While Apple’s new technologies and updates for iOS 16 were the focus of the WWDC 2022 keynote, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, spent significant time briefing about the new camera feature. iOS16 brings lots of new features, one of which is the ability to personalize spatial audio with the iPhone‘s camera.
This means that you can now control the positioning of sound effects and audio in relation to your own physical space. This can be used for things like adding stereo sound to videos or creating a more immersive gaming experience.
This is a feature that many people have been hoping for, as it would allow for a more immersive and realistic audio experience. For example, if you’re watching a movie on your iPhone, the sound of the actors’ voices would be coming from the direction they’re facing on screen. This would add a whole new level of immersion and make the experience even more realistic. It’s unclear how exactly this will work or how widespread the adoption will be, but it’s certainly an exciting possibility.
Head-related transfer functions (HRTF) are the science of understanding how everyone’s head shape and ear position can affect you to hear three-dimensional sounds. The better we know our HRTFs, the more immersive an experience with spatial audio content will be for us!
Spatial audio can be better when the HRTF profile that you use is more specific to your own hearing. In theory, this means it will deliver an even richer and clearer experience for those who have to access too such technology as headphones or speakers with customized equalization curves built in them!
Apple isn’t the only company that utilizes your phone’s camera to create a better sound. Sony has an app for this purpose called “Headphones” which uses with products such as their WH-1000XM4 headphones and XM5 earbuds; when you take pictures of both ears in order to optimize how they emit noise waves through 360RA technology (a form
With two types of spatial audio formats, Apple has you covered whether you’re listening to music on any set of stereo headphones or through their AirPods. The first type is standard and it lets users enjoy Dolby Atmos Music with streaming services like Spotify that support this format; while head tracking will take things up a notch by making vocals sound as though they’re coming from one direction instead across the room.
Spatial audio for movies can make you feel as though your screen is the source of dialog and other key soundtrack elements, such that it seems like an immersive 5.1 surround system.
We don’t yet know what Apple plans to do with the iPhone’s true depth cameras, but it could be a great opportunity for audio engineers and creators alike.