Audio … what?
Hans Zimmer is undoubtedly one of the most important modern composers. His name is already written in history with soundtracks like those of Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean or Origin, among many others.
Zimmer recently gave an interview to Apple Music and the star theme was spatial audio.
In case you don’t know, this technology, introduced by Apple in 2020, goes beyond stereo where sound emerges from the left and right. In spatial audio, a “sound field” is created that goes far beyond and allows listening from everywhere, as required by music or effects. And not only that, said sound field adapts to what you do.
For example, if you are with a movie and you move, the spatial field takes the reference of what you are seeing and adapts the sound output to your movement, as it would happen in real life with the sounds around you. In this way, the experience is much more immersive.
Well, apparently thanks to a mysterious unexpected package, Hans Zimmer was the first outside of Apple to test this technology… without knowing it.
Jony Ive’s Strange Gift to Hans Zimmer
During the beginning of the pandemic, Zimmer received a gift from none other than Jony Ive. The former Apple product manager, whom Zimmer has never met in person, sent him some very curious headphones and a simple note that said:
“I’ve done this”.
Zimmer put on the headphones and was apparently very impressed by the sound and audio capabilities of the headphones. Fascinated, he reached out to his friends at Dolby to discuss this technology, ask about the headphones, and discuss the immersive sound experience.
Dolby’s answer? They looked at each other puzzled and told him that those headphones didn’t exist. Yet Zimmer had them in hand.
This is how the composer himself narrates it.
«These headphones come and I put them on and they are amazing and suddenly I realize that we can do a dive [en el sonido]. We can do Dolby Atmos. We can do all those things. So I call my friends at Dolby and say, ‘We have to do this. I want to go and do the whole soundtrack again and I want to do the CDs again and I want to make this whole experience immersive. ‘ I called Denis and I called all my guys and said, ‘You have to listen to these headphones. Of course, the response I got was: ‘Well, they don’t really exist. I think you have the only pair».
The funny thing is that Jony Ive never confirmed if he sent her the headphones or not. And the truth is that, almost certainly, and from the physical description that Zimmer gave, they were Airpod Max. The first outside of Apple.
Without a doubt, spatial audio technology makes their money worth more. This year the first songs that take advantage of that feature have already been released and, frankly, if Zimmer is going to remake all his work again with that immersive technology, I would think about buying some.
The link to Amazon that you see in this article contains a link that is part of their affiliate program. Even so, the decision to include it has been taken at the editorial level, without attending to requests from the aforementioned brands.
