Many people have bought a new set of Apple or Beats wireless headphones or earbuds for the holidays, only to discover that the audio doesn’t sound as good as expected when listening to Apple Music. If this is your experience too, don’t worry: it’s very unlikely that your new headphones or wireless earbuds are to blame.
The real culprit is Apple Music itself. This seems ridiculous, especially if you’ve been listening to Apple Music for a long time and this has never been a problem for you in the past. But if your old headphones or earbuds were made by a company other than Apple or Beats, you might not realize that Apple Music treats Apple and Beats products a little differently.
Dolby Atmos by default
In 2021, Apple added two new formats to Apple Music: Dolby Atmos Music (aka spatial audio) and lossless audio. Apple Music wasn’t the first subscription streaming music service to do so (Amazon Music and Tidal already offered Dolby Atmos and lossless), but it was the first service to make Dolby Atmos Music the default option. when listening on an iPhone or iPad via Apple. or Beats wireless headphones equipped with the Apple H2 chip, such as the Beats Studio Pro or the Apple AirPods Pro.
If you weren’t using H2-compatible headphones, you could still hear Dolby Atmos music (if available), but you had to turn it on manually, and many people never did that. It is possible that you yourself thought you were listening to Dolby Atmos – the default Dolby Atmos setting for the Apple Music app is called “Automatic,” which sounds like something you can just leave alone. But not really.
Turns out the Automatic option is only automatic if you’re using one of those H2 compatible products I mentioned earlier. Apple Music then plays a Dolby Atmos version of a song if it exists. But any other headset will still benefit from classic two-channel stereo. The only way to get Dolby Atmos using a third-party headset is to set the setting to Always On – another misnomer given that it still only applies when a Dolby Atmos version of a track is available.
To summarize: If you’re using Apple or Beats headphones with Apple Music (on an iOS or iPadOS device) for the first time, you’ll start hearing Dolby Atmos Music versions of songs by default.
Why so quiet?
Dolby Atmos music can sound amazing, especially if you have a dedicated Dolby Atmos sound system like a Sonos Arc, plus a Sonos Sub and two Sonos Era 300 surround speakers. But even then, some Atmos Music tracks are better than others. This is still a new format and it’s clear that not all artists and sound engineers are tuned in to it yet. Hopefully this will improve over time.
Unfortunately, this quality gap is amplified when listening with headphones. Too often, Dolby Atmos Music versions of your favorite songs can sound muted.
This is partly the nature of Dolby Atmos when rendered as binaural sound. It involves recreating a room full of speakers (including overhead channels), using a single audio source for each ear. In order to trick your brain into hearing a wider, deeper, higher soundstage, some sounds simply need to be reduced. their intensity. You might notice this more with the vocals, which can sound a little distant or hollow.
But the biggest problem is the relative volume level. If you were listening to only Dolby Atmos music or only stereo tracks, there would be a natural variation in volume levels from track to track – some tracks are simply mastered at louder levels. However, if you’re listening to a mix of Atmos and stereo – which is probably the case given that Apple Music is far from having Dolby Atmos versions of every track in its catalog of over 100 million songs – the levels relative volume levels can be much higher. noticeable, with Dolby Atmos Music generally sounding quieter than stereo.
Since most of us aren’t in the habit of checking our phone every time a new song starts playing to see if it’s in stereo or Dolby Atmos Music, all we know, that’s what we hear – and it sounds rather weak compared to stereo. .
Two solutions
So how to solve this problem?
If you like Dolby Atmos Music and just want the sound to be as clear and loud as stereo tracks, try enabling Sound Check in Apple Music settings (in iOS: Settings > Music). Sound Check attempts to compensate for natural volume differences between formats (and even between two tracks of the same format), so you can simply choose your preferred listening level without constantly adjusting the volume.
I found this to be a good solution, but not everyone agrees. Additionally, Sound Check may produce different results in different listening scenarios (e.g. wireless headphones vs. Apple AirPlay vs. Apple CarPlay), so it won’t always be a panacea.
Then there’s the thermonuclear option: turn off Dolby Atmos completely. You can do this by setting Dolby Atmos from Automatic or Always On to Off. You won’t hear Apple Music’s spatial audio tracks even if they exist, and things will probably sound exactly like you remember them before you changed headphones.
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