Cannot disable spatial audio on my MacBook (AirPods Pro)?

On your Mac, open Control Center. Find the Sound section and click on the circular icon with the triangle and the ripples. In the resulting Sound menu, mouse over the AirPods and click the triangle on the right side to drop down the Spatial Audio options. If you are listening to audio, then you will have the option to disable spatial audio here. If your audio is paused then the option will be disabled. I know of no other way to disable Spatial Audio on a MacBook (it took me a few minutes of searching to find this option myself).

This feature should be MUCH easier to disable, and it should not be on by default. I work with sound for a living and really dislike how Apple's spatial audio sounds and am horrified that all new Apple devices sound the way they do out of the box.

Hello DodoML,

We see that you're having some trouble disabling Spatial Audio on your Mac. We'd be happy to assist!

Could you please confirm if your Mac is fully up to date and not running beta software?

Are you able to correctly disable spatial audio when connecting to other Apple devices?

Do you see the option to disable it when you have something like a YouTube video playing? This option may not be available to change without a source of audio playing.

This info will help determine what may be causing this.

Cheers!