[laumars]

I’ve never owned Bose nor Beats specifically but more generally I find bassiness is a desirable feature rather than a gimmick for dumb consumers.

With room sized speakers it’s not a problem because you’ll have multiple cones dedicated to the low end and usually some subs too. Thus it’s easy to have a rich low end without sacrificing the fidelity of the higher end. But with headphones that’s much harder to pull off. So you either have a flatter sound or a muffled high end. Thus having headphones that can have a super crisp top end while still still producing a rich and deep low end is very much desirable.

[Benjamin_Dobell]

> I find bassiness is a desirable feature rather than a gimmick for dumb consumers

It's perfectly reasonable to find bass a desirable quality. Depending on my mood I'll listen to music with lots of bass, or with little bass. However, I've zero desire to intentionally alter the frequency response so I'm hearing something different than the musicians and mixing engineer intended. Instead I'll just listen to appropriate music for my mood/taste.

Intentionally having a non-flat frequency response is equivalent to adjusting the colour space / colour grading of your monitor to not accurately represent colours. You can do it, and there are reasons why you might want to do it temporarily e.g. blue light filtering in the evening. However, doing so permanently without a specific (medical?) reason is a bit unusual.

[laumars]

> However, I've zero desire to intentionally alter the frequency response so I'm hearing something different than the musicians and mixing engineer intended.

I’ve done a lot of research on this as a recording artist myself and what you’re saying here is a misunderstood meme.

Eg Half the records released before 80s have been remastered to sound different to what the musicians originally recorded.

Plus any medium adds colour, vinyl adds warmth to the playback, digital formats (unless you’re using lossless, which most people don’t) add artifecting, etc. Songs are often written for their preferred medium.

So there isn’t really an exact “as intended” but rather a broader “Goldilocks zone” (for want a better term). This is especially true if you listen to a broad variety of genres.

You’ll also find that most songs record in the last 20 years will be compressed to hell and back so they sound good regardless of how shitty the sound systems are in peoples homes and cars. This isn’t an artistic decision, it’s what producers and sound engineers do to make records sound good for the lowest common denominator. It’s also part of the reason why live music sound better (if the gig or club has a half decent sound engineer anyway).

> Intentionally having a non-flat frequency response is equivalent to adjusting the colour space / colour grading of your monitor to not accurately represent colours.

Some content is actually deficient in some spectrums due to the limitations of the media or technologies of the era. Those limitations were intended to be compensated by speakers that added that colour. There’s a reason why studio monitors with zero frequency curve are less common to for rock fans than acoustic speakers (for example).

Lastly it’s also worth noting that not everyone’s ears hear spectrums equally. Our ears don’t have a zero frequency curve and that curve will differ from person to person. Which is why some of the best headphones out there are ones that profile your hearing and then perform post processing on the music based on your hearing profile.

[kuschku]

And that's why you buy the CD release of Peter Gabriel albums and listen to those instead ;)

[laumars]

Already discussed that point: those have been remastered for CD and thus sound different to the original recorded versions.

If you’re a purist like the GP then you wouldn’t listen to the CD versions. Of course, in practice most people are not that much of a purist. Which is why the whole meme of “as the artists intended” is largely hypocritical posturing.

[ShroudedNight]

If I hadn't been gifted a pair of beats earbuds, I could see myself believing similarly. The ones I was given were very nicely built, with tactile components that felt of significant quality, as though they were assembled with great care. They were also the muddiest, mushiest, and most unpleasant listening experience I've had in the last couple of decades outside of bad laptop / phone speakers or scenarios that used explicitly damaged components. When I first got them I thought that I had received a bad pair, only to find online that the sound profile was intentional.

They were awful.

[laumars]

Obviously shit earphones are going to sound shit. That’s true whether they’re bass heavy or not. So its a sentiment that is not contradictory to my point.

My point is having earphones and headphones that can offer a deep and rich low end without sacrificing sharpness a not novelty feature. And there are earphones and headphones out there that can do that. I know this because I’ve owned plenty over the years. :)