Speaking as a wee bit of an audiophile, though not a brand snob.... Some folks can't tell, don't care or may even have a personal preference to the type of sou

Speaking as a wee bit of an audiophile, though not a brand snob.... Some folks can't tell, don't care or may even have a personal preference to the type of sound they like that "real audiophile" types would consider inferior. Personally I'm fine with this, it's your money you're free to spend it how you like, and if you enjoy what you bought and they make you happy then that's all that matters. However...my friend's daughter was given a pair of Beats Solo's as a present and I tried them for an afternoon keeping an open mind and ignoring the celeb brand nonsense. Now whilst being well made and quite sturdy, they don't sound any better than the Sennheiser CX300 buds I picked up for GBP15.00 a few months earlier. In fact I thought the sound was inferior, and these Solo's retail for a whopping GBP160! I think the point I'm trying to make is that these Beats things are definitely style over substance and the Beats project is basically a massive marketing scam. I think you could definitely tell the difference between Beats and similarly priced non-celeb unfancy workhorse cans. Personally I own a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 80's, they're damned ugly things but by god they're comfy and have nice sound reproduction. I tried other makes in the same price range (AKG, Koss etc) but settled on the Beyers. I will admit I was slightly biased towards the Beyers because I used Beyer DT100 cans when I did radio broadcasting (they're pretty much industry standard, sturdy and neutral sounding) a few years back and I probably associate them with being "professional tools". For walkabout MP3 listening I have a pair of Tesco own make in-ear buds. They cost me a fiver in-store and they sound just fine (I applied the principle of "ShitTronics" when I made that purchase decision :) Discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9173017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9173017)