The Spatial Audio that Apple introduced to its devices is one of the most impressive demonstrations of immersion. Just by improving certain elements of the sound mix, those of Cupertino They made their AirPods and iPhones sound amazing. However, with iOS 16 the experience can improve, and it’s thanks to Custom Spatial Audio. Do you want to know how to activate it? Well here you go.
The Personalized Spatial Audio, as its name indicates, allows you to live a tailor-made experience. With this new feature, you can tailor the sound of your AirPods specifically to the shape of your ears. This allows to offer a much more realistic audio.
What do you require to activate custom Spatial Audio? First, you will need some AirPods Pro, AirPods 3 or AirPods Max. To date, these are the only models that support this feature. On the other hand, you must have an iPhone with a TrueDepth camera (with FaceID, wow). The latter is necessary so that iOS 16 can scan your head and the shape of your ears, and then adapt the sound specifically for you.
Best of all, once you set up iOS 16 Custom Spatial Audio with a pair of AirPods, parameters will apply to other AirPods as well associated with your Apple ID. This way you avoid having to configure each of them separately. The benefits of the Apple ecosystem…
How to set up Custom Spatial Audio in iOS 16
Setting it up is nothing to write home about. Only make sure you have your AirPods connected to the iPhone before starting. Of course, you also need to have iOS 16 installed on your device.
- With AirPods connected to iPhone, open Settings.
- Find your AirPods settings. You should find it just below your name in the menu Settings.
- tap on Configure Custom Spatial Audio.
- Selecting this option will open a new window on the screen. From here, you will simply have to follow the steps indicated by your iPhone. The system will guide you to the end of the procedure.
Now you can enjoy the Personalized Spatial Audio experience of iOS 16. Of course, it will be compatible with those apps and services that make use of this function. Among them, we have Apple Music, FaceTime, Netflix and many others. But this is not all, and even those that use Dolby Atmos will see a slight improvement.
Unfortunately, iPads do not yet support custom Spatial Audio. Although some models do have the TrueDepth camera, it seems that it is not enough for Apple to have integrated this function in iPadOS 16. It may end up arriving at some point, but at the moment nothing seems to indicate it.