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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

#121

Post by DanBC »

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?

Quality of product is unimportant. Vast market of "gullible fools" proves this.

Currently there are a lot of different headphones that have very similar specs - I suspect that some company is mass producing drivers and other companies are iust putting these into fashion shells and selling them at large profit. (WESC is an example of a company that I think is doing this).

In this market - not very good headphones sold with large profits to people who care more about looks than sound quality - Beats headphones is exciting buy.

Don't forget that many people will be listening to poor quality source material - poorly ripped; weird dynamic compression; etc.

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

#122

Post by lmm »

sjwright wrote: post #106
lmm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They probably should, if they could afford them and weren't going to be blocked by the competition commission.

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

#123

Post by b1daly »

Veratyr wrote: post #109
woah wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

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

#124

Post by Intermernet »

peteri wrote: post #101
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…

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.

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.

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

#125

Post by bruceboughton »

hadoukenio wrote: post #119

12 hours after being posted: Ctrl-F: user acquisition Zero results. Look at the last couple of massive acquisitions e.g. Facebook buying companies that made little revenue which made even less sense. Most of the big ones I can think of were for user acquisition and not product/technology. This seems like the same type of play.

Apple was recently boasting of having nearly 800mn credit cards-enabled iTunes accounts. Doesn't seem to me they are short of users.

Also, Apple is primarily a hardware + associated services company. They're not interested in getting users that aren't Apple hardware owners.

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

#126

Post by stcredzero »

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…

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.

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

#127

Post by Intermernet »

Aqwis wrote: post #31
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?

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…

I would second this statement strongly. The only other brand I'd add to the list is AKG as they also have some wonderful headphones at around this price point.

I've done AB comparisons with friends who've bought Beats, Sony, Skull Candy etc. and they're always blown away by the difference between the product they bought, and my AKGs, A-Ts or Sennheisers. I recently tested some Beyerdynamics and would highly recommend them, although I still think A-Ts are the best bang for buck around.

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

#128

Post by stcredzero »

sjwright wrote: post #110
peterarmstrong wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even Beyerdynamic 770 Pro? I tried active noise canceling in the past, but found the sound ultimately fatiguing. I prefer passive cancellation now, and 10db is a significant amount of isolation.

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

#129

Post by mjburgess »

gress wrote: post #111
lmm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a weird twist, that cynic would be superficial.

cynics are usually superficial. it's the easiest thing in the world to say "no".

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

#130

Post by dvogel »

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…

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 ;)

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