If high-streaming already adds its own 3D like effect in firmware 3.0, can’t Sony take data from your ear shape and Sony headphone products and through algorithms/acoustic R&D recreate/map out a more authentic sounding virtual surround audio for stereo music? It is not exactly true 360 positional audio, but certainly upmixing stereo audio to virtual surround can be done, and kudos if Sony is able to use AI to do it. Yamaha has a new technology called SurroundAI, which analyses audio streams(2channel or multi channel) to map out a virtual surround audio upmixing that is tailored for for their home theatre systems.
https://hub.yamaha.com/what-is-surroundai/
Spatial Audio technology up mixing stereo sound into virtual surround isn’t anything new. Sony’s implementation using your ear shape data and their predefined headphone/iem data will likely recreate a more accurate/authentic sounding version.
Ok, but that has nothing to do with 360RA, this is what I mean, so why call it that? 360RA works only with specially mixed songs, and it's not doing applying an effect to that song, but rather just rendering how that song was mixed in this format by the music label.
Also, even the ear shape thing (that is made for 360RA) being used for normal songs in some way on these players, is not basically confirmed by Sony anywhere, so it's just speculation.
Imagine that you want to buy a normal music player, but you find out that it has some features that are not advertised anywhere by the company. That doesn't make too much sense, does it? If there are features that are so awesome, why wouldn't they just advertise them? In this way, they could maybe even sell more players.
Also, Hi-Res streaming potentially adding some 3D effect to songs without Sony mentioning it, also sounds a bit wrong. Not advertising the added effect could make people believe that Hi-Res media should always sound like this.
This is all they mention about it. Now imagine someone having no idea about it, and then drawing the conclusion that this is how 192 kHz music sounds like. It's a bit wrong/misleading, hence why it's weird that they would do this, but not mention it anywhere.
Regarding the claims that the ear shape thing applies to normal songs as well, what's mainly not ok is that it's just speculation, but it's presented as 100% true info. There's no hint to these claims that they are not actually confirmed anywhere, especially when knowing how 360RA actually works, from the info that Sony themselves made available.