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Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

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Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#101

Post by peteri »

SwellJoe wrote: post #85
baddox wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 b…

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.

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#102

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

hessenwolf wrote: post #93
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #3

So much for Apple's appearance of being a premium brand. Beats products are junk. Until 2012, they were basically white-labeled Monster Cable products.

Apple can drown them in quality control engineers in the first few months, and then they have a really solid brand. There hasn't been a headphone brand with such mass-market appeal in a long time - they are like the sony walkman of headphones.

This is a fair point. Improving the product is probably relatively straight forward compared to building a brand like Beats.

On the other hand, when have Apple been interested in selling anything branded with someone else's name?

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#103

Post by madeofpalk »

cschmidt wrote: post #35
nerfhammer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In terms of sound performance, they are among the worst you can buy,” says Tyll Hertsens, editor in chief of InnerFidelity.com, a site for audiophiles. “They are absolutely, extraordinarily bad.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/beats-headphones-...

I'm a bit of an audiophile myself, so I wouldn't listen to Beats, but I do think "bad" is a value judgement. I want a neutral reproduction of the music, and I get that with my Grado's. The Beats customer wants lots of thumpy bass. We each get what we want.

They should join the 'Vinyl sounds better' camp in mistaking what they prefer for what is objectively better.

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#104

Post by nnnnni »

nerfhammer wrote: post #28
Cookingboy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are over marketed a bit and over priced, sure, but just as much as Bose, B&O and a lot of other premium sound brands. How do they objectively have "incredibly poor quality"? Do you have a link that support they have really poor sound quality or bad build quality or horrible customer satisfaction rate?

“In terms of sound performance, they are among the worst you can buy,” says Tyll Hertsens, editor in chief of InnerFidelity.com, a site for audiophiles. “They are absolutely, extraordinarily bad.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/beats-headphones-...

I once tried to help someone with a pair of beats headphones that they purchased as a present for a relative. The complaint was that they didn't sound right.

I tested them out. It was horrible, it sounded almost like what it sounds like when a stereo headphone jack is only partially inserted -- on three different devices and two different pairs of headphones.

They suck and are a major ripoff.

Whenever something advertises beats audio, I know that it's not a product for me.

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#105

Post by nemof »

abalone wrote: post #44

This makes even less sense than the Square acquisition rumor. 1. Apple has the tech and library to do their own subscription service if they want to. You think they can't do their own licensing deal? They surely don't need to pay $3B to acquire someone else's. 2. Apple wouldn't want to operate a cross-platform service. They'd pay a huge premium to acquire a bunch of Android customers than they'd promptly purge. Plus,…

but apple do effectively corner the accessories market for people buying iphones. if this acquisition happens it's about getting people to spend more money on gear after they buy their apple i-product.

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#106

Post by sjwright »

lmm wrote: post #92
leemcalilly wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they are "doing some kind of next-level mole hunt to level-up on secrecy" here. I do not see any value in Beats other than a superficial fashion trend that has already run its course.

A cynic would say the same about the iphone. I think there's a good fit here - the same kind of people buy both, so there's lots of opportunity for cross-promotion.

By that logic, Apple should buy Google.

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#107

Post by lloeki »

shashwatak wrote: post #17
state wrote: post #9

I cannot figure out any way to reconcile the incredibly poor quality of Beats products with a hopeful future for Apple. Can someone make the argument for why this is a good idea?

> poor quality of Beats products They're overpriced, certainly. But poor quality is not fair. They've got good sound, heavy bass, and the build feels solid. EDIT: I don't actually own beats, I prefer my Sennheiser's. But my brother got a pair of Beats as a gift and I've used them.

The Momentum On-Ear† are top notch quality, full of bass while keeping meds and highs detailed all the while costing much less. Technically, Beats cans are definitely overpriced, you're definitely paying for the style (which is not necessarily a bad thing per se)

† The Momentum over ear have a totally different, much more balanced sound. Almost a monitor headset, except with detail being just right so that they don't give too much fatigue.

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#108

Post by NicoJuicy »

For all the people that think its worth it.

HTC bought it for 300 million, they sold it as they had no use. Their in the same market as Apple (and with Sense / HTC, they also could use a music broadcast service).

They sold it. Now Apple wants to buy it at a much higher level... Doesn't make any sense.

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#109

Post by Veratyr »

woah wrote: post #94
SwellJoe wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

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.

> 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.

Re: Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

#110

Post by sjwright »

peterarmstrong wrote: post #98
Aqwis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bose is a damn bad example as a premium brand to compare Beats to. Their consumer headphones are widely considered to be way overpriced and gimmicky. The brands Beats should really be compared to are Sennheiser, Shure, A-T, Denon, Beyerdynamic and the like. Any offerings from these brands at a price point from $100 and up offer at least as good sound quality as Beats' cans and for a much lower price, and many of thei…

And yet... Bose QC15 are simple, light, comfortable and sound fine. The real point, however, is that they are amazing at tuning out the outside world, and thus are fantastic for coding. Their lack of audiophile cred means absolutely nothing compared to all the above, and if you are in an environment with noisy children or coworkers you won't want open headphones anyway. So for the actual use cases of many of us here,…

I'll go one further and assert that in a noisy environment, the Bose QC15 have the absolute best overall sound quality of any headphone I'm aware of. By a very, very long mark.

I had a few very sophisticated sets of expensive headphones (plus a headphone amplifier) and I just don't use them any more. When I don't need to wear headphones, I'll sit down in my theatre room. When I need to wear headphones, it's because I'm in an environment with other noises (office, travel, etc) and the noise cancellation trumps any other cans' refinement.

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