Cool. I'd be curious to see the same treatment of other high-end headphones. And all Bose products, which have always seemed egregiously overpriced to me.
Tangentially, it's actually really hard to find good headphone reviews anymore, let alone headphone demo places. Pro music stores (like Guitar Center, Sam Ash, etc) are probably the best bet these days - but they tend not to carry headphones like the high-end Sennheisers that used to be my favorites (HD570 I think?).
I'm also curious about the price of "high-end" amplifiers. Amplification of electrical signals was solved a long time ago, even before the first home computer was available, and we've not seen a corresponding, dramatic price drop.
Audio amplification was "solved" a long time ago only if you didn't care about energy efficiency. Good class-D amplifiers are more recent, and they give real improvements in battery life over older designs.
http://www.head-fi.org has always served me pretty well for audio reviews. I don't often dip into this market, so this might have changed in recent years.
And all Bose products, which have always seemed egregiously overpriced to me.
AFAICT, their noise cancelling headphones still have by far the best noise cancelling. If you work in a noisy environment or fly frequently, they're amazing. If your primary concern is audio quality in a normal or quietish environment, buy cheaper headphones (or I suppose more stylish ones, if that's your jones).
I actually just got a pair of very expensive Jabra Evolve 80 headphones (http://www.jabra.com/Products/PC_Headsets/Jabra_EVOLVE__Seri...) primarily for their mic. The noise cancelling is dramatically worse than Bose and the headphones make me look dramatically stupider because of the mic. But clients can hear me better so that's a net win.
Love my QC25s, they're one of my favorite tech purchases ever. I prefer the sound to my Etymotics and AKG K270S. Can't believe I put off buying them for so long, I wear them everywhere, even working at home at midnight.
I wonder if Bose is doing something beyond noise-cancellation in the QC25s when you turn them on. It sounds similar to a BBE Sonic Maximizer, as if they've licensed the algorithm and tweaked it to the characteristics of the drivers in the QC25s (which sound lousy when the headphones are turned off).
Sennheisers are great but i swear by Beyerdynamic. I have a pair of DT-770's that lasted me for 9 years.
You bring up an interesting point that there's no real center in the U.S. that carries audio gear online, Europe has Thomann (thomann.de) that basically carries everything but now in SF it's hard to find something else then B&H Photo Video NY to deliver stuff.
Well, they just evaluated the BOM. That tells us nothing about the sound quality, just the margin.
I'd say the audiophile market is a more resilient to style than the general population, but not completely. Flat response headphones, like the AKG-701's are reviewed as not being "fun". The thing is, audio mixing plays a much larger part in your experience than headphones. After owning the 701's, I would much rather choose different cheaper 'colored' headphones for different genres, than use a headphone that is able to reproduce sounds more accurately. YMMV.
Why would anyone make headphones, of all things, heavier to make them feel high-quality? Comfort (wearing them for hours) is one of my highest priorities and every gram shaved off the headphones adds to comfort. The fact that they estimate the material cost of a 199$ product to 17$ is the icing on the cake, haha. Now I will look down on people who wear these even more.
I was taught that 5.5x was the standard BOM to retail price ratio. If the revised article is correct and the BOM is $20.19 then there is a fairly large markup to $199.
They don’t. To quote Marco Arment: "Those metal parts are the hinges, subject to the most wear, that need to be most durable."
See also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-CkZ71iz68
And one the main differences between the original teardown with the counterfeit headphones was that the hinges were zinc alloy and with the real Beats headphones, the hinges were made with higher quality stainless steel.
That would be reasonable if the entire hinge were metal, but only the visible portion is metal where internally it is mounted in plastic. It's only as strong as the weakest link and that bit of plastic holding the metal half of the hinge looks very weak to me.
The zinc alloy in the knock-offs is weaker than stainless steel. But still much more durable than the plastic its hooked to. In either one the upper part of the hinge will break before the lower.
I don't think the metal is there to add weight, however. Seems to me to be so it looks shiny and has the appearance of being more substantial than it is. (Thus stainless steel which doesn't tarnish readily.) I think it does make a difference having metal on the shell of the ear cups because that's where your fingers touch. Over time painted plastic will fade and show smudges. The metal covering can be wiped clean and maintain its appearance longer. But everything else is plastic and will fade so a pyrrhic victory.
I have some Sony PS4 headphones where there's a metal rod going through plastic hinges. I would gladly pay an extra 100 bucks for a headset where any part of the device which is prone to wear would be made of metal, aluminum or otherwise. My larger than average head means that most headsets shatter after about a year of use.
I've got Audio-Technica ATH-A500, I don't think they make them anymore (now its A500X or something, so i can't vouch for that).
They look a little weird, but are sturdy as hell and sound plainly amazing (although after years of daily heavy use - connected to PC as exclusive sound source - they might seem to have a little lower sound quality - I'm not really sure)
I've literally stomped on them, run them over with a chair, had the cable go into the chair wheels (repeatedly) and then pull them off my head forcibly when I got up without noticing it. They are still fine.
I did break the audio jack when my headphone DAC fell of the desk and hit jackfirst into the ground (it sometimes doesn't connect properly and has to be wrangled about)
:(
The original article on Medium that this article on huffington post reprints was based on a pair of counterfeit Beats headphones. The followup on Medium does the teardown on a real pair of Beats. Not much difference but some improved quality:
>Overall the genuine & counterfeit Beats are nearly identical.
But the article did not include any comparison of the audio quality of the counterfeit and genuine Beats headphones, so how could the article come to such a conclusion?
No they're not. About the only bad Beats headset was Solo (1st edition). It just sounded too harsh and V-shaped. Solo2 is one of the best headsets out there and it's also one of the most popular ones.
But don't take my word for it, read what Tyll over at Inner Fidelity says [1]. He trashed Solo but loves Solo2.
I have around 15 different cans of various manufacture and I do enjoy Beats especially for energetic music. When I listen to classical, I still prefer my AKGs or Sennheiser HD 800.
There are things that can be measured, like frequency response and accuracy of the audio reproduction. Of course, how something feels when worn is subjective. I think an article that focuses solely on how a product looks, feels, and sounds fails to meet that criteria.
The review you posted: "Thank you, Beats by Dre, the new Solo2 is one of the best things to happen in the world of headphones this year...and maybe ever"
The first comment: "p.s : how much did dr.dre payed you for this review?"
people are buying what they want and obviously those guys buying Beats are not looking for very high quality sound. They are buying for style and recognition. The same stuff that Apple has played on us all these years.
Although this article is indeed a high quality analysis, and the author really done a great job. There is no point arguing that a Beats is not a genuine headphone. Whatever product it is, there are always people who are looking for quality and people who are looking for style (In some market they are one).
I think many people (particularly those who have not done any research, moms, grandparents, etc.) associate the Beats brand recognition with perceived quality. "Oh I see those commercials all the time, and I see people wearing them, they must be good!" sort of thing.
>> They are buying for style and recognition. The same stuff that Apple has played on us all these years.
I'm not a big fan of Apple these days, but Apple products generally do have better than average build quality -as well as- good design and looks.
They are indeed premium priced, but that's a marketing choice. You might be able to nitpick Apple products' value by specs, but I don't think you can really put them in the same bin as Beats (even though Apple now owns Beats) with respect to quality.
Sony had a minidisk player out in 92' the first iPod came out in 01'. I never personally compared the 2 apples to apples[0] but from memory and having owned both, the ipod held more songs, had a better ui, was easier to use and you could store music with no additional cost(i.e. no need to buy disks).
> The iPod was really poor in comparison.
Do you mean the audio quality? What specifically was worse about it?
Minidisc always sounded better than mp3 to me, but I never tried out the other codecs that Apple use. I wish I could find a replacement battery for my MZ-NH1, it supports PCM recording and I like the idea of optical media better than a flash chip.
As a fan of both Minidisc and iPod this sounds dubious to me. Mp3 allowed you to use both better encoders and higher and a wider range of bitrates than ATRAC. I would have rated the headphones as the weakest part of the chain on the early iPods and you didn't use those.
I really liked my Sharp with ATRAC 2.5. I guess I still like it, but I honestly haven't used my MiniDisc player in probably a decade. MP3 at 320 kbps could encode higher fidelity, but when MiniDisc was popular (sic.) most MP3s were recorded at 128 kbps or even 64 kbps with Joint Stereo. Even Apple's AAC was encoded at lower quality bitrates for years. It wasn't until OGG and lossless WMA seemed like they might put a little pressure on Apple's business model that they increased their bitrates and made it possible to remove the DRM. Of course the upshot of all this movement was that MiniDisc was no longer viable for prerecorded content. It still was an adequate poor man's DAT for my live recording purposes.
MiniDisc does indeed sound considerably better than iPod even when comparing MP3 at 320 kbps with MiniDisc SP at 292 kbps and there are several reasons for this including the quality of the later versions of the ATRAC codec itself and the fact that better quality components were used in the manufacture of MiniDisc players than are used in iPods.
MiniDisc players were effectively designed and built by companies that specialise in high quality audio equipment whereas iPods were designed and built by a company that is an expert in computing.
Many other MP3 players on the market are built very cheaply indeed and are often worse in sound quality to iPods.
> They are indeed premium priced, but that's a marketing choice.
Isn't this exactly the problem? Apple has good build quality but a terrible quality/price ratio. In a situation where money is no object and pure quality is the only measure then Apple might very well win out depending on how the customer weighs the value of build quality vs. performance.
But Apple would not be the most profitable company in the world if they were only catering to those types of customers. For the average person a minimum of quality and value are the most important metrics, which Apple would not be winning if it weren't for their marketing and brand, especially in the laptop market.
That's too simplistic. There's actually quite a few people who prefer Beats' audio, none of that really has much to do with audio tech, but rather with equalizers.
i.e. it's not just style or fashion, it's also sound that really matters. There are quite a few 'blind test' videos on youtube where people prefer the Beats headphones to the technically superior ones.
That doesn't mean that when people prefer Beats' audio, that the audio is 'better', it's just 'better to them'. An objective standard of good audio one could argue is audio that sounds 'as it is', which is where Beats fails. Beats doesn't do that, it deforms the audio to make the bass heavier. And so lots of popular music with young people who like bass, sounds better with Beats, than a more natural headphone which recreates sounds much better.
In short, yes Beats is also about audio, and it's not 'better or worse', just like there's taste in food, fashion, style etc, there's also a taste in audio.
That doesn't fully explain Beats' popularity, of course. There are cheap headphones with equalisers that are bass-heavy that aren't as popular, and that can all be explained like you did with differences in style, fashion, recognition etc. But only mentioning this fails to recognise that there are groups of people who genuinely prefer deformed sound and prefer Beats' audio over even more expensive, technically far superior headphones' audio, regardless of style/fashion etc.
This is the problem. I saw someone ask the other day, "What kind of speakers do professional audio engineers use to make master recordings?" And the answer was to buy the lousiest chinese made boombox from Walmart. Pop music mastering is done so it sounds good everywhere, including on the cheapest radios. That's how the loudness wars got started, because the most effective way to make something sound decent on poor speakers is to maximize the loudness.
Rather than pop music either have the people compare something with more range. If they don't like classical music, have them listening to a movie and see if they can clearly hear whispered dialog while not having their ears blown out by an explosion.
Back in the 80s/90s a good percentage of studios had a beatbox above the mixing desk to complement the giant monitors. You wouldn't mix on the beatbox, but you'd check a mix sounded good on it and give some attention if it didn't.
A lot of mixes were made to sound good on cheap bookshelf speakers called NS10s, made by Yamaha. Most studios had them. They weren't hifi, but the story was that if something sounded good on them it would sound good everywhere. I was never completely convinced, and a lot of bright and grainy mixes from then have been remastered since then with less edge. But it was a good story, and it helped sell a lot of speakers.
Now mix engineers are more likely to listen in the car or on cheap headphones, because that's how most people listen to music today.
Mastering studios are more likely to have very clean high-end equipment. Mastering needs subtle changes in tone and dynamics, and you need a clean reference to hear them clearly.
I, myself, couldn't care even a tiny bit about the style of Beats. I buy them because I like how they sound - I like heavy bass, and I found Sennheiser headphones in the same price range to be sounding completely flat and boring for my tastes. Tried even super expensive Sony X-Bass headphones but couldn't find anything that would be comfortable. Have both urBeats and Beats Studio headphones and swear by them - I can use both for hours, my ears don't hurt even though I wear glasses(huge problem with most on-ear headphones for me!) and the music is exactly how I like it. The name on the outside could say diddle-doo for all I care.
The problem is, that people assume everyone wants the best possible sound reproduction. Not true. For the same reason why some people actively like and even prefer greasy dominos pizza instead of the "authentic" stuff.
That doesn't mean they are wrong - they just follow their tastes. I found the music played by Beats to be exactly to my tastes - if I find something else which hits that spot but for less money - I will buy that next time instead. But I haven't yet.
What's interesting to me is that Apple products generally don't have margins anywhere near this large. Apple's products aren't generally built the 'easiest' way possible for fast assembly and such. The optimization/cheapness on these is amazing.
Tim Cook's Apple loves big margins, he's a bean counter not an idea man. And we know companies run by bean counters always do fantastically well over the long haul.
59 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadTangentially, it's actually really hard to find good headphone reviews anymore, let alone headphone demo places. Pro music stores (like Guitar Center, Sam Ash, etc) are probably the best bet these days - but they tend not to carry headphones like the high-end Sennheisers that used to be my favorites (HD570 I think?).
AFAICT, their noise cancelling headphones still have by far the best noise cancelling. If you work in a noisy environment or fly frequently, they're amazing. If your primary concern is audio quality in a normal or quietish environment, buy cheaper headphones (or I suppose more stylish ones, if that's your jones).
I actually just got a pair of very expensive Jabra Evolve 80 headphones (http://www.jabra.com/Products/PC_Headsets/Jabra_EVOLVE__Seri...) primarily for their mic. The noise cancelling is dramatically worse than Bose and the headphones make me look dramatically stupider because of the mic. But clients can hear me better so that's a net win.
I wonder if Bose is doing something beyond noise-cancellation in the QC25s when you turn them on. It sounds similar to a BBE Sonic Maximizer, as if they've licensed the algorithm and tweaked it to the characteristics of the drivers in the QC25s (which sound lousy when the headphones are turned off).
You bring up an interesting point that there's no real center in the U.S. that carries audio gear online, Europe has Thomann (thomann.de) that basically carries everything but now in SF it's hard to find something else then B&H Photo Video NY to deliver stuff.
I'd say the audiophile market is a more resilient to style than the general population, but not completely. Flat response headphones, like the AKG-701's are reviewed as not being "fun". The thing is, audio mixing plays a much larger part in your experience than headphones. After owning the 701's, I would much rather choose different cheaper 'colored' headphones for different genres, than use a headphone that is able to reproduce sounds more accurately. YMMV.
Remember when the iPhone 5 was deemed too light?
http://gizmodo.com/5945662/the-weirdest-thing-people-hate-ab...
Retail is higher than street. 5-5.5x is about right.
The zinc alloy in the knock-offs is weaker than stainless steel. But still much more durable than the plastic its hooked to. In either one the upper part of the hinge will break before the lower.
I don't think the metal is there to add weight, however. Seems to me to be so it looks shiny and has the appearance of being more substantial than it is. (Thus stainless steel which doesn't tarnish readily.) I think it does make a difference having metal on the shell of the ear cups because that's where your fingers touch. Over time painted plastic will fade and show smudges. The metal covering can be wiped clean and maintain its appearance longer. But everything else is plastic and will fade so a pyrrhic victory.
I've literally stomped on them, run them over with a chair, had the cable go into the chair wheels (repeatedly) and then pull them off my head forcibly when I got up without noticing it. They are still fine.
I did break the audio jack when my headphone DAC fell of the desk and hit jackfirst into the ground (it sometimes doesn't connect properly and has to be wrangled about) :(
Bottomline, to me they are an amazing purchase.
https://medium.com/bolt-blog/how-it-s-made-series-yup-our-be...
But the article did not include any comparison of the audio quality of the counterfeit and genuine Beats headphones, so how could the article come to such a conclusion?
No they're not. About the only bad Beats headset was Solo (1st edition). It just sounded too harsh and V-shaped. Solo2 is one of the best headsets out there and it's also one of the most popular ones.
But don't take my word for it, read what Tyll over at Inner Fidelity says [1]. He trashed Solo but loves Solo2.
I have around 15 different cans of various manufacture and I do enjoy Beats especially for energetic music. When I listen to classical, I still prefer my AKGs or Sennheiser HD 800.
[1] http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/time-rethink-beats-solo...
The first comment: "p.s : how much did dr.dre payed you for this review?"
Hilarious.
Although this article is indeed a high quality analysis, and the author really done a great job. There is no point arguing that a Beats is not a genuine headphone. Whatever product it is, there are always people who are looking for quality and people who are looking for style (In some market they are one).
I'm not a big fan of Apple these days, but Apple products generally do have better than average build quality -as well as- good design and looks.
They are indeed premium priced, but that's a marketing choice. You might be able to nitpick Apple products' value by specs, but I don't think you can really put them in the same bin as Beats (even though Apple now owns Beats) with respect to quality.
> The iPod was really poor in comparison.
Do you mean the audio quality? What specifically was worse about it?
[0]pun intended.
Isn't this exactly the problem? Apple has good build quality but a terrible quality/price ratio. In a situation where money is no object and pure quality is the only measure then Apple might very well win out depending on how the customer weighs the value of build quality vs. performance.
But Apple would not be the most profitable company in the world if they were only catering to those types of customers. For the average person a minimum of quality and value are the most important metrics, which Apple would not be winning if it weren't for their marketing and brand, especially in the laptop market.
That's too simplistic. There's actually quite a few people who prefer Beats' audio, none of that really has much to do with audio tech, but rather with equalizers.
i.e. it's not just style or fashion, it's also sound that really matters. There are quite a few 'blind test' videos on youtube where people prefer the Beats headphones to the technically superior ones.
That doesn't mean that when people prefer Beats' audio, that the audio is 'better', it's just 'better to them'. An objective standard of good audio one could argue is audio that sounds 'as it is', which is where Beats fails. Beats doesn't do that, it deforms the audio to make the bass heavier. And so lots of popular music with young people who like bass, sounds better with Beats, than a more natural headphone which recreates sounds much better.
In short, yes Beats is also about audio, and it's not 'better or worse', just like there's taste in food, fashion, style etc, there's also a taste in audio.
That doesn't fully explain Beats' popularity, of course. There are cheap headphones with equalisers that are bass-heavy that aren't as popular, and that can all be explained like you did with differences in style, fashion, recognition etc. But only mentioning this fails to recognise that there are groups of people who genuinely prefer deformed sound and prefer Beats' audio over even more expensive, technically far superior headphones' audio, regardless of style/fashion etc.
This. It's just like TV sales. A lot of people like those amped up color and contrast settings in big box stores that would make TV-philes gag.
So what?
Tastes are subjective, and judging people by their tastes is more often than not, wasted cognitive effort.
This is the problem. I saw someone ask the other day, "What kind of speakers do professional audio engineers use to make master recordings?" And the answer was to buy the lousiest chinese made boombox from Walmart. Pop music mastering is done so it sounds good everywhere, including on the cheapest radios. That's how the loudness wars got started, because the most effective way to make something sound decent on poor speakers is to maximize the loudness.
Rather than pop music either have the people compare something with more range. If they don't like classical music, have them listening to a movie and see if they can clearly hear whispered dialog while not having their ears blown out by an explosion.
A lot of mixes were made to sound good on cheap bookshelf speakers called NS10s, made by Yamaha. Most studios had them. They weren't hifi, but the story was that if something sounded good on them it would sound good everywhere. I was never completely convinced, and a lot of bright and grainy mixes from then have been remastered since then with less edge. But it was a good story, and it helped sell a lot of speakers.
Now mix engineers are more likely to listen in the car or on cheap headphones, because that's how most people listen to music today.
Mastering studios are more likely to have very clean high-end equipment. Mastering needs subtle changes in tone and dynamics, and you need a clean reference to hear them clearly.
The problem is, that people assume everyone wants the best possible sound reproduction. Not true. For the same reason why some people actively like and even prefer greasy dominos pizza instead of the "authentic" stuff. That doesn't mean they are wrong - they just follow their tastes. I found the music played by Beats to be exactly to my tastes - if I find something else which hits that spot but for less money - I will buy that next time instead. But I haven't yet.