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I cannot figure out any way to reconcile the incredibly poor quality of Beats products with a hopeful future for Apple. Can someone make the argument for why th

• shashwatak 12y ago
  > poor quality of Beats products They're overpriced, certainly. But poor quality is not fair. They've got good sound, heavy bass, and the build feels solid. EDIT: I don't actually own beats, I prefer my Sennheiser's. But my brother got a pair of Beats as a gift and I've used them.
  • lloeki 12y ago
    The Momentum On-Ear† are top notch quality, full of bass while keeping meds and highs detailed all the while costing much less. Technically, Beats cans are definitely overpriced, you're definitely paying for the style (which is not necessarily a bad thing per se) † The Momentum over ear have a totally different, much more balanced sound. Almost a monitor headset, except with detail being just right so that they don't give too much fatigue.
• Cookingboy 12y ago
  They are over marketed a bit and over priced, sure, but just as much as Bose, B&O and a lot of other premium sound brands. How do they objectively have "incredibly poor quality"? Do you have a link that support they have really poor sound quality or bad build quality or horrible customer satisfaction rate?
  • nerfhammer 12y ago
    “In terms of sound performance, they are among the worst you can buy,” says Tyll Hertsens, editor in chief of InnerFidelity.com, a site for audiophiles. “They are absolutely, extraordinarily bad.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/beats-headphones-expand-dr-dres-business-world.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/beats-headphones-...
    • cschmidt 12y ago
      I'm a bit of an audiophile myself, so I wouldn't listen to Beats, but I do think "bad" is a value judgement. I want a neutral reproduction of the music, and I get that with my Grado's. The Beats customer wants lots of thumpy bass. We each get what we want.
      • batiudrami 12y ago
        This is exactly it - they give a 'fun' listening experience that people enjoy, and mistake for sound quality. They're paying a high price for a brand and experience, rather than for the quality of the components, like many other premium brands. I don't wear them, but I don't hate the people who do (though I'm not huge on Beats' "the way it was meant to sound/the way the musician intended" branding)
        • hessenwolf 12y ago
          Quality is in the eye of the beholder, and there were several blokes sporting them on the U-bahn train this morning, all much cooler than me.
          • batiudrami 12y ago
            It's not really, when frequency response is a measurable quantity - sound quality can be, and is defined, and Beats do not fare well[1]. But you're right, they do look cool, and they have a fun listening experience. [1] http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/monster-beats-dr-dre-solo http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/monster-beats-dr-dre-so...
        • paulrov 12y ago
          > they give a 'fun' listening experience that people enjoy, and mistake for sound quality. "You're listening to it wrong"
        • mrexroad 12y ago
          "they give a 'fun' listening experience that people enjoy" ding that's the crux of it. people want something that makes them feel good, which often isn't something you can quantify in a lab. so rather than trying to build a better headphone, beats built the equivalent of a booming car stereo strapped to your head, and that evokes a very specific emotional response for most of their customers. fwiw: i have a pair of Bose QC15 cans that i got as a gift from work. i think they're crap for reproduction purposes, but the experience they're designing for is noise cancellation.
  • Aqwis 12y ago
    Bose is a damn bad example as a premium brand to compare Beats to. Their consumer headphones are widely considered to be way overpriced and gimmicky. The brands Beats should really be compared to are Sennheiser, Shure, A-T, Denon, Beyerdynamic and the like. Any offerings from these brands at a price point from $100 and up offer at least as good sound quality as Beats' cans and for a much lower price, and many of their phones look pretty good as well.
    • tomrod 12y ago
      Wait--don't compare to Bose, compare instead to Bose?
      • Aqwis 12y ago
        Oops, didn't think straight.
    • balls187 12y ago
      Except their Noise Canceling line has been getting good reviews from many review sites.
      • akandiah 12y ago
        Indeed! Their active noise canceling headphones actually retain the bass while removing the external noise. Other active noise cancelling heaphones tend to blunt the bass.
    • rdl 12y ago
      Bose professional and aviation products are actually superior to Apple quality. Their consumer noise canceling is pretty good. I agree about their consumer speakers.
    • Intermernet 12y ago
      I would second this statement strongly. The only other brand I'd add to the list is AKG as they also have some wonderful headphones at around this price point. I've done AB comparisons with friends who've bought Beats, Sony, Skull Candy etc. and they're always blown away by the difference between the product they bought, and my AKGs, A-Ts or Sennheisers. I recently tested some Beyerdynamics and would highly recommend them, although I still think A-Ts are the best bang for buck around.
  • bherms 12y ago
    Quality when applied to speakers and headphones is typically demonstrated by frequency response, with a perfectly flat response being the pinnacle. Headphones like Beats appeal to people who have only had bargain headphones (think a few bucks), and they do this by having attractive packaging and just basically amping up the bass response because bass has a "wow factor".
    • baddox 12y ago
      A flat response is rarely desirable, or at least rarely intended, except for equipment designed for audio production.
      • bherms 12y ago
        Typically you aim for as much of the audible spectrum as possible with as flat of a response as possible... From there you adjust for personal listening preferences. Some cans tend to accentuate bass a bit, others mids or trebs. Flat headphones are preferred for mixing/mastering of course. That's about as objective a measure as you can find.
      • SwellJoe 12y ago
        This is simply untrue. The best headphones, speakers, and amplifiers, are designed to faithfully reproduce the recorded signal. Anything that does something other than that is a poorly designed product, or a product that is intentionally misleading the consumer. Most cheap products accidentally fail at this goal. Beats products are intentionally designed to be cheap to manufacture, while being bass-heavy and overly bright on top, to disguise their poor quality. A flat response is always desirable to the listener (whether they know it, or not). If the listener desires EQ (for a bass-heavy and bright experience), they can apply it before it goes out to the transducer. Old stereos used to have a "loudness" button to slap this kind of curve onto the audio, but all modern playback devices have EQ and such available. But, I'd recommend using good quality headphones and listening as the engineer and artist intended.
        • stcredzero 12y ago
  • baddox 12y ago
    I would argue they're way worse than Bose. Bose products, at least to me, sound good but are overpriced. Beats products are overpriced but also sound bad.
  • gcv 12y ago
    I don't know anything about build quality or customer satisfaction, but this video gives you an excellent idea how they sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pK7QbLNjno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pK7QbLNjno — try to listen to the demo with relatively neutral headphones. FWIW, I listened to Beats at an Apple store, and the video fits nicely with my impressions.
• scep12 12y ago
  Some are speculating that Apple is more interested in the beats music streaming service. I'm not sure I buy that -- doesn't Apple nearly have its own? Even if they don't, surely they've got the foundation set to build one quite effortlessly.
  • leemcalilly 12y ago
    I agree. If they can't build a streaming service on the back of itunes, why would they need beats? I'm sure Beats, Pandora, Spotify, or any other streaming service would have killed to launch with the full support of the iTunes ecosystem.
  • rhizome 12y ago
    Beats is EXTREMELY WELL positioned to be a major iTunes competitor without the overhead of computer hardware and software divisions. Not only that, but while Apple is cool, Dre is much, much cooler.
    • OWaz 12y ago
      Beats streaming apparently has about 200,000 subscribers. That doesn't seem so cool when it's competitor Spotify has about 10 million subscribers.[1] Even if you think Apple is going for the subscriber base it still doesn't make sense. [1]:http://recode.net/2014/05/08/why-apple-is-betting-big-on-beats-hardware-for-now-streaming-for-later/ http://recode.net/2014/05/08/why-apple-is-betting-big-on-bea...
      • rhizome 12y ago
        I don't think it's about Apple purchasing a turnkey subscription service. Beats is an extremely strong brand with a lot of momentum who has been built from a consumer-electronics foundation, where Apple still has laptops and whatnot markets to wrangle. Beats likely does not have the infrastructure to be a turnkey rebranded acquisition anyway. However, download sales are down and going lower, so Apple does need to think about a future where streaming is dominant.
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• scottm30 12y ago
  Purely speculating... Modular phones will create opportunities for high quality audio drivers for Android. Apple products are synonymous with quality audio, and Apple's success is partly attributed to it's investment in music technology. A brand like Beats which is popular with young audiophiles could potentially transform Android into a recognizable music platform if they provided a Beats audio driver and quality headphones. This is a risky proposition for Apple as it would drive more of their high-end audience to view Android as a serious audio contender.
  • Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    > Apple products are synonymous with quality audio Are they? I like Apple products but the headphones really aren't great, certainly not for what you pay for them (looking at the prices for the headphones alone). In that sense you might argue there is a certain synergy with Beats...
• DanBC 12y ago
  Quality of product is unimportant. Vast market of "gullible fools" proves this. Currently there are a lot of different headphones that have very similar specs - I suspect that some company is mass producing drivers and other companies are iust putting these into fashion shells and selling them at large profit. (WESC is an example of a company that I think is doing this). In this market - not very good headphones sold with large profits to people who care more about looks than sound quality - Beats headphones is exciting buy. Don't forget that many people will be listening to poor quality source material - poorly ripped; weird dynamic compression; etc.
  • calinet6 12y ago
    Apple's market, however, is not gullible fools. They produce quality products that do not lie about their quality. This authenticity and quality is key to their success. Steve would roll in his grave. He had Magnepans.
    • gregsq 12y ago
      I was downvoted for a snarky comment about having to replace Beats if they were provided as the standard quality for iPhones in particular. OK that's fair. But with what I believe to have been Job's fastidious attention to quality, I find it difficult to understand how he would have accepted the sound quality. The branding issue has a certain, even large value, but there's also the loss of reputation for quality that using what are objectively poor quality sound reproducers will I think bring, to consider as well. The quality of the audio electronics in iPhones is quite alright. The iPhone's have measured well and sound quite OK given the limitations on space and power. The standard earbuds provided with them are poor quality though, and as an electronics engineer, audio engineer, and musician I would be quite disappointed if Apple allowed this sound reproduction shortcoming to persist. Monster Turbines like the Copper Pro are substantially better than Beats, so upgrading quality might happen, and what I say will be irrelevant. I want Apple to continue to strive for excellence in quality, and not to let that focus lapse if concentrating on branding and market share.
      • 12y ago
• zerohm 12y ago
  Beats certainly has one thing going for it in brand recognition: they are the preferred headphone of the professional athlete.
  • epo 12y ago
    Who not only never paid for them but are probably paid to wear them.
• Zigurd 12y ago
  Those iconic white earbuds were physically painful sonic crap, too. Yet everyone recognizes those silhouettes with the white earbud wires.