iPod Beats

[Ronnoco]

Beats are crap, and most people that love them do because they have never experienced real headphones. Same with Bose. Are they good? Sure, a bit. But only good because you don't know better.

Klipsch, Sennheiser, Shure, Grado, all great companies with good over ear and in ear cans. Etymotic makes great IEMs too but not bassy. Westone has amazing IEMs but they're pricey.

But at the cost of Beats, the crown jewel in my opinion is the Bowers and Wilkins P5 for over ear. Amazing sound, quality, comfort, style, and iPod compatibility from the controls to the impedance.

For in ear at that price, look at the Bowers and Wilkins C5, Triple Fi 10, Shure SEs, Sennheiser IE8 (reduced recently), or at the least the Bang and Olufsen A8 or Earset 3i. Klipsch S4i is good but a bit cheap and less punchy.

I own the B&W P5's, Bose QC3's, Shure e5's and just purchased the Beats Wireless and I find them all to be fine products with different strengths and weaknesses. I LOVE the sound and build quality of the P5's for my portable digital devices but sometimes I CANNOT STAND being "wired to the device"...
I've been waiting/looking for a pair of "wireless" headphones that actually have some "kick" to them (I own the Altec-Lansing/Plantronics Backbeat 906's which are fine for working out but lack any type of bass and can be uncomfortable with the behind-the-neck wire) and I just found them in the "Beats Wireless". I've worked in the music business for 30 years and I've heard all the hate for Bose and Beats from the "Audio Police"...
I love the "Beats Wireless" for my cable-free listening of my digital files (a combination of Apple-Lossless and mp3/AAC) and I expect many years of enjoyment out of them as I've have with my B&W's, Bose (which I use for traveling) and my Shure e5's.

 

[Ronnoco]

I disagree pretty strongly with this post, though I am a fan of Sennheiser; their 5XX series headphones and MKH 416 mic are excellent for the money.

Music isn't recorded to be listened to on reference quality systems. Maybe some SACDs are, but look at how most pop music is mastered--it's lowest common denominator stuff with tremendous amounts of compression applied globally (which sounds great on laptop speakers or over the radio, awful on better equipment). Beyond that it's a matter of taste; Grado headphones sound good in my opinion, but they have awfully slow drivers, no sub bass, a weird blip in the treble, and a frequency curve in general that's neither flat nor accurate to diffuse field equalization. They have a "warm" sound, but that's not an accurate sound at all. Most accurate headphones (Sennheiser HD280, etc.) sound pretty boring.

I haven't had much experience with the Beats (I tried them in an Apple store, but they seemed to be broken), but people seem really happy with them despite their apparently awful frequency response curve--and unlike Grado, their manufacturer acknowledges its inaccuracy as an intentional design choice.

They might not perform well for the money, but if you like them, you like them. Absolutely buy them if you like them, just try them out first to make sure the sound is one you want, since it is pretty far from what most other headphones produce. And to be fair, "high performance" can be bad. I recently got myself a very nice "accurate" set up, but while it makes 96khz/24bit audio sound incredible, a lot of popular music (90s alternative rock, anything mastered by Vlado Meller) sounds yucky and I prefer a less detailed model. There's no bass slam and music is presented with an analytical quality.

Then again, I liked Transformers (which was almost indisputably technically brilliant and the blu ray of which is reference quality--lending further credence to the idea that enjoyment is subjective)...



Good choice. With a proper fit, these sound awesome! Really clear and detailed with a nice mid-bass boost, good for all genres, though maybe not enough bass for real "bass heads" and from what I understand a lot of people prefer the Bose IEMs at that price point (though they should offer way less sound attenuation). Price/performance-wise, they are the best I've tried, personally.

This is a reasoned and excellent post...I find comments like "Beats/Bose are crap" and "Beats are for teenagers that know nothing about quality sound" condescending and obnoxious...If you don't like them, fine, that is your right, but condemning others because they do is just silly.