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Comment by weisser | Hacker News Reader

I'd agree with you except the project is helmed by Ian Rogers whose involvement is what makes it even remotely interesting to me.

http://www.crunchbase.com/person/ian-rogers

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I know the headphones that Dr. Dre puts out are among the worst available on the market. I've also heard that the mobile audio they provide affords a barely noticeable difference.

Yep, hate to say it, but you and me are in the minority here. For the average consumer, headphones are a social object. They want something that sounds decent (remember they are playing lofi files from their phones) but looks really cool (to them, and the people they are trying to appeal to, at least). Also, vast numbers of people buy Apple earbuds even though they don't own Apple devices!

That's all neither here nor there though, because Ian Rogers was never involved with the headphones - he was CEO of Topspin and is now running the development of the Beats music streaming platform.

I agree tying into the Beats by Dre brand is a negative for people like us, but for the demographic they are going after it will probably be better than building a brand from the ground up.

The #1 feature of Beats is letting the other kids know you aren't poor.

They are the worst, unless you're comparing them to the 5$ throw-away earphones you upgraded from. Unfortunately, this is the story for most of the owners of those ridiculously-priced headphones. Every time I see someone wearing those, I have to fight against this urge to explain them how terrible their headphones are.

This is idiotic. I have owned a pair of Beats. They were ok. Far from the best headphones I've had, but ok. I replaced them with 300 GBP's worth of headphones from Amazon that had a super-high rating. They're a bit better than ok, but I forget them at home recently, and had to use my old Beats. The world didn't end.

To talk about Beats being terrible - what planet are you on? Take your hipster snark elsewhere. Yes, they're primarily a fashion item. But are they dreadful headphones? No, the price just factors in their fashion status.

It's not about being hipster. I've spent years combining different headphones with different DACs and amps, to get a good sound, tried tens of devices with different use cases. Those use cases include being a fashion item as well. I respect that, though it doesn't matter for me unless it looks really bad. I also think the beats headphones don't even look that good. Add to that the terrible sound quality[1], it becomes a no-go. I mean it. It really is bad. Maybe your ears are not very sensitive (it's a possibility) or your source is bad but I find it impossible for someone not to notice at least the loss of detail when they compare beats to a proper pair of headphones.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et_PWifUd1w

My smart phone has a "Beats" option to enable when headphones are plugged in, (and oddly enough bluetooth) as far as I can tell it's simply acting as a pre-amp and upping the voltage.

That's pretty much correct. All the "Beats" setting does is adjust the equalizer in the phone, to emphasize base and treble more. It's the same thing that old stereos did with the "Loudness" button.

The sneaky thing is that when the Beats feature is turned off, the default equalizer is tuned so that bass and treble are deemphasized, to make the difference between the two even greater.

I follow someone on YouTube that did a really good review about Beats Audio. Here's the link if you're interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdbn_pmxFic

That was more of an acquihire because Topspin was going nowhere and Beats by Dre has a lot of money.

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