Weird issue with Spacial Audiol, asking for confirmation

By glassheart, 15 April, 2026

Forum
Apple Beta Releases

Hey guys. This isn't really a huge terribly big deal, as much as I'm just wondering if it's me, or if anyone else on the new 26.5 beta 2 seed is noticing this. I'm trying to pinpoint down if this changed when I updated, or if I did something that may havbe caused it.

So, last Saturday, I got the Apple airpod Pro 3 earbuds. I absolutely love them! You'll understand why I am not posting this in the accessories area of the forum in a sec, so before the mods move this, please just hear me out before jumping the gun, as this is rellavent to the beta, possibly.

So, I had an issue where due to something kinda dumb which I did, I had to completely forget the airpods, factory reset them by double tapping 3 times on the front of the case, then re-pare them. The weird thing is, now on the 26.5 beta 2 seed, which by the way, is what I was on when I forgot, reset, and re-pared, I'm finding that when listening to music which should be spacial/dolby atmos capable, with head tracking enabled, note that it's on head tracking, not on fixed, I find things are moving around in the audio field as I rotate my head from side to side back and forth, but it's nowhere near as ogressive as it used to be. I'm just wondering if this is, maybe not so much a bug, as much as something where Apple did indeed tone down the amount of spacial separation in this beta seed specifically. I'm an audio producer/musician/engineer full certified, so I do understand fully about it depending on the audio mix. That's not the issue though. The exact same recording sounded way more spacial before I set the airpods back up again. And yes. I've reset them several times. I will say this, in case is matters. The second time I did so, I unlike the first time did go through and run a hearing test, which I didn't do initially the very first time I pared them after getting them out of the box the first time. But, I turned that audio assistance back off. I even have turned off personalized spacial audio, and then let the camera rescan my ears, which I did both times in exactly the same environment. Also the tips haven't changed, and the acoustic seal test shows they do fit correctly. Again, it's not a big deal. I'm just wondering if anyone else on the beta happens to have the Airpod Pro 3's, and since the last seed has noticed this with it becoming more suddle. If you need something on Apple Music to test it with, try All for You by Sister Hazel. Another one you can try with is Girls Just Want to have Fun by Cindy Lopper. (Sorry if I'm spelling her name wrong, which I probably am. LOL!) It used to be the lead vocal as I moved my head would very strongly shift from one ear to the other. Now, it's doing it still, but only barely. I'd really like to get it back the way it was! I put this here in the beta part of the forums because my logic, no pun intended, was that OK, I'm running the beta, this might be a beta issue, maybe not, but since I'm on the beta, it's hard to say without having others also running it to confirm. Note, I'm speaking the beta of iOS here, not a firmware beta update to the airpods themselves.

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