This Week in Immersive Audio: 3 March 2025
This Week In Immersive Audio is my weekly roundup of news from the spatial audio world and new Atmos releases from the previous week. If no engineer is listed on a release, I was unable to find the credit. Please get in touch if it was you or if you know who it was!
News
Japan Airlines Introduces Spatial Audio Seating for a More Immersive In-Flight Experience
Sound in the air has always been a compromise—headphones pressing against your ears, engine noise creeping in, and shared cabin spaces limiting true immersion. But Japan Airlines is changing that equation.
On their new A350-1000 aircraft, First and Business Class passengers can experience a next-generation in-flight audio system: headrests embedded with directional speakers, delivering rich, spatial sound directly to the listener—without the need for headphones.
Using advanced beamforming technology, these speakers create a private sound field, meaning passengers can enjoy high-fidelity music, film scores, and spoken dialogue without disturbing those nearby. The system carefully directs audio waves to remain within the individual seat, preventing spillover into neighboring spaces. This precise sound isolation ensures that each traveler can experience immersive, layered audio without cabin-wide disruption.
The effect is subtle but transformative. Imagine a full cinematic mix—dialogue anchored in front, orchestral swells filling the periphery, and environmental details placed with pinpoint accuracy—all without wires or wearables. It’s a seamless blend of comfort and cutting-edge acoustic design, setting a new standard for in-flight entertainment.
By eliminating the need for traditional headphones, Japan Airlines’ innovation enhances long-haul travel comfort while preserving the intimate, three-dimensional nature of premium audio experiences. Whether you’re sinking into an Atmos-mixed film or drifting into music’s depth, the sound moves with you—contained, immersive, and free.
U2 at Sphere: Redefining Live Immersive Audio
Las Vegas’ Sphere isn’t just a concert venue—it’s an instrument. And for U2’s Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, it was played to perfection.
This wasn’t simply about volume or clarity. The sound design was immersive in the truest sense—3D audio sculpted in real time, moving through the space with precision. Sphere’s 160,000-speaker system, built on Holoplot’s beamforming technology, allowed engineers to position sound with near-microscopic accuracy. Every frequency, every delay, every harmonic could be placed exactly where it needed to be—directed, shaped, and isolated with surgical precision.
Instead of a single stereo image blasted at an audience, Sphere created thousands of them. A guitar lead could float in the air above a listener in one section while the bass locked in below them. Bono’s vocals could shift dynamically as if they were being sung just feet away, no matter where in the 18,000-seat venue you were standing.
For Atmos and immersive audio enthusiasts, this was a revelation. The traditional constraints of venue acoustics—dead zones, uneven mixes, lost details—were erased. Low-end remained tight and controlled, even at stadium volume. Midrange clarity allowed for unprecedented vocal presence. The spatial mixing gave each song a unique sense of movement, making the entire venue feel like it was breathing with the music.
This wasn’t just a concert—it was proof of what immersive audio can do when engineered at scale. U2’s Achtung Baby Live at Sphere wasn’t just heard. It was experienced.