The content is there. When 360 Reality Audio was first announced, my primary concern was content availability. It’s one thing to create a new audio standard, it’s another to convince people to use it. Sony has its own record label, so it had a library of music to pull from. Plus, it negotiated deals with Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer and other services that have high-res tiers. The amount of available content is still limited — there were only 1,000 songs at launch back in the fall — but at least there’s something. It’s certainly a start.

Sony’s latest demos for 360 Reality Audio include an Alicia Keys live performance from Tidal on a soundbar. It’s very similar to the setup you’d find in a lot of living rooms. And of course, it sounded great. However, Sony positioned two satellite speakers in the back of the room so the “wow” factor of the immersive audio the company is pitching is significantly reduced. Of course the sound in a setup with a soundbar and sub in the front, and two more speakers in the back, is going to seem like you’re in the middle of an arena. Or at least, more so than it would if you were just using a soundbar/subwoofer combo positioned in front of you. For now, this integration is just a demo. Sony’s staff say there’s nothing more to share in terms of consumer availability.

Sony also built another wireless speaker prototype. The company’s representatives were clear this is still only a demo unit, and there’s currently no plans to sell it — just like the prototype we saw last year. This new model is a different design, and it looks more like a refined Echo Studio. The directional speakers at the top from the 2019 version are gone, but the audio sounds just as good. It’s also noticeably better than what I heard on the Echo Studio during my review, which is to be expected for a tradeshow demo.

At this point, Sony has made two prototypes. They both sound great, and both have a better design than a lot of the WiFi speakers we see all the time. Sony has made Google Assistant speakers in the past as well, so it has experience with voice control in a product like this. And yet, the company still hasn’t introduced its own speaker for the 360 audio system its championing. I thought it was odd that Amazon debuted the first 360 Reality Audio speaker, and to date, it’s the only one. It’s just as confusing that Sony, a year after showing off its first prototype, still hasn’t announced one of its own. If the company wants to put some weight behind the audio ecosystem it’s trying to sell us on, it needs to put it in more of its products besides just headphones.

The Sony Headphones app is already the place you adjust noise cancellation, tweak the EQ and make other changes to its line of audio gear. It was nice to see the company will most likely put this 360 Reality Audio calibration tool inside that app. I have enough things one my phone, and I’m glad I won’t have to add another app for the sole purpose this one-time setup.

Once you select the 360 Reality Audio Setup, the Headphones app will walk you through the process. This includes asking you to make sure your ears aren’t covered by hair, remove earrings and, of course, remove your headphones. Next, you have to take the photos. The app will recognize your face to make sure you’re holding your phone the appropriate distance away. Then you simply turn your head to the right to capture your left ear before repeating the process for the right. The app will automatically detect when you’re in position and capture the image. If it doesn’t, there’s a manual option so you can snap a photo yourself. The whole thing is a bit like taking a selfie, but it can be difficult to get the distance and angle right, even if the phone is mounted stationary — like it was on the show floor.

When all the photos are done, the app analyzes the shape of your ears to create a sound profile. That process can take up to 30 seconds, but the few times I tried it, the software was much faster. Once complete, the Headphones app will send the results to a music app to “optimize your 360 Reality Audio experience.” Since the whole thing is still new, so right now that means booting you out to Sony’s own media player where there’s a selection of curated 360 Reality Audio tracks. For the demo, you had the option to switch back and forth between stereo and this immersive format. But it was only for one song and not for any of the material from the likes of LSD or Khalid.

There is a massive difference between 360 Reality Audio and normal stereo. It’s like the difference between stereo and Dolby Atmos in your living room, or digital and analog instruments. It’s much more immersive, making it seem like you’re inside the music, rather than just having it blasted into your eardrums. Sony was doing this demo with its stellar WH-1000XM3 headphones, a $350 set that’s the best noise-canceling option you can buy right now. Even though those headphones are great, they’re even better with 360 Reality Audio.

The one element of all this that I’m unsure of is just how much the photo/calibration process tailors things to your ears. I tried the immersive tracks and stereo sample with the previous attendee’s settings before going through the process myself. Obviously, the whole thing takes a couple of minutes, and I wasn’t able to flip back and forth. All in all, I couldn’t really tell a difference between the two profiles. Who knows, we could’ve had similar ears. Sony reps didn’t offer any info on what’s going under the hood during the analysis, which isn’t really surprising — just that the app is creating an audio profile specific to your ear shape.

While I’ll have to wait until the feature is ready for mass consumption to really put it to the test, having 360 Reality Audio content to use it with is the next hurdle. At CES, Sony said it working major labels and distribution services, and any existing music recorded in a multi-track format could be easily converted. Still, it’s unclear if you’ll have to pay extra for it, if this will be exclusive to artists on Sony’s stable of record labels or even when you’ll be able to access it. The good news is that whenever the time comes, the calibration part of the equation will arrive as an update to an existing app.