Anyone know how this "3D audio through TV speakers" works?
I'm assuming something like or an evolution of the "Vertical Surround Engine" they have in their soundbars, but they are doing the processing in the PS5 instead of in the soundbar:
I have it on my ZF9 soundbar from 2018 and for my Sony job I personally did a lot of testing of it on many different sources on different sound bar models, bottomline was the more information to work with the better it is so 2.1 boosted to "virtural 7.1.2" is probably going be as good as current 3D sound on mobile phones equipped with stereo speakers*, which is to say, its alright, but you don't get any height effects and rear effects are limited to it feeling like the sound is pasing by your ears rather than actually being behind you, like when a fly buzzes past your ears from front to back.
If you have an actual surround sound source (5.1/7.1) then the rear effect is much better but still not really as good as physical speakers, and sometimes you hear what you think is a height effect. So since almost all PS5 games will have 7.1 output before the 3D sound is applied it should be like that I'd imagine.
The time when it felt actually quite good was when I tried it with an actual Atmos or DTS:X source which has height channels and is "object based" rather than whatever the old method was called - which I understood to mean sounds sound more like they are inbetween the physical channels and can sound closer or further more realistically. Unfortunately no PS5 games will have that data afaik.
The caveat to all this is that the seating position is really important, you really need to be head onto the soundbar/speakers for it to really work properly. You can get an idea of how it "breaks" by doing trying with a mobile phone like I wrote below.
*I know its on the Samsung S20 at least, so if you have something similar try playing a video in landscape mode and tilt the screen away from you and you can hear the effect breaking, when its working you feel like some of the sound is right at your ears rather than coming from the speakers.
TL;DR - VSE is alright with a stereo source, its good with a 7.1 source and it can be great with an Atmos/DTS:X source and a perfect seating position. Its a way of experiencing something akin to rear and height channels without having to put speakers around your room or mount speakers in the ceiling, which have a really low WAF. Its probably shite with most modern TV speakers because they fire downwards and generally sound like shit anyway (comparitively), so even with a good source it might not work well (certainly won't work well if the TV is wall-mounted with nothing below it), a bit better with a 2.1/3.1 soundbar and good with a proper 5.1/7.1 speaker setup.