Spatial audio is all the rage right now. Just sift through the best soundbars in Australia and you’ll see brands trying their hardest to achieve true Dolby Atmos quality sound, leaning heavily on an advanced audio format that focuses on spatial object-based audio for something richer and more in-depth than your usual surround sound.
And while Dolby Atmos is most readily associated with soundbars, there are now some brands out there trying to distil the technology into wireless earbuds. Unsurprisingly, LG is getting into the game early with its new LG Tone Free T90 earbuds. While Samsung has already used Dolby Head Tracking with the Galaxy Buds2 Pro and Apple has spatial audio processing for the top-tier Apple AirPods Pro, this is the first truly brand-diagnostic pair of earbuds to make use of the ability.
So what is Dolby Head Tracking? Fairly simple. Dolby Atmos is all about spatial, object-based audio so it correctly places the sonic information of each object where it should be, as the artist or sound designer intended it to be. Essentially, this adds sensors to the earbuds that can track your head movements in real time and alter the soundstage of the content as a function of your position.
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The idea here is that music and other streaming content will sound much more true-to-life using Dolby Head Tracking without breaking immersion at any point. The more natural audio experience comes with a redesign for the LG Tone Free series, which to date has mostly played around in the cost-effective space.
But these $400 earbuds fit in nicely for those with a taste for premium audio devices. LG has managed to stuff a lot of features in this pair, including the use of lightweight graphene for the buds to help reduce vibration and clarify sound. Underneath the hood, you’ll get LG’s Voice Pickup vibration sensor, which minimises ambient noise when you talk, and Active Noise Cancellation with a higher sampling rate to cancel out external noises more effectively.
LG is also sticking with its UVnano technology, which is what distinguished the LG Tone Free series in the first place. This uses rays inside the charging case to clean and refresh the earbuds while they are charging.
You’ve got a fairly competitive nine-hour battery life on a single charge, boosted by an additional 20 hours with the charging case. That’s not market-leading by any means, but a decent shot at the higher end of the scale.
The LG Tone Free T90 is available in Australia for $399.
