Hans Zimmer is one of the best-known composers on the planet. Great movies have their music like The Lion King, Interstellar, Gladiator or Inception. He has always been recognized by the great music awards of recent years and today he continues to compose for films like Dune. In one of his latest interviews, he assures that the former chief designer of Apple, Jony Ive, gave him some unknown headphones at the time to listen to music with spatial audio technology months before its launch. In fact, Zimmer praises this technology and says he enjoys listening to content with it.
Jony Ive reappears giving Hans Zimmer some headphones
The interview comes from Apple Music and was conducted by Zane Lowe by a well-known New Zealand-born DJ. Much of the interview focused especially on Hans Zimmer's career as a composer and the influence of his soundtracks on the development of the film world. But nevertheless, they also had time to talk about Apple's spatial audio and the good things it has brought him in his life.
In fact, he commented that in the middle of the confinement Jony Ive sent him "some headphones" with a note saying "I've done this." He put them on and started listening to spatial audio music. Zimmer realized that the music was playing with immersive technology and that Dolby Atmos might be compatible. In the interview he commented that he does not listen to his soundtracks because they are almost always in stereo mode.
Next, Zimmer called his friends at Dolby and told them what he had received and about the immersive experience. Surprisingly, Dolby claimed that "those headphones don't exist, I think you have the only pair." As he comments in the interview, it seems that Jony Ive gave him a prototype AirPods Max. However, these headphones were released in December 2020 and Jony Ive left Apple in 2019. There will always be unknowns to solve.