I listened to every model of beats they had at best buy today. My quick impressions were that the beats pro were actually somewhat decent. Not $400.00 decent, but decent. The bass was sorta flabby, and the mids and treble were recessed pretty badly. The beats studios were awful. The bose qc15 actually sounded better than these, but I'm fairly certain that the qc15 were helped greatly out by the bose demo because the soundstage was crazy, and most likely exaggerated by the audio. The studio's had no treble at all. I heard what sounded like a high hat with a pillow over it being hit in the songs I listened to. The bass was extremely present, but not in a good way. It sounded like a whoopee cushion it was so uncontrolled. Could have been source issues? Not sure, but it just wasn't a very good showing for a $300 headphone.
My old razer barracuda's had better audio quality for music than the beats studio did. M50 is hands down better than both. I know that I'm listening to my own sources with ALAC and FLAC so it could be a huge factor in what I was hearing, but I could not recommend any of the beats headphones based upon what I heard today at the store.
Edited by VulgarDisplay - 12/27/10 at 12:57pm