Spatial audio with head tracking is now available on Apple Music with iOS 15
The feature only works on AirPods Pro and AirPods Max with a compatible iPhone or iPad.
Image: Apple
With the arrival of Apple’s iOS 15, users can now enjoy spatial audio with dynamic head tracking when listening to songs in Apple Music.
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You can turn on the feature by heading to Bluetooth > AirPods, and tapping the “Spatial Audio” tab.
Before iOS 15, dynamic head tracking was only available for movies or videos on a compatible device — iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV — with the AirPods Pro or AirPods Max. Now users can also enjoy Dolby Atmos music in spatial audio with dynamic head tracking while listening to audio-only content in Apple Music.
Dynamic head tracking takes advantage of the gyroscope and accelerometer in AirPods Pro or AirPods Max to track a wearer’s head motion and devices and pinpoint their location in a virtual landscape. This ensures that the audio remains accurate even as the user’s head moves around.
Apple describes the feature in their support page: “Spatial audio with dynamic head tracking brings theatre-like sound that surrounds you from the movie or video you’re watching, so that it seems as if the sound is coming from all around you. The sound field stays mapped to the device, and the voice stays with the actor or action on screen.”
Since the launch of Spatial Audio in August, 60 per cent of pop albums, 50 per cent of Latin albums, 40 per cent of country albums, and 36 per cent of hiop-hop albums that reached number one on the US Apple Music albums chart were also available in Spatial Audio. At the moment, 40 of the top 100 global songs and 28 of the top 100 albums in the US are available in Spatial Audio.
iOS 15 is available on the iPhone 6S and later models.
Learn more at apple.com
