It's quite accidental. Before Apple Music, I was a dual-Android user. I used NetEase Cloud Music which was "not that outrageous" and "not that bloated". At that time, everything had changed over time. Be quiet.

Later Apple released HomePod, and I borrowed one from a friend to try it out - You must know that HomePod at that time had not yet been launched in China, and it did not yet support Mandarin and Cantonese. HomePod was the largest The function of HomePod is to listen to music, not the so-called voice assistant and smart home. It has a very good sound performance in this price range, but the disadvantage of HomePod at that time was that it relied heavily on Apple's ecosystem, and voice song requests could only play songs from Apple Music. music.

At that time, the only Apple device I had was an iPad. It didn’t seem worth it to open an Apple Music on the borrowed HomePod. Well, Apple gave me a 3-month trial. ——Then just open it, it won’t be a loss.

Not long after I returned the HomePod, Apple updated the Mandarin and Cantonese language packs, and also launched the Android client of Apple Music. I was excited to buy my first HomePod, and at the same time, I officially started my career. Apple Music journey.

After switching to Apple Music, NetEase Cloud Music became more and more boring and became a tool for me to read lyrics, comment and find "***s"; then Apple Music added a dynamic lyrics function and improved After adding various functions, the increasingly bloated NetEase Cloud Music was inevitably destined to be abandoned by me.

The "conscience" Apple does not treat the Android platform differently because it is not "its own". Almost every time a new feature is added to Apple Music, it can be synchronized to the Android platform in time, and its functions are almost the same as its own iOS version. There is no difference. It is even said that some of the current Android version's experiences are better than those of the iOS version; and the recently added lossless audio, digital mastering and spatial audio (Dolby Atom) functions increase the volume without increasing the price.

The addition of lossless audio and digital mastering will directly push Apple Music's audio sources into the era of high resolution. Among them, "lossless audio" uses Apple's lossless compression encoder to encode and decode, with the highest It can reach 24bit/48kHz bit width and sampling rate that supports high resolution, and digital mastering goes even further, starting with 24bit bit width.

You can now enjoy lossless audio sources on the Android version of Apple Music. However, because the wireless transmission of iPhone, iPad and even Mac currently only supports the lower bandwidth ACC, 256kbps peaks, even with None of our own AirPods can enjoy Apple Music’s high-resolution audio sources wirelessly.

But the Android side is different. Most Android phones on the market today support the LDAC wireless audio coding developed by Sony, and are paired with Sony headphones that support LDAC (now Sony has opened LDAC technology to third-party headphones and speakers) , such as Huawei's new Sound and digital mastering of high-resolution sound sources.

In fact, in addition to Sony’s LDAC, there is also the domestic LHDC, which can achieve wireless high-resolution listening enjoyment of Apple Music, so I won’t go into details here.

However, because the Android platform lacks hardware and software support, the Android version of Apple Music does not support Apple-specific spatial audio music; but if it is equipped with headphones that support Dolby Atom (such as OnePlus’ recent OnePlus Buds Pro) is a Dolby Atom music resource that can achieve a very spatial sense on Apple Music.

It needs to be explained that Dolby Atom and Apple’s spatial audio are not exactly the same thing. Apple’s spatial audio does require Dolby Atom as technical support, but spatial audio will be in Dolby Atom. On top of that, it adds a dynamic sense of space, which relies on the hardware support of AirPods and Apple devices. It can calculate and simulate the real sound direction in real time based on your movements. Dolby Atom can be regarded as a "spatial audio Lite version" that lacks motion perception, but compared with ordinary sound sources, it can also create a very realistic sound atmosphere, but the sound will not respond to your movements. Changes in orientation.

Compared with other domestic music platforms, the biggest advantage of Apple Music is that the music library is clean and the operation is smooth. Even on the Android platform, Apple is ensuring full functionality while following the development guidelines of Android apps. It also has an interface and logic similar to the iOS client, and does not have various derivative functions such as NetEase Cloud and QQ Music to drag down system resources and pollute the user's vision.

However, the shortcomings of Apple Music are also very obvious. Some relatively niche Chinese music resources are still relatively small, and some music in English and other languages ??in the country are confusing. For example, the names of Japanese music are somewhat confusing. When displayed in Japanese, some are displayed in Roman pronunciation, which is really inconvenient to find.

If you have similar needs to me and are looking for a clean streaming platform in China, Apple Music may not be the best choice, but it may be a platform worth considering. After all, it is free for 3 months Try it out... It's not in vain if you don't use it.