Spatial audio, which creates an immersive three-dimensional soundscope with multi-channel formats like Dolby Atmos, where sounds appear to be coming from in front of you, from the sides, the rear and even above, has been one of the buzzwords in music streaming and consumer technology in recent years. Apple has shouted from the rooftops about its spatialised tracks on Apple Music and its AirPods and HomePods’ support of them, and brands like Sonos, Bose and Bang & Olufsen took little time to headline some of their headphones and speaker spec sheets with their versions of the innovative audio technology too.
It’s in wireless headphones, complete with head-tracking so that the presentation moves dynamically as you do, and in wireless speakers. It is even in the Netflix catalogue (for movie and TV soundtracks, of course). It is, per my and the rest of the What Hi-Fi? team’s consensus, an interesting audio development that in practice is about as hit-and-miss as Darwin Nunez’s ball striking (I’ll let the football fans amongst you decide the ratio there), both in terms of music mixing and hardware delivery. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not (yet anyway) the consistent and reliable man Friday of good old-fashioned stereo.
