Spatial Audio brings next generation audio to Teams

Now in public preview, you can now make your Microsoft Teams calls now sound much more pleasing to the ear as Microsoft gives Teams a huge audio quality upgrade in the form of spatial audio support.

What is spatial audio?

Spatial audio works by virtually positioning sounds in the space around you which makes communication sound and feel more natural, inclusive and focused. It makes a significant difference and once you’ve experienced it, you won’t want to turn it off.

Spatial audio can make audio within the Teams meeting more natural, inclusive and focused for all. Spatial Audio is already used by lots of video and media platforms to improve the audio quality in films and music etc. For Teams, it now makes sound though stereo devices sound much more immersive and realistic, significantly improves the quality of virtual meetings.

This means that during a meeting, you can hear exactly where each participant is located, as if they were physically present in the same room. The result is an immersive and realistic sound experience that enhances collaboration and communication.

Another benefit of Spatial Audio is that it reduces background noise and echoes. This creates a clearer and cleaner sound, improving the overall sound quality of the meeting. This is especially useful for people working in noisy environments or with less than optimal acoustics

“This new audio experience spatializes the voices of attendees across the visual meeting stage in the Gallery view. This helps make conversations more natural, increasing the sense of audio presence, and making the conversation easier to follow when multiple people are speaking together”.

Microsoft.

Spatial Audio | Pre requisites

Devices: To use spatial audio within Teams, you need to be using USB-wired stereo headphones, your laptop stereo speakers or external / monitor stereo speakers. Bluetooth audio is not currently supported for spatial audio – but it soon will.

People: To experience this effect, the meeting must have more than two participants in gallery view.

Bandwidth: To preserve audio quality, Teams will turn off spatial audio if your network’s bandwidth or computer memory is too low.

Teams Client: You need to be using the Teams Public Preview (it will be generally released in mid June).

How to turn on Spatial Audio

With spatial audio enables, when people speak, you’ll hear their voices coming from their relative positions on the meeting screen as per the gallery view. Here is how to enable it..

Before the meeting
1. Go to your Teams calendar and select the meeting you’d like to join.
2. Before you join, select Device settings.
3. Under Speaker section, make sure you select your compatible device.
4. Toggle the setting to enable Spatial audio.

During a meeting
You can also activate Spatial in the meeting by
1. More “…” > Settings > Device Settings:

Notes and other info

  • Spatial audio will be enabled in Gallery view
  • For the best exleriwnxe, you need three or more attendees in the meeting.
  • 1:1 calls and large meetings are not yet supported (but will be).
  • Wireless audio devices are not yet supported (but will be).
  • Feature is in public preview now and expected to available to all mid-June ate May to mid-June 2023.
  • This is Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 107783.

What else is on the Microsoft 365 roadmap?

New features are added or annouced weekly with new ones coming for the collective MVP community and user feedback. The Microsoft 365 Roadmap can be accessed here. https://microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365

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