Marsha Stevenson 
Apple Music offers a wide variety of music in high-quality formats, including Dolby Atmos. To take full advantage of the rich soundtracks and immersive experience that comes with Apple Music and Dolby Atmos, there are a few simple steps you can take to ensure you’re getting the most out of your listening experience.
This guide will walk you through setting up your device and connecting it to an audio system that supports Dolby Atmos. Once connected, you’ll be able to enjoy music with ground-shaking depth and clarity. So let’s get started – here’s everything you need to know about Dolby Atmos with Apple Music.
What is Dolby Atmos?
Dolby Atmos is a surround-sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories to bring expansive audio to your home or car. It uses audio objects to create three-dimensional sound that seems to move around you, creating an immersive experience. You can experience Dolby Atmos with Apple Music when streaming through AirPlay 2–compatible speakers or an Apple TV 4K¹.
Dolby Atmos audio has two features available for listeners: directionalized sound and immersive sound. Directionalized sound uses panning technology that directs the sound in any direction around you for enhanced realism and placement accuracy – like when a movie’s scene movement throws sounds from one side of the room to the other. Immersive sound creates a 360–degree experience around you, even including overhead effects, as if sounds are coming from above and below you in addition to the standard left and right channels used in stereo systems.
With Dolby Atmos on Apple Music, certain songs have special mixes created at the mixing desk with more than 40 channels of immersive audio rather than just left and right stereo channels, bringing music alive within your home listening environment like never before. To take full advantage of this, listen using speakers that support Dolby Atmos or compatible headphones⁴ connected to your Android device (iOS devices are not currently supported).
What is Spatial Audio?
Spatial audio, also known as object-based audio, produces surround sound whereby audio content is divided into specific channels and adjusted in real time around the listener. Sound content segments are assigned to particular spatial locations within a virtual 3D space to create an immersive audio experience. The technology can create a uniquely realistic spatial sound that can be experienced with headphones or through speakers.
Apple Music uses the Dolby Atmos surround-sound format to provide an immersive listening experience on supported devices. When you select Apple Music tracks with Dolby Atmos available, you’ll hear space and clarity that make your music come alive with motion and depth when you’re using headphones or home speakers. This new dimension of sound makes it feel like instruments and voices are moving in three-dimensional space making the music more vivid and realistic.
With Dolby Atmos support on Apple Music you can access over 75 million songs from thousands of albums across all genres; including pop, rock, hip-hop, R&B, electronic and classical music. Many of these tracks were remastered for great playback on supported devices with balanced low frequencies and clarity in higher frequencies so that every detail comes through clearly and consistently when listening via headphones or home speakers – giving you an entirely new world of musical possibilities that was not available before.
About Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos in Apple Music
Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology that can provide an immersive sound experience. With Apple Music, you can listen to songs with this technology.
Setting up Dolby Atmos with Apple Music is straightforward; it only takes a few steps.
This article will go through everything you need to know about setting up Dolby Atmos with Apple Music.
Enabling Dolby Atmos on your device
To get the most out of Apple Music’s new Dolby Atmos listening experience, you must first ensure that your device is properly enabled for Dolby Atmos playback. On iOS and Android phones, Dolby Atmos is enabled by default. You’ll need to manually enable the feature using a computer or tablet.
For Windows 10 devices:
- Open the Start menu and select ‘Settings’
- Select ‘System’ from the menu options
- Select ‘Sound’ from the left-hand panel
- Under ‘Spatial sound,’ select ‘Dolby Atmos for headphones’ if this option is available. Note that if it does not appear in your list of sound settings, your device does not support Dolby Atmos.
For Apple Computers or Tablets:
- Open System Preferences (Mac) or Settings (iPadOS).
- Go to “Music” or “Sounds” and select “Audio Output”.
- Select either “Dolby Atmos for Headphones” or “Dolby Audio”, depending on which one appears in your list of sound output choices -The former will offer enhanced 3D surround sound. In contrast, the latter will only offer basic surround sound options. Note that if it does not appear in your list of sound settings, then your device is not compatible with Dolby Atmos audio.
Connecting your device to your home theatre system
To set up Dolby Atmos on your device, your device must be connected to an audio compatible home theatre system or soundbar that supports Dolby Atmos. Connecting your audio set-up correctly is the key to ensuring you experience the best possible sound quality when using Apple Music with Dolby Atmos.
The first step is to identify which cables you need. You can use a combination of HDMI, optical audio, or coaxial cables to connect your device and speaker system. Make sure that you select the correct cable for each connection — for example, if you are connecting an Apple TV 4K the HDMI cable needs to be an Ultra High Speed (UHS) certified one to fully support 4K HDR video and other advanced features.
Once all the cables have been connected securely in their ports, use the settings menu on your Apple TV/iOS device (or remote) and select Audio Output under Settings and configure it as shown in this guide:
-HDMI – Choose Multi-Channel Audio from the drop-down menu and make sure that Dolby Digital Plus is enabled -Optical – Select Optical Auto or PCM Audio from the menu and make sure that Dolby Digital Plus is enabled -Coaxial – Select Coaxial Auto or PCM Audio from the drop-down menu
After everything is configured correctly, you should test out your setup by playing a song with some supported content such as Weekend by Fleet Foxes on an Apple TV 4K with AirPods Pro. If all went well then congratulations! You can now enjoy a dynamic immersive experience listening with Dolby Atmos from Apple Music!
Listening to Dolby Atmos with Apple Music
With Apple Music, you can now experience songs, albums and playlists in an immersive and powerful way with Dolby Atmos.
Dolby Atmos adds a 3D soundscape to the music, creating an incredibly lifelike listening experience that puts you in the centre of the music.
Let’s look at how you can make the most of Dolby Atmos and Apple Music together.
Finding Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music
Suppose you have an Apple device with an active Apple Music subscription and an audio system or home theatre set-up that supports Dolby Atmos. In that case, you can take advantage of the best audio playback available. Finding content with Dolby Atmos on Apple Music is easy.
To start, open Apple Music on your device and navigate to the Browse screen. Your screen will display a list of categories like Playlists, New & Hot Releases, Recently Played, and more. Scroll down this list to the end and select Audio Quality under Music in High Fidelity Audio.
From here, select Stream High Fidelity Explicit Audio which will open up a selection of music with your preferred audio quality — Dolby Atmos! Next, you can see the types of content available by selecting Featured Playlists or Albums at the top of this page; these selections include music from independent artists and major labels so there is likely something to suit everyone’s preferences.
Once you’ve found something that interests you, select it — then press play! Your audio will play through your supported system in its highest fidelity for optimal listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Playing Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music
Dolby Atmos is a revolutionary surround sound technology developed by Dolby laboratories. It combines with existing multichannel formats to create an immersive 3D listening experience. Apple Music also supports Dolby Atmos, enabling users to enjoy their favourite music in incredibly immersive audio.
It must be available on the Apple Music platform to play Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music. Some titles will have a Dolby Atmos badge attached to them and they can be identified by searching for the “Dolby Atmos” label in the search field at the top of your screen. Once you have found a song or album with the badge, you can start streaming in this revolutionary 3D audio format with your compatible hardware device such as an AirPods Pro or Beats Solo Pro headphones.
These devices can replicate spatial audio, which is used to deliver directional sounds from multiple angles and heights providing a realistic and intense experience. In addition, other compatible devices such as speakers will benefit from spatially-cued audio peak adjustments, which helps the listener pinpoint specific sounds when playing content in Dolby Atmos format.
To get the best out of their listening experience, users are advised to check their device’s software settings and ensure that “Dolby/Spatial Audio” is enabled under ‘Settings/Accessibility Options’ before playing songs or albums available on Apple Music in Dolby Atmos format.
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