- ASAF offers a Dolby Atmos style spatial sound, with more effects
- Available for all Apple Watchos platforms
- Mainly focused on vision pro
Apple has introduced a new format for the head tracking audio: Asaf. Apple’s space -space format promises “truly immersive audio experiences” and was quietly unveiled during the WWDC 2025 event last week – not in the speech, but during a session for application developers.
As Flatpanelleshd explains, there are two components here: ASAF, which is used in audio and video production to position the audio elements in a three -dimensional space, and APAC (Apple positional audio codec), which is the codec used to deliver it.
If you think “not another Audio format “You are not alone: Samsung and Google promote Eclipsa audio as a Dolby Atmos rival too.
However, Apple is at the same time and is not a rival of Dolby Atmos – Flatpanelleshd reports that Dolby Atmos can be delivered in the new Apple format, which is then able to add additional space tips. It therefore seems to be less to replace atmos than expansion … although providing an alternative could be a large part of the Apple plan.
What does Asaf mean for the future of audio?
This is a very good question, because for the moment Asaf is for Apple Devices: tvos, iOS, iPados, macOS and Visionos. The iPhone 16 can be used to capture ASAF audio, and this ease of capture is probably something to be careful.
Initially, according to Apple’s presentation, it seems that the attention – the word play is very planned – is on the visionos helmet. Apple has forced the use of APAC with all immersive video titles, although the Codec can be used as a container for Dolby Atmos data instead of ASAF if the creator already uses this format.
The idea with the additional 3D skills of ASAF is that they can modify spatial sound not only according to your own follow -up and your positioning, but also according to the virtual environment in which you are, changing elements such as volume and reverberation to ensure that the sound seems that it corresponds to the world in which you are. So that you can see why he goes beyond Dolby Atmos, who simply assumed that you are sitting at the center of a virtual theater.
However, another call may not be technical; This can be financial. Dolby Atmos needs producers’ royalty payments, and Samsung told us that one of the objectives of Eclipsa audio was partly to ensure that smaller content creators could also create and deliver space audio videos.
Apple is perhaps able to offer a similar approach: while before, it has kept its proprietary formats, it has become more open in recent years and its Apple Lossless audio codec has abandoned its fee scheme in 2011. Asaf can apparently be created using software and standard plugins of the industry.
The APAC codec would operate on fees as low as 64 kbps and is maximum at 768 kbps, which may seem low, is the same maximum binary speed as Apple, Netflix and others are using Dolby Atmos at the moment, so it will correspond to current quality standards.
