Jonathan Morrison joins us on The MacRumors Show podcast this week to take a deep dive into Spatial Audio and Apple's audio technologies. Jonathan is a leading tech YouTuber and has moved into professional music production in recent years. He has a wealth of knowledge about audio technology and first-hand experience mixing tracks for Spatial Audio. See more of Jonathan's work on his YouTube channel.

In this episode, we discuss Spatial Audio in detail, including the new personalized Spatial Audio feature in iOS 16, thoughts on Spatialize Stereo, Spatial Audio support on devices like the Studio Display and MacBook Pro, where the technology is headed next, and more. We also take a look at future AirPods, including the AirPods Pro 2, and evaluate the state of Apple Music.

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Article Link: The MacRumors Show: Jonathan Morrison Talks Spatial Audio

Macrumors is getting lots of high profile YouTubers, I like it!
(and no, not sarcasm)

He is a good YouTuber, could you get tailosive tech on next

All 5 songs available on Apple Music in spatial audio sound great.

Macative said:

All 5 songs available on Apple Music in spatial audio sound great.

100 but who is counting

from what I experienced, only some music and some movies are ok in Spatial Audio.
I wish I could set this on the device to enable it only in certain apps.

ProfessionalFan said:

100 but who is counting

I'm just tired of Apple pretending like the entire catalog is available in Spatial Audio with the way they sell the feature, and its not even 0.01%.

I like the idea of spatial audio for music, but it seems that it works best for certain styles of music, for metal (e.g. Mastodon) it just sounds very weak, but I think it sounds nice for mellower stuff, like Pink Floyd’s Division Bell or Momentary Lapse of Reason

Morrison is a good dude. Has great content on YouTube and seems like a genuinely good guy.

Dan: I hope Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) is next on MacRumors show. Also, please invite Zollotech so he can talk about the upcoming iOS 16 and all other software Apple will be offering to the public this Fall.

Just want to use this as an opportunity to say that embedded YouTube’s on iPhone in safari NEVER EVER WORK CORRECTLY. Either the volume doesn’t work, it just doesn’t play, or the gyro doesn’t work. What happened to IT JUST WORKS?

Also, whoever said you should get MKBHD? lol yeah Im sure macrumors entire yearly budget might cover a 20
Minute interview with such a character.

NightfallOrchid said:

I like the idea of spatial audio for music, but it seems that it works best for certain styles of music, for metal (e.g. Mastodon) it just sounds very weak, but I think it sounds nice for mellower stuff, like Pink Floyd’s Division Bell or Momentary Lapse of Reason

Yeah, I was listening to Angel Dust by Faith No More on my Airpods Pro and wondering why it sounded like total crap until I realized spacial was on. Very hit or miss for me with other stuff. Would be nice to have a preference for individual albums to toggle it on or off.

madrigal77 said:

It's probably just the lighting, but I swear the guy on the right always looks like he's wearing lipstick and mascara

He's my favorite. He's got the best facial expressions. Pay attention to his eyes, eyebrows, and lips. Over-rated!

yadmonkey said:

Yeah, I was listening to Angel Dust by Faith No More on my Airpods Pro and wondering why it sounded like total crap until I realized spacial was on. Very hit or miss for me with other stuff. Would be nice to have a preference for individual albums to toggle it on or off.

That might actually be pretty cool on some of the Bungle or Fantomas tunes though..

I don’t even hear it 🤷🏼‍♂️ the only thing I notice is that the sound gets more quiet with head movement turned on and I am like why

It’s cool and all, but a perfect mix on a good pair of speakers is already 3D. We’ve forgotten that with the digitization and compression of music over the decades.

yadmonkey said:

Yeah, I was listening to Angel Dust by Faith No More on my Airpods Pro and wondering why it sounded like total crap until I realized spacial was on. Very hit or miss for me with other stuff. Would be nice to have a preference for individual albums to toggle it on or off.

You have good tase in music

Morrison is a huge Apple shill.

Also--I guess I am just old--the music he works with is just so awful. It's antiseptic, non-threatening, has zero edge, is anodyne and is more like a sedative than anything. It's just trash, like most of the "music" produced these days.

he bought a $5500 Apogee audio interface.

I have been in and out of lots of professional recording studios. No one uses Apogee in pro studios where they cut Tons of Albums

They use an SSL console.

What a joke. $5500 for an apogee connected to a 14 inch MacBook Pro M1. LOL

Good luck paying that off.

I agree with those saying this should be more opt in by app/content. My AppleTV likes to enable it to the AirPods periodically (maybe after an update) and it just completely ruins the "fullness" of normal stereo content, and instead you feel like you are listening to TV in a hospital ward. The number of non-tech users who now think their headphones are faulty must be out of control. Note that it's not just Apple, my new Windows 11 work laptop also has "enhance audio" on by default, which does anything BUT enhance the audio...

Freeangel1 said:

he bought a $5500 Apogee audio interface.

I have been in and out of lots of professional recording studios. No one uses Apogee in pro studios where they cut Tons of Albums

They use an SSL console.

What a joke. $5500 for an apogee connected to a 14 inch MacBook Pro M1. LOL

Good luck paying that off.

Click to expand...

You forgot Tridents, Neves, APIs, Neotek, Toft, etc.. SSL isnt the only console out there and not a lot of folks want to pay more than the cost of their car every year for the HVAC and electricity to keep a 4000/9000 series running.

1. Please - introduce all three of you. Assume new folks like me would like to hear what you have to say and would like to know the names of the people doing the talking. For this posting I'll call you L, M, & R (left, middle, right).

2. C pointed out that he uses the AirPods 3 for reference when doing spacial audio work. L interpreted C's comment for us as: C uses worst case earbuds. It became clear that that's not at all what C meant. It became clear that C has significant respect for the AirPods 3 - even over other AirPods.

3. Qobuz was not mentioned as an excellent lossless hi res streaming source. I think it's the best. It hails from Europe but it is available here in the U.S. Using AirPods Max via Qobuz I'm currently listening to M's suggested Julie Wolf's Hot Killer album on Qobuz. Wow - wicked Bass.

4. My streamed music comes from a BlueSound Node 2i Bluetooth streamer (I also use it hardwired to an amp and STAX earphones). The Node 2i works well with the Sonys, with Sennheiser TW2s, and with B&W's Pi7s, and now my AirPods Max (finally fixed the Bluetooth connection).

My brother who’s a bit of an audiophile was really impressed with all this stuff

I couldn’t hear anything special but then again I’ve got tinnitus in my left ear so god knows what was playing 😆

Spatial Audio is not your friend. Turn it off on all devices.