If you’ve been following the fortunes of Bose for a while and/or you’re a regular What Hi-Fi? reader, you might have been aware of the brand’s take on spatial audio, which first emerged alongside the release of the QuietComfort Ultra line of headphones and earbuds over two years ago.
Dubbed ‘Immersive Audio’, the system works with two-channel stereo sound and uses onboard processing to essentially lift the sound out of your head and simulate the feeling of listening to a pair of stereo speakers, albeit stereo speakers that are, to all intents and purposes, now attached to your bonce.
For Bose, any track can be ‘spatialised’ regardless of the format, meaning that, in theory, you can use Immersive Audio on any song and on any platform.
Any headphones or earbuds drawn from the brand’s QuietComfort Ultra range, such as the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) we’ve recently been testing and I've been listening to, will do the job.
They've improved on their predecessors across the board, but has Immersive Audio taken any leaps forward since we first sampled it back in 2023?
The problem with Immersive Audio
Now, when we delivered our verdict of Immersive Audio in late 2023, we harboured a number of reservations. Firstly, it’s an absolute killer for your battery life: if you’re using it with a pair of QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, battery figures are cut from 24 hours to just 18. That’s a 25 per cent drop!
Secondly, the effect is… hit and miss. As we said during our review of the original QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, “It works well for some tracks but can also sound off with others. Robyn’s Dancing On My Own is presented with a wonderfully spacious and immersive sound field, but Kanye West’s Bound 2 sounds overly processed and hard to gel with."
Some members of our team have never clicked with the tech at all, while I have a slightly softer spot for a feature which clearly isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It's a bit of a divisive topic in the What Hi-Fi? offices, however.
Is it any better?
Have things changed with our experience of Bose’s latest QC Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen)? Well, certainly not on the battery front. Clearly, using Immersive Audio takes a lot of processing power, and that saps the life from your buds to a worrying extent.
To borrow from our recent review, “Immersive Audio drains your battery life considerably, slashing it from six hours on a single charge to a rather meagre four when switched on”.
With the wireless over-ears you can take the hit, but with these smaller numbers boasted by their in-ear counterparts, that’s a huge chunk to lose.
How about the sound? Well, it’s worth noting that getting your in-house tech to essentially ‘spatialise’ any music, no matter its original recording format, is pretty impressive.
Better still, it does sound better on a more impressive pair of wireless earbuds – there’s more weight and authority with the second-gen Ultra buds than with the first, and that helps provide a better spatial experience as a result.
Horses for courses
It still, however, depends greatly on the track you’re listening to and your general disposition to spatial audio in general. Some music works beautifully – Ramin Djawadi’s Across The Oceans Of Time is little else except layered orchestral vocals and swooning strings, and with something like that, Bose’s spatial tech really excels.
Everything is lifted up and around you as voices arc and soar with far more range and scope than before – turning Immersive Audio off, it all feels small-scale and a bit closed off. It's the only way I listen to that particular track if I have the choice.
That was a Tidal tester, but when switching over to Qobuz, I've found more music that could potentially benefit from a bit of clever immersion.
Coldplay’s Yes really excels with the tech, with instruments and voices genuinely sounding as though they could be coming from speakers positioned above, below and to the side of our head. This is it, I'm tempted to think. This is the way to listen.
Except, as you may have guessed, there are more than a few caveats. As before, Immersive Audio can best be described as hit and miss, working well on some tracks but failing to cut the mustard on others. Part of that is due to the nature of spatial audio itself, and part, I suspect, is due to the failings of Bose’s particular take.
With given tracks, it still works, just not to the music’s benefit. Something like Alice in Chains’ Man In The Box sounds oddly hollow and pulled apart when we give it the spatial treatment, losing much of the meaty punch which usually makes it such a head-banging delight.
It’s a similar story with Lady Gaga’s Abracadabra. Yes, there’s a reasonable job done of getting the music to sound more open and spacious, but it comes at the expense not only of cohesion but musical richness and tone.
The QC Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) are punchier and more entertaining than their predecessors, but even those qualities can't rescue Abracadabra once it's been Immersive-ified.
There’s an oddly processed feeling to the song when Immersive Audio is switched on, exacerbated by the fact that the music just doesn't hang together in the way that it does when we switch it back off.
Vocals tend to struggle, too. It's nice to appreciate the operatic falsettos on Across the Oceans
Again, some of this is just the risk you run when using any spatial audio – not all songs are designed to be as open and expansive as possible. Sometimes music is supposed to be punchy and direct, and sometimes it’s supposed to be close and intimate in the manner of, say, Elliott Smith.
When that's the case, pulling it apart can rob you of the very qualities the music is trying to convey.
Put in the effort
With Bose’s Immersive Audio, then, it’s a case of experimentation, of finding what works through what is essentially trial and error. Some songs aren’t going to gel with it, while others can be elevated if they click with the system and the music itself is conducive to the effect created.
It also depends on the product you're using. The second-gen Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds sound markedly better than their five-star antecedents, and that in itself elevates how they cope with Immersive Audio.
The over-ear QC Ultra Headphones, meanwhile, are able to conjure a broader, wider soundscape thanks to their inherent form factor and larger drivers, and that leads to a more satisfying experience overall.
I may be a reluctant admirer, but our collective verdict remains somewhat ambivalent, even divided.
We can see the direction in which Bose is attempting to move, and while we’ve had past reservations about algorithms and effects which pull you out of the musical experience rather than, somewhat ironically, ‘immersing’ you, we’re at least able to see the appeal in some given circumstances.
It’s still going to require effort on the part of the listener to elicit the best results. Maybe earmarking tracks that benefit from a bit of spatialisation, along with those that should be avoided, is the way to go. Immersive Audio has its place, but if you’re expecting it to be a musical magic bullet, you may end up disappointed.
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