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According to a recent post over at 9to5 Google, it seems the ChromeOS team is now at work to bring one of the more technologically impressive audio features to Chromebooks: Spatial Audio.
If you aren’t familiar with it, many smartphones and earbuds now offer Spatial Audio as a way to create more immersive and expansive soundscapes for users in everything from music to games to shows and movies. In some cases, there are even options for head tracking as well that truly immerse the listener in the content by placing audio in space that can move with you as you turn your head.
Spatial Audio for Chromebooks
Thanks to a recent commit in the Chromium Repositories, it seems this feature is at least in the works right now for ChromeOS and could give Chromebook users the option to enable Spatial Audio for supported earbuds in the future.
Clearly, this is an early WIP (work in progress) and could take a bit before arriving. With this feature already solidified on the Pixel series of phones, it may move along a bit faster with ChromeOS if the team can borrow some info from the Pixel camp, but there’s no way to know right now.
With there being no mention of head tracking so far, we’re unsure whether or not Chromebooks will get this treatment: but I hope they do. As devices that are far more stationary far more often than a smartphone, head-tracked audio could be a really cool addition to the overall Chromebook experience down the road. We’ll keep an eye on this one and hopefully it will at least land in the Canary Channel of ChromeOS soon.
