Apple returns to Spatial Audio with list of Dolby Atmos devices

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(Pocket-lint) – Apple has removed several devices from its Apple Music Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos compatibility list.

LiPhone XR, iPad mini 5, iPad Air 3, and 6th through 8th generation iPads are no longer listed as being able to play Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos through their built-in speakers.

This means that you can only do this if you have an iPhone XS or higher (not an iPhone SE), a 12.9-inch iPad Pro 3rd generation or later, an 11-inch iPad Pro, or a 4th generation iPad Air.

Why the others were on the list originally, we don’t know. However, if you own one of these devices, you won’t be missing out on much anyway.

Dolby Atmos mixes are designed for multichannel setups or, if there isn’t one, headphones that virtualize the experience, such as AirPods, AirPods Pro, Apple AirPods Max, and select Beats headphones. It is not designed to be best played through tiny stereo speakers.

You might get a slight performance boost on supported devices, but it’ll be so minor that you might as well play a standard stereo mix.

Funny enough, while Apple’s support pages removed some older, own-branded devices, it added Android – with lossless audio and spatial with Dolby Atmos now available on the rival operating system.

Written by Rik Henderson. Originally published on July 23, 2021.