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The Apple Watch can be an all-purpose audio entertainment device. With the iPod now long gone, consumers can still leave their iPhone at home and take music, podcasts and audiobooks with them on the go. In this tip Darcy takes you through the experience of syncing and streaming content with the Watch app, including how to control the Music app on your Mac using your Apple Watch.

If you prefer listening to full albums rather than playlists, and would rather launch them from a single widget than search in your music app, "Albums: Music Shortcuts" may just be the app for you. It is free and allows you to create various size widgets on your iOS device for albums that you have in either Apple Music or Spotify. It's simple to use and in this video, Lee walks you through the setup.

In this tip, Darcy brings you Apple's new music app, Classical, which Apple Music subscribers now have access to. This a dedicated app that focuses on how classical music is found and organised to create a better searching and listening experience. Whether you're looking for composers, conductors, or your favorite soloist or even instrument, Apple Music Classical's Browse tab makes finding (and favoriting) the exact version you want a lot easier.

Earlier in the year, in show 1134, Lee covered an app on iOS called Albums that centred around recommending and playing albums in Apple Music in their entirety. Whilst this is great for looking at individual albums, we all love to have that shuffle factor that a playlist can bring. SongCapsule (formerly known as Next) fills that gap. A cross-platform application, it uses a feature called MagicDJs to look at your play history and creates a number of different playlists based on artist and genre automatically, as well as offering the ability to create your own. In this video, Lee walks you through the iOS version of the app.

As a music lover, there are lots of apps that Lee has recommended here at SCO to help you build your music library. However the most used app has gone uncovered—until now. Shazam allows you to identify the title and artist of a song that is currently playing. More than this, it can automatically add this track to a playlist in either Apple Music or Spotify, as well as view similar music, track concert information for artists, and more.

After using his original Synology NAS for about 5 years, Don decided to upgrade it to a newer model when his unit started exhibiting some performance issues. There have been a lot of changes and improvements since we first covered Synology hardware back in 2017, so in this episode Don takes a fresh look at features that are part of the operating system. After going over the basics, you discover options like setting up Time Machine backups, as well as setting up Synology Drive on both Mac and iPad.

Sometimes an app comes around that you didn't know you needed. With a proven pedigree in app development around media, thanks to releases like MusicHarbor and Play, Marcos Tanaka gives us MusicBox, a music application based on the premise of a Read-it-Later service. In this video, Lee shows you how to add music into MusicBox from a variety of sources, organise it with tags both manually and automatically, as well as create Smart Searches.

Audio Hijack allows you access to record and route audio in ways that Apple didn’t build into macOS. Version 4 brings a dramatically improved user interface, making it easier for new users to understand and filled with enhancements for those already familiar with the software. Allison is here to show you this versatile audio tool and its features, using real world examples.

The brains behind the MusicHarbor app on iOS, Marcos Tanaka, has switched gears from audio to video, with a Universal application called Play that allows you to find and catalogue YouTube videos for future viewing. In this short video, Lee goes through its features using his iPad, including the ability to organise your favourites using tags as well as descriptions.

Apple Music has become a very popular subscription option for streaming music. The native Music app, however, still leaves a lot to be desired, especially for those of us who favour listening to albums from front to back, in the original order. Albums, by Adam Linder, is an excellent option that can help with this. It allows you to easily find music in your library, create playlists from collections of albums that can be filtered, and provide useful stats on your listening history.

macOS Monterey includes several applications to help you manage and enjoy various types of media. This week, Todd walks you through the main features of the Music, Podcasts, TV, and Books apps on the Mac. These apps have gone through some subtle but important changes over the last few years and this fresh look brings you up to speed.

Todd also covers the benefits of AirPlay 2 for sharing audio throughout your home.

Fission is an audio editor that is equally at ease with lossless and lossy (compressed) audio file formats. It is designed with speed and ease of use in mind for editing audio, and provides useful tools like trim, split and the combining of audio files into one. Fission can also handle specialized file formats such as iPhone ringtones, chapterized AAC files, and offers direct publishing to SoundCloud.

In this screencast, you get a complete tour of this nifty utility with Allison as your guide.

When Apple transitioned away from iTunes to a series of application in macOS Catalina, the way you manage your media changed in several ways. We briefly covered these changes and new apps in the past, but we felt it was time to take a deeper dive.

In this screencast, Todd gives you a tour of each one, beginning with Music. He also goes over the Home app, which can help you manage your audio sources, such as HomePod and AirPlay 2 speakers.

Loopback from Rogue Amoeba allows you to combine application audio and physical audio input devices together to be used within other applications. For example, combining the Music app with your microphone for a video call. You don't need a complicated mixer if you learn to use Loopback.

Allison also revisits Audio Hijack and shows you new features that enable you to capture the audio from special sources like Siri, Text to Speech, and VoiceOver. She also takes a very brief look at the new capabilities to broadcast Internet radio using Audio Hijack's Broadcast and Live Streaming options.

Lee shows you an application in this week's tip that has helped him discover new music from his favourite artists, track upcoming releases as well as find out about concerts taking place close to home. MusicHarbor includes all of this and more.

SoundSource from Rogue Amoeba takes your Mac's audio capabilities to the next level with a host of flexible options. This week, Allison shows you how it can route audio to different outputs on a per-app basis, change the volume independently by app, and even process the audio with equalizers and other built-in Audio Unit effects.

Rogue Amoeba builds accessibility into their apps from the ground up, and Allison gives you a demonstration of how SoundSource can be used with VoiceOver on macOS. You also learn how to use Magic Boost and the new Volume Overdrive, as well as getting around the SoundSource window using keyboard shortcuts.

iReal Pro is an iOS and Mac-based program to help musicians of all levels, even aspiring ones, make better music. It simulates a three-piece band that can accompany you as you practice and also lets you collect chord charts from your favorite songs for reference. iReal Pro also allows you to export your songs as chord charts or audio files that you can share with other musicians.

In this episode, Mike helps you discover iReal Pro on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. You learn the basic playback options, how to change styles, keys, and tempo, and how to use Practice Mode to help you develop your skills. Mike wraps up by showing you a real-world example: Exporting a song from iReal Pro and using it alongside a home video in iMovie.

The touch interface of your favorite iOS device combined with the simple design of Ferrite provides a great environment for editing and publishing audio for the web. There's something about editing audio with your finger or Apple Pencil that makes this task more personal and more enjoyable.

This week, Mike explains how you can use Ferrite to edit, and even record, a podcast. He shows you some basic editing techniques and guides you through the built-in tools and effects that make Ferrite such a great tool for podcasters. You also learn how to set up automation like fading out an intro track, adding artwork and chapter markers for export, and leveling your audio for the final mix.

Apple's new HomePod is now with us.

In this live video episode, Don takes a look at the new HomePod and reviews its basic functions as well as the various ways of interacting with it using your Apple devices.