Spatial audio has arrived on BandLab. What does it mean for producers?Ad feature with Sony and BandLab. Editor’s note: BandLab Technologies and MusicTech are both a part of the Caldecott Music Group.
When terms like ‘spatial audio’ and ‘spatial music’ started hitting the mainstream a few years ago, there was plenty of scepticism from jaded audio pros, myself included. To a large extent, those reservations have melted away. Most major streaming platforms now support spatial audio, and both studio and consumer hardware have adapted at breakneck speed, with spatial audio interfaces, soundbars, and headphones becoming available at pitch-perfect price points.
After decades of two-channel dominance, it now truly feels like spatial audio might be the successor to stereo.
In April, BandLab stepped into the ring, announcing that, through a partnership with Sony, the company’s hugely popular browser and app-based DAW would begin offering spatial audio capabilities at zero cost to the platform’s 100 million registered users. The first stage of that collaboration is now here, with the launch of a curated set of pre-mixed spatial audio song-starters called 360RA beats.
To understand why this is a big deal, we first need to step back and look at what spatial audio actually is and why it’s a massive leap forward for listening.
Image: Press
What is spatial audio?
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good stereo track – but the stereo listening experience has always been a simplified version of how humans actually experience sound. We’re all familiar with stereo panning – the ability to move sounds left or right on an 180° horizontal plane – but, in the real world, sounds have height and depth; they can move around us or surround us completely. Spatial audio can emulate all of this better than stereo.
Of course, spatial audio has actually existed in some form or another since the 1950s. Back then, people were experimenting with putting hundreds of loudspeakers around a venue to give people a deeper spatial experience of music. Cool? Definitely. Practical? Nope. It’s taken decades to refine the technology to the point where we can now have a standardised spatial audio format that works seamlessly across various consumer listening devices, from phones to computers, TVs and stereo systems.
Getting this to work involves some cutting-edge audio processing technologies that reproduce how we naturally hear distance, depth, and movement – whether you’re listening on headphones or on a multi-channel speaker setup. Luckily, we don’t need to know the specifics. What’s important is that spatial audio has reached critical mass: it’s now possible to approximate the experience of standing in a hundred loudspeaker concert venue using just a pair of mid-tier headphones. This is why spatial audio is fast becoming the new consumer standard for music listening.
Image: Press
What does it offer audio engineers, artists and listeners?
Over the decades, mix engineers have gotten extremely adept at working within the confines of stereo. Using effects like compression, EQ, and reverb, they’ve managed to pack huge walls of sound into just two speakers. Spatial audio explodes this paradigm, fundamentally reshaping how we should consider dynamics and frequency ranges in music production. For one thing, spatial audio offers unparalleled separation between instruments – sounds don’t have to fight each other to be heard. This means audio engineers can back off the compressors and limiters and mix with a much wider dynamic range. Essentially, the Loudness Wars are over.
For artists, they can begin thinking about songwriting in three dimensions. Artists can transport their listeners to a stadium concert or an intimate studio session, they can put the listener in the best seat in the house, or right up on stage in the middle of the band. The incredible depth and realism offered by spatial audio means that artists can communicate the emotion and mood of their music with a level of control that was never possible in stereo.
And, of course, artists don’t have to shoot for a mix that resembles real life. With 360° of space to play with, you can push the piano so far away it sounds like it’s coming from the back of a dark cavern or bring your vocal harmonies so close they feel like an intimate whisper. Or, if you’ve a sadistic streak, it’s entirely possible to make a cowbell run circles around the listener’s head.
The creative possibilities for spatial audio are incredibly exciting, and right now is the time when artists and engineers get the opportunity to define the new production techniques we might end up using for generations to come. What spatial audio does best, what works, what doesn’t, how to achieve certain moods or feelings – these are the big questions and it’s music creators who will find the answers.
For music lovers, spatial audio offers a deeply immersive listening experience. And, because of spatial audio’s adaptability, it’s also frictionless: the format will seamlessly adapt to a person’s hardware, giving them the ideal spatial mix regardless of the listening environment, or even switch back to a stereo mix if spatially enabled hardware is unavailable.
Mixing for spatial audio is one of the best ways to make sure a song stands out from the crowd. The world’s largest music streaming providers are increasingly making spatial listening a default option for subscribers, and it’s even possible for artists to earn higher music streaming royalty rates if they publish a spatial mix. So if you’re looking to catch someone’s ear on a playlist, increase your royalties, or just offer your fans the best possible listening experience, spatial audio is the way forward.
The only drawback to this format is its inaccessibility – but not anymore.
Image: Press
A new era of accessibility
Up until now, spatial audio has been a complex, niche, and expensive technology that was off-limits to anyone working outside of professional studios or academia. With the BandLab x Sony partnership, that’s no longer the case.
Using Sony’s cutting-edge spatial sound technology, 360 Reality Audio (360RA), BandLab is supporting millions of music makers to use spatial audio for the first time. Crucially, specialist knowledge and expensive hardware is no longer a requirement – all you need is a pair of headphones and an internet connection to jump onto the BandLab platform and start playing with space.
The first big step comes in the form of 360RA beats. These pre-spatialised tracks empower users to quickly audition spatial sounds, hear the difference between a classic stereo mix, and drag and drop into BandLab Studio to begin crafting a new song. Best of all, it’s all freely available to BandLab’s 100 million-strong community.
With 20 360RA beats on offer at launch, and many more set to become available over the following months, these are a great place to start for any bedroom producers who have never dabbled with spatial mixes before. To try it, just make an account, peruse the hundreds of Beats available on the BandLab platform, and select one that is tagged with the ‘Experience 360 Reality Audio powered by Sony’ label. Simple as that.
The barriers holding back the adoption of spatial audio in mainstream music are being broken down as the technology is refined, simplified and made widely available to music makers. The creative potential is clear, the limitations have yet to be reached, and with the introduction of 360 Reality Audio to BandLab’s highly accessible DAW, there’s now nothing holding artists back from stepping into this new creative space.
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