATIAL AUDIO versions are only available via Apple Music subscription. I think I pursued this issue several years ago when it was first introduced. Most of my music is PURCHASED from Apple and you would think that any such music would be the COMPLETE and best version.
To me this is just another nail in Apple’s greedy coffin.
Again, my sincere thanks for taking the time to remind me of this issue and pointing a reply.
Click to expand...

Apple doesn't own the music, it's licenced and those licences will have conditions. If there's any online outlet selling Dobly Atmos audio, I'd love to hear about it. Let us know what you find.
 
I am looking forward to seeing if any of the movies I have purchased and have an Atmos Audio indicator will stream and provide the Atmos effect with the Apple Earbuds Pro 3 when I return home. I do have the latest Apple TV 4K box.
I really don’t believe that you can buy Atmos. It’s part of the post production editing process and included with the editing software. An audio expert will have to tell us what the difference is between Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio.
The question of having to pay for streaming audio with some special effects and streaming a 4K movie previously purchased in HD isn’t quite apples and oranges. It has to do with piracy issues and widespread distribution of a production quality master.
 
What does Dolby ATMOS have to do with Spatial Audio recordings? They are two totally different encodings.
 
Soondae said:
What does Dolby ATMOS have to do with Spatial Audio recordings? They are two totally different encodings.
Click to expand...

They are same. They are made exactly the same way. Each channel requires its own speakers. the fact that you can hear it with headphones is a scam.

if i want to do spatialaudio, i will be given the dolby atmos settings dialogs....

two pictures... first shows how many speakers are needed to mix spatialaudio.
spatial monitoring.png

The thing shown in the second picture can be used to visualize how imaginary sound sources fly around the listener like flies. and the listener must sit exactly in the middle of this imaginary space, in the "sweet spot". There are no "flies" in the picture because I haven't opened any spatialaudio projects.
spatialaudio-rendering.png
 
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