[bherms]

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]

A flat response is rarely desirable, or at least rarely intended, except for equipment designed for audio production.

[SwellJoe]

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.

[woah]

Some people, perhaps most people, want a strong bass. Are they wrong?

Not to say that Beats are great or anything, but applying a bass boost to something with a flat response is not going to produce better bass than housing, speaker, etc that all resonate together at the right frequency.

Another thing to keep in mind is that most people will be using these in noisy environments.

[Veratyr]

> Some people, perhaps most people, want a strong bass. Are they wrong?

I think that if people want a strong bass, they should listen to music that has strong bass and use headphones that will accurately reproduce it.

If they want music that doesn't have strong bass to sound like it does, well that's the role of the equalizer, not the headphones. The role of the headphones is to take whatever signal they're given and accurately reproduce it.

That's what the comment you're replying to is saying.

[b1daly]

What people aren't getting in this thread is that modern pop and hip hop is engineered to be played on systems with a lot of bass (sub woofers). Ironically this forces the engineer to limit the amount of bass in the mix, so there some truth to the claim that a headphone with exaggerated bass will produce a sound closer to the intention of the artist.

I think they sound horrendous (I'm an audio engineer) but I have a 9 year old friend who is obsessed with getting the $300 version and can't be persuaded that this is waste. So I would say Beats has a powerful brand. The margin on the headphones has to be unprecedented...

[SwellJoe]

"What people aren't getting in this thread is that modern pop and hip hop is engineered to be played on systems with a lot of bass (sub woofers). Ironically this forces the engineer to limit the amount of bass in the mix, so there some truth to the claim that a headphone with exaggerated bass will produce a sound closer to the intention of the artist."

Not true. Engineers working in pop and hip hop mix primarily with the understanding that the first listen by a consumer will be on the radio in their car. This has several built-in assumptions, and the expectation of lots of sub bass being reproduce-able is not among them. Sales of records are heavily affected by how good the song sounds on the radio, and most people have the audio equipment that came with their car.

Not only that, the next stage of music marketing evolution is earbuds. So, if one were to mix for the next most popular method of getting your music into the ears of consumers, you'd mix with the expectation of being heard first through cheap earbuds.

Engineers mix knowing that their tracks will be played on a wide variety of equipment, from very bad to very good. The more accurate their equipment is, the better they'll be able to serve all of those listeners. But, the best results will always come from having accurate equipment for playing it back.

I'm also an audio engineer, and I, too, find the $300 beats headphones to be an abomination to both good sense and good taste. But, I disagree with your suggestion that engineers are mixing with less bass because subwoofers exist.

[userbinator]

I think a lot of people that want strong bass don't even know what an EQ is, so they'll just buy headphones with strong bass, since that's the easiest way (to them) of getting the sound they want.

People who want really strong bass will buy headphones that have strong bass --- and then turn the bass up on the EQ too. :)

[stcredzero]

This is simply untrue. The best headphones, speakers, and amplifiers, are designed to faithfully reproduce the recorded signal.

Have you seen the actual frequency response curves of headphones? They are by no means flat! They can approach flat from 20-20k, but there are always trade offs, at least until you get to certain price points.

What is good or bad sound is largely subjective and socially conditioned. The expectations around binaural recordings of natural sound are very different from highly produced studio production. What is bad in one context is good in another and vice versa. And while I'd go for headphones with better frequency response, it's not the be-all end all measurement either.

Then again, maybe Beats are a tragedy, since we are getting to a point technologically where every headphone could have reference class performance, if that is what the market wanted. That's not what the market wants. Maybe that's the real tragedy.

[SwellJoe]

"Have you seen the actual frequency response curves of headphones? They are by no means flat!"

Yes. And, as I said: Most cheap products accidentally fail at this goal.

It costs a bit of money to produce a quality transducer that is stable, reliably mass-produced, and lasts a long time. Not as much for headphones as for larger transducers, however. For $100 you can buy any of several models that are extremely accurate (compared to what $100 would buy you in speakers). Sennheiser, Shure, AKG, and Audio Technica all offer several models in the $50-$100 range that will destroy Beats offerings at even much higher price points.

Nonetheless, just because most people's cheap headphones suck doesn't mean that a company producing expensive headphones that suck should be given a pass. In a world with good products in a field I care about, why wouldn't I encourage people to choose them over a clearly inferior product? Beats is a demonstrably inferior product with good marketing.

[curun1r]

You don't even need to go to the $100 level to get better than Beats. I've convinced a bunch of Beats owners at my work by loaning out my $30 Sonys. Not only does everyone agree that they sounds better, but there's near universal agreement that they're more comfortable to wear as well.

I'm not saying a $25 pair of headphones is particularly good, but it gets past the "obviously bad" test that Beats headphones fail and allows me to leave them at work without worrying about losing or breaking them.

[dvogel]

Combining the speaker and the EQ might not work for your use case. That doesn't make it a bad choice by the manufacturer or the consumer. Targeting a particular class of user by combining products that are often used together has been very successful in a plethora of markets. Apple is kind of the poster child for integrating accessories in an opinionated fashion. The built-in camera on the iMac comes to mind. Even the choice to use a 3.5mm jack on the iPod could fit the frame of your argument.

Me, I'm a Skippy Natural guy, but I see a place on the shelf for Goober too ;)

[peteri]

Lets be honest here if you want to listen as the engineer and artist intended[1] then you probably want Yamaha NS10s sat on a mixing desk bridge.

See this sound on sound article for more (and why you might want a mixing desk)

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/articles/yamahans10.ht...

They are not great speakers but they are probably the target of most pop / rock music in the studio.

[baddox]

It's disingenuous to say that this is the way the engineer intended it to sound. It's probably how it did sound to the engineer, but that's not the same as how he or she intends it to sound. Any competent engineer knows that people will be listening to the music on a wide variety of sound systems.

[SwellJoe]

The NS10 has been out of production for years, and I haven't seen them in a studio in quite some time. Though, when I was in college (I went to college for audio engineering), every studio I worked in had a pair (in addition to one or two other types of monitor).

It is true that for a decade or two, the NS10 was the monitor on which more records were produced than any other. And, they are reasonably accurate. There are more accurate speakers than the NS10, even at similar prices, but part of the value of the NS10 was that you'd have them wherever you were working. The mastering engineer would have a pair of them, too, so you'd know everybody in the path from tracking to cutting the master would be hearing roughly the same thing. But, it's worth mentioning that I've never been in a professional studio that only had a pair of NS10s. They were considered the sanity check speakers...not the speakers used for all of your mixing and such.

Anyway, the newer models (HS series or MSP series) from Yamaha might be a good choice, if you want good reference monitors.

But, a reasonable level accuracy should be the goal of every transducer. Just because consumers make often make poorly informed decisions based on marketing and tricks played on the ear (because a "hyped" sound, like the Beats headphones and devices, will sound louder and thus "better"...but will also be more fatiguing and will have other negative effects on your listening experience) doesn't mean people who know better should just shut up and let manufacturers do so without criticism.

[Intermernet]

NS10s are so popular because they're so non-complimentary. Yamaha (and I've read conflicting accounts) either deliberately created a speaker that was so non-flattering to any audio, or accidentally released a product that became a studio mix engineer hit for the same reasons.

I've heard producers and studio engineers say that if something sounds good on NS10s, it'll sound good on anything.

This is the same reason professional mastering engineers will sometimes insist on listening to mixes on average car stereos, ipod headphones, and cheap consumer audio systems. It doesn't matter how good it sounds on your $100,000 studio system if it sounds terrible to 99% of the population.

[bherms]

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.