What are you really paying for when you pick up a pair of Beats? A fondness for Beats by Dr Dre headphones it seems. The prominent audio brand burst onto the scene in and has since made a name for themselves with their unique and stylish designs. Over the years, style over sound has been a characteristic of Beats headphones but has it always been like that? If that is the case, what else is in it for the consumer by getting a pair?
This is not what I spent all this time in the studio for. Dre about iPod earbuds. Aiming to revolutionize the industry with a brand of headphones that could provide the best sound quality with personality, the duo then embarked on a journey that would see Beats rise up as one of the prominent players in the industry. Dre is. As one of the key members of iconic hip-hop group, N.
A, Dr. Dre was part of a legacy that changed and shaped hip-hop with their tendency to infuse their songs with social commentary and brutal honesty. Dre an image of a total badass and infused the brand with its trademark aura of rebellion and defiance.
Trivia time: Dr. Dre was egged on by his lawyer to start a line of sneakers but co-founder Jimmy Iovine convinced him that headphones are the way to go. In hindsight, this may or may not have been a good thing seeing that people have pretty harsh things to say about their products? In order to find out more about the components, the good people from Bolt and Gizmodo have tried to tear down a set of headphones with similar findings.
That puts the retail price of their headphones at least a whopping 10 times more than the production cost. Talk about a very good profit margin. As a hip-hop artiste, heavy bass sounds are pretty characteristic of the genre.
Beats, as the brainchild of Dr. Dre, has also inherited this trait of favoring bass-heavy sound signature. Beats has a reputation of being flimsy. With two metal parts ultimately attached to a cheap plastic headband, it makes Beats more vulnerable and fragile. So it seems there are many well-documented downsides to acquiring a pair of Beats headphones. Which brings us to the question: What are you really paying for when you get yourself one of these gadgets?
Beats is no stranger to celebrity endorsements. Ed Sheeran, check. Serena Williams , check. Cara Delevingne , check. You name it, and they would most probably have appeared in Beats massive roster of star-studded ambassadors.
The one thread stringing many prominent celebrities together is none other than a pair of Beats headphones, and now, that thread includes you when you purchase a set of your own. Most interestingly, there was the ambush marketing tactic Beats adopted at the London Olympics in Without being an official sponsor for the event, Beats sent their headphones to the athletes directly and was rewarded with hordes of athletes showcasing their gear on the international stage.
The massive exposure, of course, contributed to a huge sales spike that reinforces how purchasing behavior is influenced by the association the buyer makes with the product. In fact, the brand has positioned themselves as a premium brand with a corresponding price tag. And sometimes even a middle aged spin doctor arriving at Downing Street. They are lightweight and easy to wear.
One of the company's founders - legendary hip hop producer Dr Dre - imbues them with automatic street cred. They have a bass-heavy sound popular with fans of RnB and hip hop. It can be hard for a technology company to become cool, he says. Beats' cunning idea is in taking a "fashion first" approach backed by music industry kudos, then adding technology. The latter includes a redesigned headphone jack that's been grounded to reduce distortion, and a more powerful amplifier with better stereo separation.
Also, the audio components on the computer's system board are isolated, away from other parts that might mess with the signals. But the key feature seems to be something called the "Beats Audio profile," which audiophile critics say is a fancy name for the equalizer setting, or EQ, on the computer's software operating system [sources: YouTube , Tunelab].
What that means, basically, is that when the computer plays a song -- specifically, the sort of a bass-heavy hip-hop music that Dre produces -- its software automatically jumps in and tweaks the frequencies a little more, for your benefit.
If you thought we had a tough time explaining how Beats Audio works, it's even tougher for us to say whether or not Beats Audio really produces superior sound. Part of the problem is that people have different opinions about what sounds good. Some people hate distortion for example, while others actually like it -- evidenced by the popularity of the Kinks' hit "You Really Got Me," for which guitarist Dave Davies mutilated the speaker cone on his amp with knitting needles [source: Buskin ].
The tech Web site Endgadget, which in hired an independent lab to subject an HTC phone equipped with Beats Audio to extensive tests, came up with some intriguing findings. Contrary to its advertising, reviewer Sharif Sakr wrote, Beats Audio doesn't actually make music that's more faithful to what the musicians played in the studio.
Instead, what the technology does is reproduce music the way that Dr. Dre likes it to sound. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It tweaks music to emphasize the bass and vocals, while depressing the "less interesting" middle frequencies.
If you like hip-hop , reviewer Sharif Sakr concluded, Beats Audio makes it sound great. For orchestral music, in contrast, "activating Beats Audio does nothing good," he added [source: Sakr ]. But since most people who buy equipment with Beats Audio are more concerned about Wiz Khalifa than Yo-Yo Ma, that probably doesn't matter.
The Monster Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, released in , garnered a positive review from the techie Web site CNET, which praised the sleek look of the headphones and also was impressed from a listening standpoint. The headphones had "an exceptionally -- one might say shockingly -- crisp" sound that was "balanced in the mids and truly impressive in their delivery of high-end detail" without the muddiness sometimes found in the bass-heavy microphones favored by hip-hop fans, it reported [source: CNET ].
I have to admit to being amused by audio consumers' obsession with hearing a song that sounds exactly as the artist intended it. When I was a high school sophomore in the early s, my introduction to rock was listening to a vinyl copy of the Rolling Stones' live record "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!
The sound that came through my headphones was mono, not stereo, and the pops and hisses from the badly worn phonograph needle probably made the Stones' live version of "Live With Me" sound even raunchier than if I had been in the front row of their concert. It sounded terrible, and I absolutely was enthralled by it. If some manufacturer can come up with a gadget that could bring back the feeling of that moment again, I'd pay just about any price for it.
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