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Hmm. And what's the debate called today, then, if not musicality? Regardless of whatever you'd like to call it, I would argue that most audiophile products do
by owenversteeg 6y ago
Hmm. And what's the debate called today, then, if not musicality?
Regardless of whatever you'd like to call it, I would argue that most audiophile products do not have it. I've personally tried a ton of "audiophile" products, from your standard Massdrop DAC+IEM combo to the incredibly fancy setup of a Swiss acquaintance and was left disappointed. Sure, there's plenty of music that did sound good to me on those setups, but there was more music that sounded better on a pair of AirPods. This is also borne out by my own personal experiments. Let a random Joe listen to your expensive setup with a carefully chosen song, and they'll likely be impressed at first. Wow, the details! The range! Incredible! But let them put on their favorite song, and they'll often actually prefer it on their shitty setup. Try it - the results will surprise you.
And my critique of audiophile equipment is not coming from an untrained ear, or someone who cares about branding. I've been playing violin for almost my entire life, and even plenty of classical music sounds better on AirPods vs many audiophile setups! And as much as I like my Etymotics+DAC combo, it exposes flaws in the music. You hear the sneezes in the orchestra, you notice the small mistakes, and God help you if you play a recording of lower quality - it'll sound terrible. There is an enormous amount of music that is _only_ available in low quality, and it will sound a million times worse on your audiophile setup than your AirPods.
In my opinion, the audiophile world has completely lost its mind. Nobody cares about if the music is actually fun to listen to - they're far more concerned with frequency response curves, which, as anyone in the audiophile world knows, absolutely makes or breaks a manufacturer. Case in point: all the audiophiles downvoting the comment by 'gambiting' to oblivion, simply because they expressed their personal preference! It's preposterous to actually _like_ Beats: clearly that user is just an uninformed sheeple, downvote them and move on. I am so tired of the idea that Beats is objectively bad and Massdrop DAC+IEMs is objectively good. Has anyone ever considered that, just like the music you play with them, it's possible to have personal preferences in headphones?
- chrisweekly 6y agoYou make some valid points, but FTR some of the anti-Beats sentiment relates to build quality (ie, cheap plastic and tendency to physically break at the poorly-designed, fragile hinge), and to the cost compared to alternatives with similar electronics / sound.