Apple Spatial Audio Format (ASAF) and Vision Pro

Originally published on Patreon (December 5, 2025)

A few weeks ago, Apple did a developer event entirely focused on the Vision Pro. They just published the recording of this event. There are like 10 videos around the Vision Pro, on how to create immersive environments, how to create 270-degree videos, and also how audio is done. This is the video that I link here.

You can see that Apple Spatial Audio Format goes far beyond Dolby Atmos format. It is also interesting to see that there is an emergence of competing immersive formats. You may have heard of Eclipsa (or IAMF), which is spearheaded by Google and Samsung. Like AV1, this is the open-source, royalty-free immersive audio format that Google needs to avoid paying licenses for YouTube.

I don’t know what audio is available in other VR/AR devices like the Quest. My quick look at Unity shows that there are immersive audio capabilities, but I never found a spec. In this video on ASAF, you will see that there are many capabilities available.

If you can point me to some documentation on other immersive audio formats, that would be awesome.

It is this event that kind of pushed me to code the Where is my Mind? application for the Vision OS.