I listened to the Apple Spatial Audio system that makes people cry – and it’s the future

[What Hi-Fi?]

Mercedes-Benz and Burmester want to make the ultimate in-car audio system - and the early signs are seriously impressive.

I listened to the Apple Spatial Audio system that makes people cry – and it’s the future : Read more

 

[F8lee]

Sure, it's nifty they have a great sound system in a $200,000 car - but how much or a difference does it really make when the car is driving along? I mean, road noise from the tires and wind, other traffic, etc Plus, does one really want to play it extremely loud with the risk of missing that oh-so-important sound of an oncoming big rig honking its horn?

Like 8K TV, this strikes me as little more than a HALO product to dupe folks into getting the lesser models, because frankly it makes no sense in the real world.

 

[Mister Doctor]

I guess I don't understand what spatial audio means in this context? Spatial audio is something that Apple uses to describe its headphones, wherein headphones create the illusion of 3d sound with only the left and right "speakers" and the devices track your head movement to maintain that 3d sound.
If you have genuine surround speakers, "spatial audio" is a redundant descriptor, you're just describing Dolby atmos. Unless there's some indication that head tracking is also involved in augmenting the surround setup, there isn't anything about "spatial audio" that would differentiate it from atmos, especially as atmos is the encoding that provides the 3d sound for Apple Music already.