Chromebooks Get Spatial Audio: Immersive Listening on the Way

Google has been working to bring Spatial Autio to Chromebooks allowing for a more immersive listening experience than ever before.

Many recently launched Android devices, have Spatial audio designed to tweak the audio sent to your stereo headphones to add a more depth of feel to the music. It feels like you’re listening to surround sound audio through speakers.

The effect is especially more pronounced when it is combined with head tracking that adjusts the sound based on where you might be looking.

Spatial Audio makes a great deal of sense on Android, between the convenience of watching shows on your phone and the improved experience available through Android tablets. That said, ChromeOS has been stepping up in a major way, between the arrival of competent tablets and the productivity improvements of the Chromebook Plus series.

It seems like Google is working hard to improve the entertainment options in the Chromebooks by introducing  Spatial Audio in a new code change.

As is often the case, the feature will initially be locked behind an option in chrome://flags. Once enabled, a new option will appear on the Audio page of the Settings app.

Spatial Audio is a feature that is far from ready and is not available even in the latest ChromeOS Canary build.

The details on how the Spatial audio will work on the Chromebook are pretty limited as of right now. But judging from how it works on many Android devices, we can predict that it will work with both Bluetooth and wired headphones to simulate more depth in audio.