I am convinced there must be some kind of ‘spatial’ processing going on, even though I’m as certain as I can be that I’m listening to a plain stereo source, Spotify web version on Firefox.
Why does it sound like a particular instrument is up in the air to my right? I’ve found myself getting up and looking for the source of a sound before realising it was in the music.
Probably they're pre-distorting the sound so it's correct only after bouncing off the screen, kind of like how VR distorts the image to account for headset optics undoing that distortion.
I had an M1 Air before the MBP release. The sound was good, but the sound stage is eerily wide on the M1 MBP (and presumably the M2 Air), compared to the normal side speakers.
> the sound stage is eerily wide on the M1 MBP (and presumably the M2 Air), compared to the normal side speakers.
Thank you for giving me the new language to express this! :) ;p x
The tech needed to do that doesn’t require fancy silicon, though it does seem they restrict the headtracked binaural (over headphones like AirPods Pro).[0]
Though you can plug any headphones in and, at least in Apple Music, force it to do a binaural rendering (without headtracking) on any headphones.