We Took Apart Some Beats Headphones
huffingtonpost.com
huffingtonpost.com
https://medium.com/bolt-blog/how-it-s-made-series-yup-our-be...
But the article did not include any comparison of the audio quality of the counterfeit and genuine Beats headphones, so how could the article come to such a conclusion?
No they're not. About the only bad Beats headset was Solo (1st edition). It just sounded too harsh and V-shaped. Solo2 is one of the best headsets out there and it's also one of the most popular ones.
But don't take my word for it, read what Tyll over at Inner Fidelity says [1]. He trashed Solo but loves Solo2.
I have around 15 different cans of various manufacture and I do enjoy Beats especially for energetic music. When I listen to classical, I still prefer my AKGs or Sennheiser HD 800.
[1] http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/time-rethink-beats-solo...
The first comment: "p.s : how much did dr.dre payed you for this review?"
Hilarious.
Tangentially, it's actually really hard to find good headphone reviews anymore, let alone headphone demo places. Pro music stores (like Guitar Center, Sam Ash, etc) are probably the best bet these days - but they tend not to carry headphones like the high-end Sennheisers that used to be my favorites (HD570 I think?).
AFAICT, their noise cancelling headphones still have by far the best noise cancelling. If you work in a noisy environment or fly frequently, they're amazing. If your primary concern is audio quality in a normal or quietish environment, buy cheaper headphones (or I suppose more stylish ones, if that's your jones).
I actually just got a pair of very expensive Jabra Evolve 80 headphones (http://www.jabra.com/Products/PC_Headsets/Jabra_EVOLVE__Seri...) primarily for their mic. The noise cancelling is dramatically worse than Bose and the headphones make me look dramatically stupider because of the mic. But clients can hear me better so that's a net win.
I wonder if Bose is doing something beyond noise-cancellation in the QC25s when you turn them on. It sounds similar to a BBE Sonic Maximizer, as if they've licensed the algorithm and tweaked it to the characteristics of the drivers in the QC25s (which sound lousy when the headphones are turned off).
You bring up an interesting point that there's no real center in the U.S. that carries audio gear online, Europe has Thomann (thomann.de) that basically carries everything but now in SF it's hard to find something else then B&H Photo Video NY to deliver stuff.
I'd say the audiophile market is a more resilient to style than the general population, but not completely. Flat response headphones, like the AKG-701's are reviewed as not being "fun". The thing is, audio mixing plays a much larger part in your experience than headphones. After owning the 701's, I would much rather choose different cheaper 'colored' headphones for different genres, than use a headphone that is able to reproduce sounds more accurately. YMMV.
Remember when the iPhone 5 was deemed too light?
http://gizmodo.com/5945662/the-weirdest-thing-people-hate-ab...
Retail is higher than street. 5-5.5x is about right.
The zinc alloy in the knock-offs is weaker than stainless steel. But still much more durable than the plastic its hooked to. In either one the upper part of the hinge will break before the lower.
I don't think the metal is there to add weight, however. Seems to me to be so it looks shiny and has the appearance of being more substantial than it is. (Thus stainless steel which doesn't tarnish readily.) I think it does make a difference having metal on the shell of the ear cups because that's where your fingers touch. Over time painted plastic will fade and show smudges. The metal covering can be wiped clean and maintain its appearance longer. But everything else is plastic and will fade so a pyrrhic victory.
I've literally stomped on them, run them over with a chair, had the cable go into the chair wheels (repeatedly) and then pull them off my head forcibly when I got up without noticing it. They are still fine.
I did break the audio jack when my headphone DAC fell of the desk and hit jackfirst into the ground (it sometimes doesn't connect properly and has to be wrangled about) :(
Bottomline, to me they are an amazing purchase.
Although this article is indeed a high quality analysis, and the author really done a great job. There is no point arguing that a Beats is not a genuine headphone. Whatever product it is, there are always people who are looking for quality and people who are looking for style (In some market they are one).
I'm not a big fan of Apple these days, but Apple products generally do have better than average build quality -as well as- good design and looks.
They are indeed premium priced, but that's a marketing choice. You might be able to nitpick Apple products' value by specs, but I don't think you can really put them in the same bin as Beats (even though Apple now owns Beats) with respect to quality.
> The iPod was really poor in comparison.
Do you mean the audio quality? What specifically was worse about it?
[0]pun intended.
Isn't this exactly the problem? Apple has good build quality but a terrible quality/price ratio. In a situation where money is no object and pure quality is the only measure then Apple might very well win out depending on how the customer weighs the value of build quality vs. performance.
But Apple would not be the most profitable company in the world if they were only catering to those types of customers. For the average person a minimum of quality and value are the most important metrics, which Apple would not be winning if it weren't for their marketing and brand, especially in the laptop market.
That's too simplistic. There's actually quite a few people who prefer Beats' audio, none of that really has much to do with audio tech, but rather with equalizers.
i.e. it's not just style or fashion, it's also sound that really matters. There are quite a few 'blind test' videos on youtube where people prefer the Beats headphones to the technically superior ones.
That doesn't mean that when people prefer Beats' audio, that the audio is 'better', it's just 'better to them'. An objective standard of good audio one could argue is audio that sounds 'as it is', which is where Beats fails. Beats doesn't do that, it deforms the audio to make the bass heavier. And so lots of popular music with young people who like bass, sounds better with Beats, than a more natural headphone which recreates sounds much better.
In short, yes Beats is also about audio, and it's not 'better or worse', just like there's taste in food, fashion, style etc, there's also a taste in audio.
That doesn't fully explain Beats' popularity, of course. There are cheap headphones with equalisers that are bass-heavy that aren't as popular, and that can all be explained like you did with differences in style, fashion, recognition etc. But only mentioning this fails to recognise that there are groups of people who genuinely prefer deformed sound and prefer Beats' audio over even more expensive, technically far superior headphones' audio, regardless of style/fashion etc.
This. It's just like TV sales. A lot of people like those amped up color and contrast settings in big box stores that would make TV-philes gag.
So what?
Tastes are subjective, and judging people by their tastes is more often than not, wasted cognitive effort.
This is the problem. I saw someone ask the other day, "What kind of speakers do professional audio engineers use to make master recordings?" And the answer was to buy the lousiest chinese made boombox from Walmart. Pop music mastering is done so it sounds good everywhere, including on the cheapest radios. That's how the loudness wars got started, because the most effective way to make something sound decent on poor speakers is to maximize the loudness.
Rather than pop music either have the people compare something with more range. If they don't like classical music, have them listening to a movie and see if they can clearly hear whispered dialog while not having their ears blown out by an explosion.
A lot of mixes were made to sound good on cheap bookshelf speakers called NS10s, made by Yamaha. Most studios had them. They weren't hifi, but the story was that if something sounded good on them it would sound good everywhere. I was never completely convinced, and a lot of bright and grainy mixes from then have been remastered since then with less edge. But it was a good story, and it helped sell a lot of speakers.
Now mix engineers are more likely to listen in the car or on cheap headphones, because that's how most people listen to music today.
Mastering studios are more likely to have very clean high-end equipment. Mastering needs subtle changes in tone and dynamics, and you need a clean reference to hear them clearly.
The problem is, that people assume everyone wants the best possible sound reproduction. Not true. For the same reason why some people actively like and even prefer greasy dominos pizza instead of the "authentic" stuff. That doesn't mean they are wrong - they just follow their tastes. I found the music played by Beats to be exactly to my tastes - if I find something else which hits that spot but for less money - I will buy that next time instead. But I haven't yet.