What is the point of spacial audio?

[bigshot]

I hear absolutely nothing outside of the proximity of my head. No distance, nothing in the rear. I have a 5.1 speaker system and I have many of the multichannel recordings that are on Apple Music. On the speakers, it comes from all around and there is a coherent sound field. On the AirPods Max it sounds like a good mix on regular headphones inside my head.

Head tracking has a very narrow range. If I turn my head too far, it stops and doesn't turn any further.

I don't like the phasey echo it adds to dialogue on movies. It makes the voices sound wimpy.

 

[Stuey3D]

I hear absolutely nothing outside of the proximity of my head. No distance, nothing in the rear. I have a 5.1 speaker system and I have many of the multichannel recordings that are on Apple Music. On the speakers, it comes from all around and there is a coherent sound field. On the AirPods Max it sounds like a good mix on regular headphones inside my head.

Head tracking has a very narrow range. If I turn my head too far, it stops and doesn't turn any further.

I don't like the phasey echo it adds to dialogue on movies. It makes the voices sound wimpy.

Have you tried using the Headphone Accommodations? For me as I was reading reviews prior to purchase that mostly said use the Headphone Accommodations to improve the sound I have had them activated from the minute I got them.

I did an audiogram on Mimi and used that to “calibrate” the AirPods Max to my ears which could be why its sounding so convincing for me and for other people on this thread.

I do notice a slight reverb but I believe that is trying to emulate a room sound, and for me with movies and stuff that sounds pretty natural and sounds like I am listening through the home cinema speakers which I believe is what Apple are going for in terms of how Spatial Audio sounds. However if I use Spatialise Stereo on say YouTube it does sound like garbage and too echoey for me so I leave that off.

 

[bigshot]

What is headphone accommodations? And what is Mimi?

 

[Stuey3D]

What is headphone accommodations? And what is Mimi?

Mimi is an app that can carry out an audiogram (hearing test) and then with that you can link it to Health.

Then under accessibility settings - audio/visual there is an option for Headphone Accommodations and if you enable them what you can do is apply an EQ to the headphones to make them sound better. So most people just use the standard presets but if you do an AudioGram in Mimi then import it into Health under the Headphone Accommodations you can use the AudioGram to tune the headphones to your ears.

So for instance on my AudioGram it says I cant hear 4Khz as well as I can 8Khz so I assume the headphones will then boost the 4Khz for my personalised settings.

Be aware though to get the best results with Mimi you need headphones they’ve validated, now the AirPods Max aren’t validated yet but the standard and pro AirPods are and also the old skool EarPods that used to come with the phone are too, so I just used a set of them to do my AudioGram. You can use other headphones but it will warn you about the accuracy if you use them.

 

[Stuey3D]

So what I believe the headphone accommodations will do is to EQ the headphones as much as they can to compensate for the frequencies I cant hear as well so that the AirPods Max will sound to me like Apple intended them to, rather than sounding maybe not as good because my specific hearing loss.

 

[bigshot]

Is there a setting that corrects for imbalances in the headphones as well? That is what would be the most useful.

 

[Stuey3D]

Is there a setting that corrects for imbalances in the headphones as well? That is what would be the most useful.

Yup its under the accessibility settings too, there is a balance control. I’m not sure if it automatically does it with the AudioGram or not but there is definitely a manual balance control if needed.

 

[reflekshunmusic]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that a large part of what influences your opinion on spatial audio is also your music genre preference. Also, do you like things feeling more upfront, or most spaced out. I know there's a general audio quality and usefulness argument, but I thought I'd just add another point to it.