3D sound and 8D audio for every app on your Mac

Four modes

• 3D Surround – a virtual pair of speakers in front of you, with the early reflections of a room. The music plays outside your head instead of between your ears, which is also easier on long listening sessions.
• 8D Orbit – the music circles your head. Choose the path (circle, pendulum, figure 8 or drift), the speed in seconds per round and how near or far the source sits.
• 4D Impact – maximum impact: 3D space, bass you can feel and depth. Made for films, games and big drops.
• Off – plain stereo again. Every switch crossfades, so nothing clicks.

Hold HEAR ORIGINAL at any time to compare with the untouched sound.

Rooms

Six one-click rooms – Studio, Living Room, Cinema, Club, Concert Hall and Cathedral – or dry. Each sets how much space the renderer adds and a matching reverb, from a small, damped studio to a long cathedral tail.

Head tracking with AirPods

With AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, TONO follows your head. Turn left, and the music stays in front of your screen – like real speakers in a real room. When you settle into a new position, TONO slowly re-centers. macOS asks once for access to head movement; TONO uses it live and never stores it.

How TONO renders 3D and 8D

TONO models how a sound from one direction reaches each ear: the tiny time difference between the ears, the shadow of your head on the far ear, and the notch your outer ear cuts into the treble, which tells you front from back and up from down. In 8D, the left and right channels move together as a pair, so a centered voice stays clear instead of turning hollow.

It runs on the sound of every app through TONO’s Core Audio process tap, the same path as the equalizer. The spatial stage adds well under a millisecond of delay. Technical details are in How TONO works.

Headphones or speakers?

3D and 8D are rendered for two ears. Speakers mix left and right in the room before the sound reaches you, so most of the effect disappears – use headphones. Any headphones work: wired, Bluetooth, AirPods, in-ear or over-ear. The equalizer, the App Mixer and the rest of TONO work just as well on speakers.

Live 8D vs. “8D versions” on YouTube

An “8D audio” video is a single song that someone rendered once, with a fixed path and speed, usually re-encoded at streaming quality. TONO does the same live, for anything you play, in the original quality of the source – and you choose the path, the speed and the distance, or switch it off in a click.

At a glance

Hear it before you install anything

The demo on the landing page plays a loop composed in your browser through a sketch of TONO’s chain: put on headphones, switch on 3D or 8D and drag the source around the stage. The app does the same to every app on your Mac.

3D & Space is part of TONO Pro (€3.99 a month, €29 a year or €79 once). TONO starts with one day of Pro on each Mac.

Questions