Sony's immersive 360 Reality Audio format could be coming to Android

(Image credit: Future)

It's been two years since Sony launched 360 Reality Audio, a format that uses Sony’s object-based spatial audio technology to deliver 360-degree sound. In that time, 360 Realit Audio has become available on Deezer, Tidal, Amazon Music HD and nugs.net, with subscribers to those services able to listen to them in all their immersive glory.

Compatible products include Sony's dedicated SRS-RA5000 and SRS-RA3000 wireless speakers, Amazon's Echo Studio smart speaker and certain Sony headphones (such as the WH-1000XM4) via the firm's dedicated Headphone Connect app.

Now, however, it seems as though Sony has plans to widen compatibility for the format to more Android devices. In the Android Open Source Project, code reviews and comments from both Sony and Google have directly mentioned Sony 360 Reality Audio, as spotted by XDA Developers. The report highlights a comment by Sony software engineer Kei Murayama: “This is one of the patches mentioned in the meeting ‘Android OS 360RA support’ between Google and Sony."

That suggests a collaboration is in the works to bring Sony's custom decoder for the format (which is built on the open MPEG-H 3D Audio standard) to the wider Android world, presumably allowing app providers to easily offer 3D audio playback.

While 360 Reality Audio can support up to 64 channels of audio, the code mentions support for a 13-channel audio layout "which uses surround 5 channels, top 5 channels and bottom 3 channels". It also states that a "Virtualizer can place individual sounds in a 360 spherical sound field from these channels on any headphones" – so it looks like the technology may be able to work in a psuedo capacity with any set of headphones or, indeed, speakers.

Here's everything you need to know about Sony 360 Reality Audio

Becky is a hi-fi, AV and technology journalist, formerly the Managing Editor at What Hi-Fi? and Editor of Australian Hi-Fi and Audio Esoterica magazines. With over twelve years of journalism experience in the hi-fi industry, she has reviewed all manner of audio gear, from budget amplifiers to high-end speakers, and particularly specialises in headphones and head-fi devices.

In her spare time, Becky can often be found running, watching Liverpool FC and horror movies, and hunting for gluten-free cake.