Spatial audio not available on MacBook Air m1?

I was having the same issue but i solved it and it will only work on apple music that too you have to download the music that has dolby atmos sign on it and go to library and play the downloaded music and it will work

I can confirm this "download to fix" also works with my MBP M1 Max and AirPod 3s. I was beyond the returnable date for them, so i didn't end up returning them. It's weird because there is nothing stated about music being downloaded as a requirement for play spatial audio playback. Most of my music I only stream to keep my drive space available as you can probably tell by my flip/flopped audio quality settings being lossless for streaming, not downloads. Still seems like a bug to me, but nice that there is a workaround at least.

Spacial stereo I’m getting on M1 imac for Netflix

Spacial audio works with apple plus content but the icon is greyed out when I try Apple Music & the bit/sample rate isn’t showing up on tracks (this happened with earlier versions of Big Sur

appple music app was buggy for a couple of months

Hello,

Just wanted to add that I have the same problem on my mbp M1 and airpods pro. Spacial audio is grayed out when playing dolby atmos content on Apple Music. With TV+ it works, but I'm getting audio sizzling and crackling with spacial audio content.

Other audio content work fine and on the phone, everything works without any bugs on ios 15.1. So I suppose that it's a software problem with Monterey. I find it amazing that such a huge bug went through all the testing phase.

I'm using an M1 iMac and AirPods Pro. As far as I know, spatial audio is enabled/disabled under the following conditions:

Music.app : Enabled for playing Dolby Atmos songs downloaded locally from Apple Music (after download to a playlist) / Disabled for streaming or locally files of non-Atmos

Youtube(any video) : Safari / other browsers

mp4 video : QuickTime Player, play in Finder preview or QuickLook / VLC, mpv, IINA

m4a, mp3 locally music files : / completely impossible no matter what I do

As a side note, (I do) in order to add Apple Music songs to your library in Music.app, your music library must be (or converted to be) a cloud music library.

なお以上の情報はTwitterで@muota_hereとして日本語で呟き済みです。

If that's true what mu-on is saying, than this is a workaround (altho kudos for finding one), still I consider this as a bug. M1 chip is more than capable of playing Atmos content (music in that case) while streaming... **** my old iPhone 7Plus can do it without a hickup.

To sum it up:

iPhones - can steram music in Atmos

iPads (also with M1 chip) - can stream music in Atmos

Apple TV 4K - can stream music in Atmos

MacBooks with M1 - CAN'T

Mac mini (M1) - CAN'T

Looks like MacOS Monterey music.app limitation or bug.

I tried mu-on's tip and it's indeed working. Once Dolby Atmos songs are downloaded (the whole album has to be downloaded), it can be played using Spatial Audio.

Sadly "Spatialise Stereo" is still not working - even with this workaround - which is a big bummer.

Like you're correctly pointing out, "Spatial Audio" and "Spatialise Stereo" should definitely be possible by just streaming the music (like on iPhone and iPad, and like in the OTHER macOS apps).

Let's hope Apple will address this very soon and have a fix available.

New M1 Max MBP and Airpods 3 owner with the same issue here. At first I thought it might have something to do with other apps trying to use the mic and speakers as I had some web pages open with the camera on testing facial recognition and machine learning performance, but i closed those out and it still sounds awful. Are you all experiencing a regression in stereo audio fidelity as well? My music sounds like I'm listening to ultra compressed mobile phone voicemails rather than high fidelity lossless atmos audio.

Quick correction; just checked the "Viral Hits" playlist and it plays well, but the "Made for spatial audio" playlist sounds awful. It still says "Spatial audio not available" for the airpods, but the stereo sound doesn't seem as bad as the spacial audio playlist.

Well Ahmed-midou21, it won't get your spatial Audio back in macOS Monterey, as this whole topic is about lack of it in music.app while streaming. Altho did it fix your ability to switch modes: transparent, noise... etc?

I think it's a bug in the new MacOS Monterey update. Well still we can enjoy it during watching movies & YouTube videos. Actually it doesn't work when listening to apple music or Spotify. I hope they'll fix it with the upcoming updates.

That’s not the issue. The issue i was reporting was possibly caused by the safari (or chrome) audio apis being used (getUserMedia) which tries to access the microphone and camera. When this happens, the quality of the audio in itunes for spatial audio tracks is severely regressed and degraded to the point that it sounds like old cell phone compression. Spatial audio is greyed out as an option for itunes all together for the headphones.

That might mean playing on the MacBook Pro through one of the headphones listed. I have a 2021 M1 iMac and it will play Spatial Audio through the built in speakers but NOT if I use my AirPods Pro or AirPods Max. Disappointed with that.

But if I play something in the TV app that is listed as Dolby Atmos, then I will hear in Spatial Audio also through the Pros and Max (in addition to the built in speakers).

Hey! I "solved" the issue doing this: in Music app settings, enable "Download Dolby Atmos". Now, you need to download the songs to enable the Spatial Audio option. Im not sure if that's how supposed to work..... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well done - Thank you this worked for me too. Not sure why Apple say MacOS is currently not supported when it does work but does work only if the song is dowloaded first. It's a pity hopefully it will be fixed soon so we can play with SA directly from Music app. thanks again