Personalized spatial audio comes to the PlayStation 5

The latest beta update for Sony’s PlayStation 5 console brings the ability to create personalized spatial audio profiles, which should produce more immersive and realistic sound.

The beta software was released on July 25 and described in a PlayStation blog post. Officially, Sony calls the new feature “personalized 3D audio profiles for headphones and earbuds.”

Normally, personalized spatial audio is accomplished using photos or scans of people’s ears, and sometimes their heads and chests too. These images reveal how your unique physiology affects your perception of sound localization (where you think a sound is coming from). The data is used to create what’s known as an HRTF or head-related transfer function. Our spatial audio explainer goes into more depth on HRTFs if you want to learn more.

However, Sony is taking a different approach to HRTFs on the PS5. Instead of asking you to take photos of your head and upload them, the console walks you through a series of audio tests that ask you to identify the source location of various sounds.

Once the tests are complete and your personalized 3D audio profile has been created, Sony says it “may enable you to better sense the positions of characters and objects in a game world more clearly than before, making the experience more immersive.”

There are a few caveats. The first and most important is that personalized 3D audio only works with headsets or earbuds. You won’t get any of the benefits if you game via your TV’s built-in speakers or a home theater/soundbar system — even if those audio options are compatible with spatial audio formats like Dolby Atmos.

Second, Sony points out that personalized 3D audio profiles are not supported during PS5 cloud game streaming and that 3D audio in general is not supported during Remote Play.