WHY SPATIAL AUDIO COULD BE THE NEXT BIG THING IN PERSONAL AUDIO

A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON IN SOUND

- KENNY YEO

The last major revolution in sound came in the early Thirties when Alan Blumlein pioneered stereophonic sound. The technology became mainstream in the late Fifties and has since become the default way in which music is recorded, produced, and played. Today, we don’t even think about it. Nearly all sound we hear around us is in stereo. While there’s no question that stereo sound is a major improvement over its predecessor mono sound, it’s still a compromise. That’s because we don’t perceive sound from just two sources. Sound, in the real world, comes from all around us. And for the past few decades, companies like Dolby, Sony, and DTS have been trying to fix that with surround sound technologies, and with varying degrees of success.

ENTER SPATIAL AUDIO 

Change, however, could be on the way because Apple announced in June 2021 that it would be supporting spatial audio on its Apple Music streaming service. Before we go on any further, it’s necessary to clear up some confusion surrounding the nomenclature of it all. The underlying technology enabling spatial audio on Apple Music and through Apple devices like the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max is Dolby Atmos. Now, this technology has been with us for a while but it was almost exclusively used in the movie industry – in movies, cinemas, and home theatres. It differs from older surround technologies in that it adds a height element to the mix, thereby allowing sounds to be presented as three-dimensional objects in space. It sounds more immersive, but it was also expensive to implement. Cinemas needed to be fitted with extra speakers (mostly in the ceiling) and home theatres required expensive multi-speaker setups.