- Listen to your Spotify playlist.
Now listen to the CD.
Now listen to Spotify.
Now the CD.
Like what you hear from the CD?
What if I told you there's something even better?
(bright music)
And no, this piece of plastic isn't witchcraft.
They've been in use from the early 1800s until about 2005.
Anyhow, Apple just announced that they're adding
lossless and spatial audio with Dolby Atmos
to their Apple Music subscription service for free.
And with that, Amazon also announced the same
with their subscription service,
but how do you get it?
Does it really make a difference?
Will your current phone, headphones,
or any other mobile devices work with these new offerings?
Now, well, CD may stand for compact disk.
I'm going to calmly decipher all the tech speak
and answer your myriad questions
and prepare you and your ears
for the beautiful stereo imagery coming your way.
Let's go.
(upbeat music)
So who are these new offerings really for?
Everyone but you,
especially if you're like my wife
who likes to listen to music
when performing any mundane household chores
or cooking or going for a drive.
Basically, if you're not in audio file
but music is a big part of your life,
you should absolutely get this info.
If it isn't, you still should because when you listen,
this higher quality audio
can take your experience to a new level.
Now, I'm gonna share with you three things you need to know
about Apple Music and Amazon's announcements.
One, what is lossless, spatial, and Dolby Atmos.
Two, what Apple and Amazon are actually offering.
And three, how you access that content
on your mobile devices.
So, number one, what is lossless music?
Well, let's begin with what isn't lossless.
Many of your music streams or MP3s or AAC files
you've download in the past are what's called compressed.
That means that in order to get the music to you
in the easiest, most bandwidth friendly way,
streamers and content delivery stores
send files or streams to your devices
which are made smaller than their original files
by omitting some data from those streams
at the cost of the sound quality of your music.
From the hardcore music enthusiast's perspective,
the audio file.
That means y'all been listening to music
which sounds like kaka for a long time. (chuckles)
Let me make a visual example out of this.
On my left, my left, is an MP3.
On my right is the same song
but in a lossless format like a FLAC file.
With the slower internet speeds of yesteryear,
content providers had to give us these
so it didn't take forever to download or stream a track.
But with 4G, LTE, and now 5G,
we have greater speeds and pipelines
to allow for content providers to give us these.
In both instances, you can make out the image
but the one on the right has much more detail and color.
Now, what lossless files streams also enable
goes beyond just the stereo studio recording
with all of its detail and color.
They enable us to enjoy spatial audio
and Dolby Atmos mastering and remastering.
Spatial audio takes that lossless stereo image
where things sound like they're only happening
on your left and right
and expands the sound image so that it surrounds you
and sounds like it's coming from the front
and the back as well.
And even from above, in the case of some movies.
So what you need to know about spatial audio
is that it is a type of audio or a format
which has different codecs that utilize it.
I know that's a bunch of mumble jumble.
Think of it this way.
You have blenders, right?
Yeah, yeah, you have blenders.
They all blend
but there are different brands
using different methods and motors
for giving you their versions of a blender.
In this case, Apple Music and Amazon
both offers spatial audio, a blender.
Apple went with Dolby Atmos as their blender of choice
and Amazon landed on Sony 360 Reality.
Now, these are both vitamixes.
(chuckles) I mean, they both produced beautiful sound mixes,
as I've listened to both on various platforms.
You aren't gonna be disappointed
if you know this one thing ahead of time, though.
The quality of the Dolby Atmos or Sony 360 Reality mix
is dependent on the mixer or a music producer in this case.
So some are better than others.
I put together a whole video on this
that we'll link to in the description.
I use TIDAL as the service that I streamed
both Dolby Atmos and Sony's 360 Reality track from.
So what are Apple and Amazon both actually offering?
Let's start with Amazon's sister product is live right now.
I know that correlation doesn't equal causation
but as Apple was set to announce their service
at no additional charge,
Amazon announced they were modifying their pricing tiers
so that HD quality tier
which was previously an additional $5 a month
on top of the Amazon Music unlimited individual plan
at $7.99 a month for prime members
and $9.99 a month for Amazon customers
(inhales deeply) or the family plan at $14.99 a month.
Yes, they changed it up
and that top tier HD access is now available
at no additional cost,
which coincidentally is what Apple is offering.
Amazon is offering you three levels of music,
HD, Ultra HD, and 3D.
I have specific audio details up here
for you tech and audio nerds to check out
while I talk about it.
For each level of music,
you'll find a badge next to your song titles or albums
indicating which flavor of music stream you have access to.
You can access that music on your tablets and smartphones
and on supported Amazon smart speakers and displays.
Now, Apple has bundled pricing and a la carte pricing
where their music offerings are concerned.
The bundles fall under the Apple One services
but the a la carte pricing is $4.99 for students,
$9.99 for individuals and $14.99 for the family plan.
Included in that cost, as I mentioned previously,
is technically for listening options.
I can't tell you what that looks like in their app yet
as it isn't live,
but we'll have a video on that once it is.
So, for Apple you'll get CD-quality 16-bit at 44.1 kilohertz
and that will go up to 24-bits at 48 kilohertz.
Then, there's the high resolution lossless music
that is gonna be 24-bit at 192 kilohertz,
but with the catch.
In order to listen to that, you'll need additional equipment
like an external digital to analog converter or a DAC
or D-A-C.
Then, you also will have access to Dolby Atmos tracks
which will automatically play
on all AirPods and Beats headphones
with the H1 or W1 chip,
as well as built-in speakers
on the latest versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Apple says there will be some sort of badge
on the detail page of albums
which are available in Atmos.
So, how do you access this music on mobile?
You'll need either the Apple Music or Amazon Music app
which is available on both iOS and Android.
Once in the Amazon app,
go into settings, streaming audio quality,
and I'd recommend setting it to HD/Ultra HD
for streaming on WiFi
and best available under the mobile data header.
And look for car mode as well.
It makes the Amazon Music interface
much more friendly for use in car
with larger text and buttons.
Once the Apple offering is live,
which should be mid-June, somewhere,
you'll go into the iOS settings app
then tap on music,
then audio quality.
Similar to the Amazon app,
they say you'll be able to choose
different resolutions for WiFi, for cellular,
and additionally for downloads.
And that's it.
Mine is getting really deep into the weeds
about bit rates and the whole issue of needing a D-A-C,
a DAC for high risk files.
That's everything you need to know
to take advantage of these two huge announcements.
Hey, I'm Tshaka Armstrong.
If you have any further questions, anything I didn't answer,
any of my information
that actually brought up more questions,
please leave those in the comments below.
I'll get to them, I love chatting with you all.
I don't take it lightly, we don't,
that you've watched here with us.
I'll catch you on the next video.