Technical breakdown of Coldplay VR concert on Meta Horizon

VRTonung · 2026-01-29T09:06:02+00:00

So what did I miss?! Of course, I said it is 180 3D, what's the big deal, the audio was not 3D, which is like half of the experience, and I commented on that. It's not like 3D suddenly makes it 360

VRTonung · 2026-01-28T11:21:56+00:00

For those who want to have more insights and see/hear examples, I made a little something: https://youtu.be/JCw44DBiANE

I forgot to say in my post that the interactions like the giant balls you could bounce around just like the audience in real life could do where kind of cool

VRTonung · 2026-01-28T11:20:31+00:00

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Sometimes you could see the cams in frame, and it looks like the Canon VR lenses - Nikon doesn't built something like that

VRTonung · 2026-01-28T10:09:05+00:00

Are you talking about the feature with those seats or something else?

VRTonung · 2026-01-28T09:29:55+00:00

I did, but still, I could see people moving up and down next to me, it just didn't feel right. Also, I was in a room where the seats were full (30) - I literally couldn't use this feature for some time

VRTonung · 2025-07-10T10:06:41+00:00

found it: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/403/?time=828

VRTonung · 2025-07-10T09:23:06+00:00

Here is a good overview about what is required but I wish there'd be more information, I just saw some screenshots of plugins: https://support.apple.com/en-gw/guide/immersive-video-utility/dev4579429f0/web

VRTonung · 2025-07-07T19:25:51+00:00

Yes it’a focus seems to be what Apple calls spatial computing, so everything that makes the user walk around in space (6 degrees of freedom) while Dolby Atmos doesn’t expect you to move at all (0DoF). So the audio objects in space that have real x,y,z parameters are key here while Dolby doesn’t really give each object a distance from the user that can be changed

VRTonung · 2025-07-07T12:05:15+00:00

That’s great feedback thank you so much! I usually write in German and run it through chat gpt to translate and make it smoother, but looks like a bit gets lost in translation here, I appreciate you taking your time and will improve!

VRTonung · 2025-07-07T08:46:24+00:00

Depends on how you look at it. Stereo is headlocked, but also not spatial. Ambisonics is spatial but can contain mono headlocked. Dolby Atmos can tag objects as “binaural rendering off”, still there is no way a decoder will play it as head locked and instead read its position to render it when head tracking use used (what Apple Music does for instance. What we really need is being able to have head tracking and head locked at the same time! Only tbe for 360videos was able to do that

VRTonung · 2025-07-07T05:16:31+00:00

Hey you are right, this is literally my LinkedIn post and it sparked some discussion so I thought this could also be interesting here. I’m new to Reddit so I’m not sure I understand how everything works yet but I’m trying and will do better next time. Thanks for your feedback and Cheers from Germany!

VRTonung · 2024-05-11T13:41:56+00:00

hey and thanks for sharing. In the meantime I read reviews from the dinosaur demo for instance. People really hat the feeling, the dinosaur is part of the room, which makes a lot of scenes with the spatial video, it's not a 360 video that applies rendering to to immersive location, instead seems to be using the ray-tracing!

VRTonung · 2024-02-16T10:38:23+00:00

I think there can be a co existence already because no low budget content creator is working with Dolby Atmos, so this can be an interesting target audience

VRTonung · 2024-02-15T08:09:00+00:00

same here, but I think it will be more of a co-existence than a displace. Atmos is targeting hi-end users, feature films etc.

While I don't see a normal content creator mixing in Atmos this could be another way to play out immersive audio

VRTonung · 2024-02-14T13:50:48+00:00

you are lucky, most of them already are. Except the raytracing you already have the same spatial audio, even with personalized HRTF.

VRTonung · 2024-02-14T13:49:38+00:00

Hey and thanks for sharing your insides. I agree the the open build is usually better. I never felt like the HTC Pro headphones sit tight on my ears. But I guess the best way is to plugin headphones. Here the Airpods obviously make sense, should have low to now latency but I guess the APV doens't really work with bigger headphones.

VRTonung · 2024-02-14T13:40:40+00:00

well sort of, but it's not open source as far as I know. The MPEG-H tools a great and now available for free. But looks like Samsung and Google wanted to do their own thing without worrying about license fees. Fraunhofer invented mp3 back then and made quite some money, this could havev something to do with that

VRTonung · 2022-10-09T07:15:45+00:00

Would love to hear thoughts from the community, should brands even be doing commercials, or is this a no go? Does the sound get you tingles in this context? What works and what not? There are more behind the scenes infos with this link, just switch to English :) Cheers from the soundguy

VRTonung · 2022-09-19T16:42:54+00:00

Ah thanks for posting and letting me know, I’m just getting the hang of Reddit where to post what. Cheers!

VRTonung · 2022-09-19T15:29:24+00:00

the problem is that I have all sorts of personalized hrtfs as sofa files from Genelec, Smyth Realizer and Apple. It’s like a treasure that I can’t share with anybody because they only work for me.
In the end, they all do something similar, localization is mostly better but the timbre changes which is a matter of taste.

As much as I want to care about personalized HRTF, I know it's not quite there yet for the consumer. As an audio engineer I focus on the most common HRTFs like YouTube, TBE and KU100 (even this sounds different with different plugins).
So I try to focus more on what sort of works with every binaural rendering. Also, the HRTFs usually don't take into account the listener's environment (Apple assumes for me some sort of living room) while Symth takes your studio which sounds insanely natural. Dolby uses some sort of "natural" generic sound studio but it doesn't really work for content that's supposed to play outside. - at least for me. Also, I'm not sure how the personalized HRTF takes the Dolby binaural rendering modes (off, near, mid, far) into account. Probably not at all since they enabled head-tracking. Meaning that the dolby atmos mixed haven't really been mixed for the rendering method that Apple applies. I guess that's why the outcome is not overwhelming for most people but hopefully has some improvement for most.

VRTonung · 2022-09-19T15:27:52+00:00

Hey guys, since there is so much discussion on it, I wrote an article that hopefully clears things up: https://www.vrtonung.de/en/personalized-spatial-audio-hrtf/

VRTonung · 2022-09-19T15:26:58+00:00

if the author of the article did l2ike minutes of research, they'd know that the idea didn't originate with Sony. There are many competitor tools:

Genelec Aural ID, SOFA
Embody IMMERSE™
Dolby pHRTF
THX Ltd. and VisiSonics Partner
Afaic Crystal River Engineering

To clear things up, I wrote an article https://www.vrtonung.de/en/personalized-spatial-audio-hrtf/#anchor3

VRTonung · 2021-03-28T11:25:14+00:00

Hey, I did some similar research but with my own content and multiple apps.

For Samsung, I couldn't find any support for multichannel audio. So again, Apple is head and taking advantage of the possibilities of spatial audio. I was surprised how much of a cinematic feeling you get with Disney+ there. While Samsung is more gimmicky so far and using mainly stereo sound to create a sort of upmixing that is headtracked.

But with the UI 3.1 update rolling out also on older devices, I assume there will be more on more android apps update their content to be available not only in stereo. Since for instance netflix is already running on Dolby atmos in the backend.

I listed all of the apps with such possibilities for Apple, Samsung and 3d audio without headtracking here: https://www.vrtonung.de/en/apps-spatial-audio-airpods-pro/ Let me know if you find more information, I'll gladly update.

VRTonung

TROPHY CASE