THE BEATLES AND APPLE COME TOGETHER FOR SPATIAL AUDIO PROJECT
If you’re going to show off your fancy new audio technology, you might as well use the best material. That’s maybe why Apple is bigging up the release of the Beatles’ 1 album and the Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane single in spatial audio.
To coincide with the release I got to listen in on a chat between producer Giles Martin – son of George, no less - and Apple’s own Zane Lowe.
Giles has been charged with the task of remixing the Fab Four’s back catalogue in spatial audio. You will likely have experienced surround sound at the cinema – when sounds appear to travel from back to front as well as left to right. Spatial audio is the same idea… only it happens in your headphones. Anyone with the latest AirPods, AirPods Pro or AirPods Max can listen to tracks that have been created or converted into the format on Apple Music. And it’s a revelation. The magic works particularly well on Strawberry Fields. As Giles says: “That song kind of suits that world of Spatial Audio, it suits falling into… nothing is real. That’s what the line says in the song. And so it suits it.
“I remember doing it and putting it on my
AirPods and going, ‘this really works’.”
Giles also adds that the two remaining Beatles, as well as those charged with maintaining the legacy of those no longer with us, are right behind it.
Giles said: “Paul and Ringo are always going, “How can we push technology? How can we change the way? Paul says: ‘I don’t want to be stuck in a museum. I don’t want to be under a glass case. I want, you know, people to discover things.’”
The Beatles 1 and the Strawberry Fields/ Penny Lane are out now in spatial audio on
Apple Music.