How Beats by Dre played you like a fool • Hacker News Board

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#51

Post by kaolinite » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

Brakenshire wrote: post #48

kaolinite wrote: post #21

Whilst I dislike Beats, I admire them a lot. They entered a market where every company was focusing on sound quality first, aesthetics second and they came in with a new take: headphones should look good (I actually dislike the style but a lot of young people seem to love it), and should have a lot of bass to make certain types of music - music listened to by young people - sound good (again, I dislike this but many…

The comparison with Mac seems really spurious. Apple, at its best, redesigns hardware and software to find whole new ways of interacting intuitively with really very complicated computing devices. That is not comparable to making some headphones which are bass heavy. Beats is like Apple, but with its objective value stripped out. i.e. just the fashion and marketing without any of the engineering excellence and innova…

That's a good point. Maybe the comparison with Mac wasn't such a good one.

Nevertheless, I still think there's something to admire from a business perspective.

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#52

Post by dagw » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

jmkni wrote: post #4

My laptop has a Beats by Dre logo for some reason, I have no idea why because the sound quality is no better than any other laptop I have used with bog-standard speakers.

Beats licensed their name to bunch of computer manufacturers and included some kind of software equalizer presets that would make the sound more 'Beats-like'. As far as I can tell Beats had nothing to do with the actual audio hardware.

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#53

Post by andreasen » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #9

Isn't this just same old same old? We have a fantastic independent coffee shop at the end of our road. When a major coffee chain opened a few doors down, I asked him if he was worried. His reply: "No. The kind of people that drink coffee in Starbucks don't pay for coffee in independent coffee shops.". It's the same here. Beats' target market is not people that love good quality headphones, but people that want fashio…

Similar to Psycology by Dr. Phil - it's not for everyone but there is a market.

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#54

Post by kawsper » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:35 PM UTC

smackfu wrote: post #19

robmccoll wrote: post #12

Sennheiser HD 280 Pros - best headphones for under US$100. Balanced sound, good isolation, responsive and clean, comfortable for long sessions. http://en-us.sennheiser.com/professional-dj-headphones-noise... http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-Headphones/dp/B0... I just don't understand purchasing headphones as a fashion statement. I read it as "I want you to know I like popular brands over high quality and m…

I understand purchasing anything that is highly visible on your body as a fashion statement.

Me too. I own some Bose QuietComfort 15 which have made my work life much better because of the active noise cancelling, and they have made my flights more comfortable.

But with that said, I would not wear them in public. Apart from walking around in traffic with noise-cancelling, which is dangerous, the headphones looks a bit big on your head, so I use the headphones that came with my iPhone.

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#55

Post by gagege » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:35 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #39

I find the Beats-bashing to be very suspect. It's funny how a hobby (hi-fi, audiophile, whatever you want to call it) dominated by white men just happens to get so incensed over something marketed by and to the urban crowd. Why aren't we angry about every other thing that's endorsed by celebrities? Why this one in particular? I don't think the folks behind Activia yogurt "played everybody for a fool" or "had us over…

No, we bash Beats because they are an inferior overpriced product. I'm no audiophile, but I do like to think of myself as a savvy consumer, so when I hear some 14 year old saying "Beats are better" I just might tell him that he can get something way better for the same price. I hate seeing people get duped by marketing. That story is not hypothetical, by the way.

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#56

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:36 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #8

Marketing and politics, they work the same.

They are the same.

Politics is just marketing with taxes and nuclear weapons.

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#57

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:37 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#58

Post by JohnBooty » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:38 PM UTC

sehr wrote: post #36

robmccoll wrote: post #12

Sennheiser HD 280 Pros - best headphones for under US$100. Balanced sound, good isolation, responsive and clean, comfortable for long sessions. http://en-us.sennheiser.com/professional-dj-headphones-noise... http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-Headphones/dp/B0... I just don't understand purchasing headphones as a fashion statement. I read it as "I want you to know I like popular brands over high quality and m…

Are there any recommendations for headphones that's aren't balanced? I'm not a studio engineer and prefer the heavy bass honestly

I'm really enjoying the V-Moda Crossfade M-100! Tons of bass.

Head-fi.org (the biggest, most active forum for headphone people that I know of) has some good (although overwhelmingly long) threads on the topic, such as: http://www.head-fi.org/t/716711/the-best-bass-headphones-are...

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#59

Post by blowski » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:39 PM UTC

creshal wrote: post #34

kaolinite wrote: post #21

Whilst I dislike Beats, I admire them a lot. They entered a market where every company was focusing on sound quality first, aesthetics second and they came in with a new take: headphones should look good (I actually dislike the style but a lot of young people seem to love it), and should have a lot of bass to make certain types of music - music listened to by young people - sound good (again, I dislike this but many…

> certain types of music - music listened to by young people Can I feel old now? Where's my lawn? > People aren't buying the headphones for the sound quality, they're buying it for everything else. I find this worrying, really. Are we so desperate to consume that we're willing to buy shit just for sake of buying?

Why is buying headphones based on their audio quality superior to buying headphones based on their aesthetics?

Re: How Beats by Dre played you like a fool

#60

Post by AndrewUnmuted » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 12:40 PM UTC

kaolinite wrote: post #21

Whilst I dislike Beats, I admire them a lot. They entered a market where every company was focusing on sound quality first, aesthetics second and they came in with a new take: headphones should look good (I actually dislike the style but a lot of young people seem to love it), and should have a lot of bass to make certain types of music - music listened to by young people - sound good (again, I dislike this but many…

You should check your premise. With companies like Bose and Bang & Olufson around for several decades, it's hard to imagine how your claim that they entered a market where every company was focused on sound quality first could be true.

The ingenious thing that Beats by Dre did was market the Bose sound and product to fans of hip hop, R&B, and pop electronica. All three of these genres, with their particularly die-hard listening audience, had never been able to be penetrated by a prior audio product besides extremely cheap Skullcandy offerings and the like. The profit margins are considerably higher on a $300 pair of headphones than on a $25 pair of headphones - especially if the Skullcandy and Beats by Dre options are capable of providing an equally-high fidelity output.

As an audio engineer, this of course makes me sad. But it is indeed genius.