BACK IN MAY 2021, Apple significantly boosted the appeal of its Apple Music streaming service with the addition of two new features: Lossless Audio (including high-res versions for some albums and tracks) and Spatial Audio. While the term “Spatial Audio” might indicate that Apple has created a completely new surround sound music format, it’s essentially Dolby Atmos—the same immersive, object-based mixing technology used for movie soundtracks. Atmos for music isn’t a new idea; Dolby has conducted demos of its new technology applied to the musical realm since day one, and Atmos-mixed tracks have been available on the Tidal and Amazon Music services since late 2019. But Apple is clearly aiming to take Atmos music acceptance to the next level with its Spatial Audio offerings, which are far more numerous than what could previously be mined on those other services. At launch, thousands of tracks were available in the format on Apple Music, and more are being added on a weekly basis.
Apple is a company that likes to keep things in the family, so it comes as no surprise that Dolby Atmos tracks play automatically on all recent-model AirPods and Beats headphones that feature an H1 or W1 chip. But Spatial Audio can also be experienced on any non-Apple headphones by configuring the Apple Music Dolby Atmos Audio settings on your iPhone/iPad (running iOS 14.6 or later) or Mac computer (running macOS 11.4 or later) as “Always On.” (An Android phone can also be used for Spatial Audio playback—if it features Dolby Atmos support.) While Spatial Audio can sound impressive on headphones, you’ll want to hear it on your home theater system to get the full sonic impact, and in that case the hardware options are limited to the Apple TV 4K streaming box. (Smart TVs and other streaming devices like Roku don’t currently support Spatial Audio on the Apple Music app, and it can’t be streamed wirelessly to external hardware via AirPlay.)
To evaluate Apple Music Spatial Audio, playlist, I shared my list with music editor Mike Mettler, who helped pare it down to a more manageable 11 selections. To better get a handle on Apple Music’s quality control when it comes to Spatial Audio, Mike checked out the equivalent version of each track on Blu-ray from his extensive surround sound music disc library. Some of these offered an Atmos mix, while others provided a high-res 5.1 Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, or PCM version.
