the definitive guide to apple spatial audio, including personalized spatial audio.

Hello everyone, and as promised, here is my definitive guide to spatial audio for apple devices.
I have updated this guide as of February 2024, with more information I have found, as well as changes that reflect the latest iOS and macOS software as well as other Misc changes.

Note, for a lot of these features such as spatialized stereo, you will need AirPods or beats headphones that support spatial audio, which include,
• AirPods 3rd generation
• AirPods Pro first generation
• AirPods Pro second generation
• AirPods Max
• Beets fit pro

If you are an apple music subscriber, you have access to dolby Atmos music and lossless audio. This can work in tandem with spatial audio. This is the only feature that doesn’t require AirPods, but you will have to enable it. Here’s how.
If on an iPhone, open the music settings. If on a Mac, open the music app, and press command+comma to open the settings, and select playback in the top toolbar.
Under dolby Atmos, select always on. This setting only affects apple music. If you don’t see it, you are not an apple music subscriber or you aren’t signed into apple music.
Dolby Atmos and spatial audio will now be on for supported songs. To hear stereo tracks in spatialized stereo, open control center.
If on a Mac, press VO+command+space on sound.
If on an iPhone, double tap and hold on the volume slider in control center.
This is where you toggle the feature on. Turning it on for one app does not affect any other apps. For example, turning this on in YouTube will not turn it on for safari or another app.
(note, in iOS 17, tapping on spatial audio when no music is playing will take you back a screen. Make sure media is playing before toggling the feature.)
Depending on your settings, you may either see a menu or be presented with a toggle switch for spatial audio.
If you are presented with a menu, you will be presented with 3 options.
Off, adds 0 spatial audio processing to the sound.
Fixed, provides spatial content that does not use dynamic head tracking (see below)
Head tracked, Dynamic head tracking will make the sound seem like it changes direction if you move your head. For example, if your iPhone is stationary on a flat surface and you turn your head to the right, the sound will sound like it is turning to the left. If personalized spatial audio is turned on, head tracking also works for the up and down motion of your head. For example, if you tilt your head back, the sound will sound like it is getting lower and farther away. (see below for personalized spatial audio.
Update: as of a version of iOS 17 that I don’t remember, regular spatial audio supports the ability to move your head up and down with head tracking.
Spatial audio works in all apps that play media. Unfortunately, this does not work for audio games like the blindfold games or RSGames.
This feature does not work on 3rd party conferencing/VOIP apps.
3rd party apps that support multichannel content like Netflix, Disney+ and others will use multi channel formats if the movie or show supports it. A lot of shows and movies support 5.1 surround sound, so spatial audio will work by default when supported headphones are connected (see above)..

Personalized spatial audio, the next upgrade for apple spatial audio, Says Apple.
As I discussed in a previous forum comment, personalized spatial audio will scan your head to make a HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) on your iPhone. This will allow spatial audio to use your HRTF rather than a generic one. See below for more details about HRTF’s.

Personalized spatial audio setup
Note: this set up has slightly changed in iOS 17.3 and later.
Before we talk about how to set up this feature, we need to talk about compatible devices.
All devices that support iOS 16.0 and macOS 13.0 can play back created personalized spatial audio profiles.
To create one, you must have an iPhone 10 and later. After it is set up, you can play back audio using the personalized spatial audio HRTF on any iOS 16 or macOS 13 capable device.

To set up personalized spatial audio, make sure your AirPods are connected, and then do the following.
Open the settings app on your iPhone.
Tap on your AirPods at the top of the settings list. If you don’t see it, open your AirPods case and hold it near your phone.
Scroll down until you see personalized spatial audio.
After tapping on personalized spatial audio, you should see a “Set up personalized spatial audio” button.
For iOS 17.3 and later, the set up process is less cumbersome and is slightly easier to set up.
After you hit the capture button, put your face in the camera frame.
You will hear a sound to confirm.
Now, turn your head to the left until You hear a chime.
Now, turn your head all the way to the right until you hear the chime, then set up will be completed.
If you don’t hear the chime when moving your head, try adjusting your head to the center and then move it in the direction.
If you are running iOS 17.2 and older, the set up process takes three steps to complete, and is a bit more challenging.
You will be asked to complete the front view capture. This is very similar to setting up Face ID.
After you complete the front view capture, you will be asked to complete the right ear capture. There is no one way to complete this from my testing. My recommendation is to do this. Hold the phone out in front of you, and then turn to the left. Then, you will turn your head to the right and left until it works. That’s the best advice I can give you. I would recommend keeping the phone at arms length or about 12 inches (304.8mm) away from you.
Next, repeat that all over again but this time for the left ear capture. Same advice as before, you kind of have to figure it out as you go. Apples “turn your head left” and turn your head right” messages play seemingly random. If I were to follow them I would be turning the back of my head fully in the camera’s view.
After you complete the set up process, Personalized spatial audio is ready!

My Thoughts on the whole thing
Well, I love the idea. It makes the audio sound great, just the way I want spatial audio to make it sound.
Do I think it’s 100% perfect? Maybe, but it’s got a few kinks it’s non-personalized counterpart has.
In previous versions of iOS 16 and all currently available versions of iOS 17, there is a slight high frequency boost which makes high frequencies sound sharp, but this went away in iOS 17.0 beta 2 after creating another HRTF, But around beta four or five to public release, the bug came and went as it pleased.
For those who can’t try it and want me to explain every difference between normal and personalized spatial audio, here you go.
Let’s start with personalized spatial audio.
One thing that I’ve been noticing is that things sound very up close with personalized spatial audio turned on compared to regular spatial audio. When listening to some tracks in spacialized stereo, it was hard for me to tell that spatial audio was even turned on.
There’s barely any room ambience which normal spatial audio has which adds to the 3-D affect.
Normal spatial audio feels much more immersive. When things are above you, they feel like you could reach up and almost touch them, while with personalized spatial audio turned on, it still feels like they are coming from the top of your head.
I like the way spacial audio as a whole makes regular stereo content in apple music and YouTube have a sense of depth. I can see it getting even better in future versions of iOS 17 and iOS 18 and macOS 14 and 15.
Following is some information for the more curious minded about HRTF’s and how personalized spatial audio can change the way spatial audio sounds as well as some more technical details about how apple’s spatial audio works..

The problem with generic HRTF’s

Everyone’s head is not the same, so spatial audio will work better or worse by default for some people. When you have your own HRTF, this increases the effect of spatial audio and makes it more realistic and giving more depth and clarity to the sound.
There was an old app called waves NX which would let you play your music through 3-D sound. One of its features was you could enter exact values, and it would customize your HRTF for you.
According to Wikipedia, “A head-related transfer function (HRTF), also known as anatomical transfer function (ATF),], or a head shadow is a response that characterizes how an ear receives a sound from a point in space. As sound strikes the listener, the size and shape of the head, ears, ear canal, density of the head, size and shape of nasal and oral cavities, all transform the sound and affect how it is perceived, boosting some frequencies and attenuating others.”
This is why when your iPhone scans your head to create an HRTF, it is most likely gonna be better than that random guy at apple they scanned for the standard HRTF.
The virtual room
To make an HRTF more realistic, spatial audio companies can add a virtual room to enhance their experience.
This allows reflections of the sound to bounce off of walls in a virtual room giving the effect of the audio being in a living room or studio/theater. Depending on what the app wants to do with there HRTF’s, the room reverb could be very subtle, or very pronounced.
For example, an app called Boom 3D which is designed for playing music and podcasts as well as radio stations through has a large virtual room. If you heard a short kick drum, it would sound like it was in a big room. Apple’s implementations of the virtual room is to have the reverb time be pretty short, and more in the background rather than it be right up front and extremely noticeable.
Many other apps like Boom3D and others create HRTF’s for surround sound audio, but rarely do they let you import or scan your own like apple’s Personalized Spatial audio and waves NX.
While personalized spatial audio is free for all iPhone users, apps like boom3d are locked behind Pay Walls or hard to cancel subscriptions. (Trust me, I know. Back before these features came out, I was in one such hard to cancel expensive subscription.)
Stats about apple spatial audio for the fellow sound enthusiasts
Here we go, the real nerdy stuff.
If you are using personalized spatial audio, you may notice a boost at the frequencies of around 8 to 12kHz as mentioned before.
This boosting of the frequencies goes away if personalized spatial audio is turned off with regular spatial audio still on.
If personalized spatial audio is turned off, the virtual room changes completely and is nothing like the room that personalized spatial audio uses. Even someone who didn’t know lots about reverb could pick up on it depending on the sound.
Changes in iOS 17.0 beta and Mac OS 14.0 beta
One thing I mentioned in the previous section was that the high frequency boost at 8000 to 12000Hz was 90% completely eliminated in the earlier beta software.
Other changes include the amount of the virtual room used on dolby Atmos signals on apple music being lessened. Over the course of spatial audios whole entire existence, I have noticed that on dolby Atmos signals the virtual room varies a lot more than regular 2 channel content. It is never more than stereo content.
The way I think of it is that there is less virtual room reverb interfering with the sound, we can get as accurate as the stereo sound while still adding lots of spatial audio effects.
Additional notes
Here are some things I have found out just by using personalized spatial audio that I would like to add.
I feel like there has been a boost in all sounds that are mono, or the mid channel. Adding this boost makes sounds that normally pan Out wider stay closer to the center which I feel like is the opposite of immersive. Regular spatial audio does not do this. If you were too over exaggerate the side channel on the other hand (not individual stereo channels) the audio panning would be over exaggerated. If you added too much of the side channel, the sound might start to sound like it’s coming from the middle of your head.
It’s hard to explain what that sounds like, but for those who knows what it sounds like, you know what I’m talking about.
Apple should find a happy medium. Not too much of either channel, but not too little.
There is a easy fix I feel like, and one of the apples apps has already done this ever since the feature first came out.
If you could use the renderer that non-personalized spatial audio content uses, the ideal experience would be a bit better. There would still be a high frequency boost, but sounds would be more immersive, rather than trapped to the listener so to speak.
Apple’s logic Pro app already does this, and although I prefer the Dolby renderer option, the personalized spatial audio option in logic Pro does sound a bit better when compared to the standard spatial audio options.
The reason for this is they use the same renderer, or the same virtual room.

Those are my thoughts, and that is all for now.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out in the comments.
Pete S, for anyone wanting to put spatial audio and spacialized stereo through its paces, I’ve created some playlists that have songs on them I feel like our really good ones.
I have a playlist with some of the most immersive Dolby Atmos content I have found on Apple Music.

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/spacial-audio-testing/pl.u-xrRlIJ62bxe

I also have a playlist with Songs I feel like sound really good in spatialized stereo.
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/spacialized-stereo-testing/pl.u-2x5vFGyP4Re
If you have your own song ideas for these playlists, please post them in the comments.
I’m looking for songs that are similarly themed.

If any major changes are made to apples spatial audio feature, I will update the guide accordingly.