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If I'm the kind of person who buys expensive stuff to signal my membership, then buying Beats headphones is being myself, no?
No, by definition, group identity replaces and/or subsumes personal identity.
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And ties - what purpose do they serve other than social signals?
"And ties - what purpose do they serve other than social signals?" Here is an answer: I am the slave of my company, that's why I wear an expensive, totally useless thing around my neck, that lets me sweat in summer and breathe hard all year round. My company asks that and I do what they say, because I always do what everybody does. And I rather shit my pants than to hold the minority opinion :o)))). Well, you are rig…
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Hey, but apple computers have a great operating system and they do perform very well. Now read about the comparison of beats with other headphones - or listen yourself - and tell me where the match is? While Apple stuff has become a fashion statement, it also performs. Apple products look good because they are very well designed and made. Beats on the other hand don't perform, at least not sound quality wise. And the…
Oddly though, Beats are nowhere near cheap! For the daft money they throw at headphones with an inline EQ, they could get some great Beyerdynamic headphones that sound brilliant. Fashion over functionality. EDIT: Yep, I missed the point! Functionality = fashion. You can clearly tell I am not fashionable.
Imho beats headphones don't sound good. The bass is ridiculously overpowered and distorts nearly constantly. Now, tastes are different, and you might want exactly this experience with that distorted bass. If you create both the music and the speaker, like Dre does, and you wanted that experience, the right approach would have been to add such a distorted bass to your track during mixing/mastering, and then create hea…
Why is a mix of the songs (with extra bass) less "truthful" than the mix made by the record company employee? Both are valid interpretations of the music. If you prefer the former, why shouldn't you listen to it?
When I say truthfulness, I refer to playback equipment. Truthful means that it outputs something that is close to the input.
My argument is that if a headphone doesn't add deliberate distortions, it can be used for all kinds of music, enhancing its utility. And at the same time, with such a more useful headphone, you can still have the same experience as before, if those distortions are added at an earlier time.
I can't finely distinguish sound and when I researched headphones I decided on a Bose one that was rated as having worse sound quality than others in its price segment. It's an active noisecancelling one that had great ratings in that regard. One of the best items I ever bought, I commute by train (45-50m each way) and it's fantastic for reading uninterrupted. Recently tried a Sennheiser in the same price segment tha…
Of course whether or not that is a good thing... eh.
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> People go to extraordinary lengths to join groups and send this membership signal... > It's dumb, but it is what it is, and people wrap an awful lot of their identity up in their chosen tribe rather than just being themselves. Cough. Written on Hacker News, but not Reddit or Digg or Facebook. Cough. C’mon, we’re sitting right in the middle of a tribe. Even writing that Sennheisers sound better is sending a tribal s…
I'm not saying I'm not dumb at times. FWIW, I have a $20 pair of Sony unknown model # headphones I picked up at Ross. I bought them because they were over ear and cheap not because they're white, have Sony logos on them, or because I wanted to make a statement about what group I'm in or not in. But yeah, HN is also very group membership oriented and people spend extraordinary amount of time to build things with thing…
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No, by definition, group identity replaces and/or subsumes personal identity.
How is that personal identity formed, if not by social interaction? I think the dichotomy you refer to is illusory.
I think you're confusing the two.
I'm pretty sure we'll be confronted with a generation of deaf people pretty soon, given the extreme bass and the personal music players that can output high volumes, and the incessant barrage of noise (radio?) wherever you go.
Additionally, when mastering and mixing, does anyone take into account what their record would sound like on these things? Everyone buys excellent quality reference monitors with as close-to flat response as possible for revealing midrange, non-fatiguing high-end and punchy/deep (non-flabby) bass so they can produce the best sounding record. Some might even listen to it weighted for FM radio broadcasts and have a range of different speakers like those famous Yamaha NS10s (yuck!) to get a feel of how good/bad it sounds on normal home-users equipment. But does anyone mix/master for these? Those records will sound as thin as a pancake on other speakers if they did; where's the balance?
Furthermore, since bass is mainly felt with the skin, is increased bass in these headphones really as effective as listening to a real speaker?
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Oddly though, Beats are nowhere near cheap! For the daft money they throw at headphones with an inline EQ, they could get some great Beyerdynamic headphones that sound brilliant. Fashion over functionality. EDIT: Yep, I missed the point! Functionality = fashion. You can clearly tell I am not fashionable.
You're completely missing the point. Fashion is the functionality.
I can't finely distinguish sound and when I researched headphones I decided on a Bose one that was rated as having worse sound quality than others in its price segment. It's an active noisecancelling one that had great ratings in that regard. One of the best items I ever bought, I commute by train (45-50m each way) and it's fantastic for reading uninterrupted. Recently tried a Sennheiser in the same price segment tha…
Some folks can't tell, don't care or may even have a personal preference to the type of sound they like that "real audiophile" types would consider inferior. Personally I'm fine with this, it's your money you're free to spend it how you like, and if you enjoy what you bought and they make you happy then that's all that matters.
However...my friend's daughter was given a pair of Beats Solo's as a present and I tried them for an afternoon keeping an open mind and ignoring the celeb brand nonsense. Now whilst being well made and quite sturdy, they don't sound any better than the Sennheiser CX300 buds I picked up for GBP15.00 a few months earlier. In fact I thought the sound was inferior, and these Solo's retail for a whopping GBP160!
I think the point I'm trying to make is that these Beats things are definitely style over substance and the Beats project is basically a massive marketing scam. I think you could definitely tell the difference between Beats and similarly priced non-celeb unfancy workhorse cans.
Personally I own a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 80's, they're damned ugly things but by god they're comfy and have nice sound reproduction. I tried other makes in the same price range (AKG, Koss etc) but settled on the Beyers. I will admit I was slightly biased towards the Beyers because I used Beyer DT100 cans when I did radio broadcasting (they're pretty much industry standard, sturdy and neutral sounding) a few years back and I probably associate them with being "professional tools".
For walkabout MP3 listening I have a pair of Tesco own make in-ear buds. They cost me a fiver in-store and they sound just fine (I applied the principle of "ShitTronics" when I made that purchase decision :) Discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9173017)