It’s rare that a company offers a significant leap forward in features without requiring you to buy a brand new device to use it. Apple is no different, with many newly announced features requiring a new Apple Watch or iPhone to fully take advantage of the updated software additions. Now, however, Apple is bringing an entirely new way to experience TV and movies to its devices via AirPods Pro: Spatial Audio.

Behind the Scenes: In addition to a slew of new OS updates coming to iOS, macOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS, Apple brought on Senior AirPods Firmware Engineer Mary-Ann Ionascu during WWDC to talk about the new audio feature. Essentially, the Apple team has developed an algorithm to create the illusion that sound is coming at you from all directions: left, right, front, behind, and even overhead. It will work, Ionascu said, with Dolby 5.1, 7.1, and Dolby Atmos, making it perfect for watching content encoded for that audio on your iPad or iPhone (or Apple TV, perhaps).

Advanced audio: Even if you move your head, she said, your AirPod Pros will track where your head lands and position the audio as if it’s still coming from the screen in front of you, rather than aiming directly at your head. Plus, if you move your iPad, for example, Spatial Audio will account for that too, ensuring you have a predictable soundstage while watching.

Bottom line: If you want these kinds of leaps and bounds to upgrade your sound system, you’d normally have to buy a new set of AirPods. Luckily for those of us who just bought our less-than-a-year-old earbuds, Apple can push this astonishingly useful upgrade through a simple software update included in the new OS systems (which will be available to developers in beta form in July, and to the rest of us presumably in the fall).