Anyone who’s ever been to the movies is familiar with the concept of surround sound — a film’s soundtrack plays all around you, and it is used in ways that complement the onscreen action. You are probably also familiar with Dolby Atmos, which is an advanced version of surround sound that includes height information. But Spatial Audio, what’s that?

Spatial Audio is Apple’s proprietary surround format, similar to Dolby Atmos, that is designed to be heard on Apple devices and services — from AirPods to MacBooks to Apple Music. It’s meant to give users a sense of “space” when listening to Apple content that stereo alone can’t do, hence the name. While Spatial Audio with capital letters is Apple’s version, when it’s spelled without capital letters it’s usually referring to Dolby Atmos or even DTS:X, but we’re going to concentrate on Apple’s tech here. 

While Apple devices can up-convert any type of content into Spatial Audio, for the best results the phone or tablet needs a surround-sound source. This includes TV shows and movies, as well as specific Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos music available via Apple Music. Most recent Apple hardware supports Spatial Audio, including the Apple TV 4K, but is it worth seeking out? Is it just a gimmick, or is it as revolutionary of an audio experience as Apple claims? Let’s dive in.

What is spatial audio?

Spatial audio is Apple’s term for a collection of audio technologies that bring 360-degree effects to video calls, TV shows, movies and remixed music. Apple first introduced spatial audio on its AirPods Pro earbuds in 2020, and most of its audio products and other hardware since then also support the tech. 

When it comes to the spatial audio portion of Apple Music and streaming movies, this is supplied courtesy of Dolby Atmos. Atmos is a surround-sound standard used both in movie theaters and the home, and has also been used to remix albums. As long as the source is encoded for surround sound, Atmos or not, you’ll be able to get Spatial Audio with Apple gear.

Dolby Atmos Music, as used by Apple Music, is one of two competing formats providing surround and height effects for streaming tunes, while its competitor is Sony’s 360 Reality Audio. Apple says that Dolby Atmos mixes on its Music service offer a better experience than lossless music alone.

“Listening to a song in Dolby Atmos is like magic,” Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music and Beats, said in a news release in 2021. “The music comes from all around you and sounds incredible.”

At CNET we’ve tried countless technologies that attempt to create surround sound with stereo headphones — Dolby Headphone, DTS Headphone:X and so on — but, the biggest issue in the past has been that the effect evaporates as soon as you move your head. This is because in everyday life we can cock our ears to help locate where a sound is coming from, especially when it’s from behind us. This isn’t an issue for physical speakers, including the six-speaker array on the new MacBook Pros. When we wear headphones, though, the sounds follow our movement so the effect can be lost.

That’s different now, as with the right gear Spatial Audio can use head tracking to, you guessed it, track the position of your head. As you move the sound doesn’t, like you’re listening to speakers in a room and not headphones. For example, when a sound appears to be coming from the corner of the room, and you turn, it still seems to be coming from the same direction. This can help with immersion in both music and movies.

Which devices can I hear spatial on?

The full Spatial Audio experience is available on most recent Apple devices, including the AirPods Max, the Max 2, the AirPods 4 and Pro 3, and so on. You can also use any brand’s headphones as long as they’re connected to a device that supports Spatial Audio, including recent iPhones. They might not have head tracking, though some brands implement their own version of that tech like Bose’s Immersive Audio, for example.

If you want to listen to Spatial Audio via Apple Music on an Apple TV, you will either need to connect it to a compatible soundbar or to an AV system that includes Dolby Atmos decoding — for example, a receiver and a 5.1.2 speaker package. 

If you have a device that supports Spatial Audio you will need content with surround sound, as in nearly all recent TV shows and movies. That includes Dolby Atmos content, but non-Atmos surround sound (5.1 and 7.1 for example), will also work as it’s able to be upscaled. Music, however, is a bit different as it’s not typically surround, only stereo. For music you’ll need…

Which music services do I need to subscribe to?

You can find Spatial Audio music on Apple Music, Amazon Music and Tidal. The spatial audio tracks are typically included in the lowest subscription tier, but of course this could change. You’ll see icons near the albums or songs that support spatial audio, and there are usually spatial audio playlists to get a wide variety of songs to test your new gear.

For which of those is the best option, check out Best Music Streaming Service of 2026.

How does spatial audio music sound on a home theater system?

While CNET’s David Carnoy has tested spatial audio with the AirPods, I was interested to hear how the experience scaled up to a full home theater system. I regularly test Dolby Atmos playback in movies as part of my day-to-day work, but music in spatial audio is something different. I did some listening tests with a Marantz SR6013, an Apple TV 4K and a Klipsch 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos speaker setup. As with DVD-Audio and quadraphonic before it, the success of spatial music (i.e. Dolby Atmos Music) depends mostly on the quality of the mix itself. Every album since the late ’60s has been mixed in stereo, but only a relative handful have ever been mixed for more than two speakers. It takes extra time and effort to produce an album in Dolby Atmos Music, but when done well the results can be impressive.

I spent some time listening to the dedicated Spatial Music channel on Apple Music and found that the music tended toward two extremes: Either the secondary channels were used for ambience, as with The Replacements’ track “Alex Chilton,” or used in a showy, look-at-me way like with Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” where the percussion appeared above and behind me.

In at least one case, the Atmos mix was actually better than the original stereo mix, but this was more because of an enhanced clarity in the vocals. Michael Kiwanuka’s “You Ain’t The Problem,” with its fuzzy guitar and deranged la la las, can be a bit much to handle, but Atmos cleaned it up significantly. His voice hovered in the center about 6 feet above me, and the wildness of the supporting instruments was tamed.

However, being mixed in 360 surround didn’t guarantee that a song sounded better. While spatial mixes of songs like Kanye West’s Black Skinhead were fun, I found that the original stereo mix had more power and was less reliant on surround-sound tricks.

Hear for yourself

Dolby Atmos has been part of movies for many years, but its growth into music has been getting a big push from record companies and manufacturers for the past 5 years. While creating the musical equivalent of 8K or HDR probably won’t work — more than 50 years of surround-sound music formats tell us that — it’s movies (and games) where spatial audio is most useful. The big difference this time around is that while almost no one had a quadraphonic speaker setup back in the ’70s, millions of people have both an iPhone and an Apple Music or Apple TV subscription. Whether listening to the AirPods 3 or checking out a Dolby Atmos soundbar, Apple fans can now listen to spatial audio to judge for themselves.