Beats vs Bose vs Sennheiser for the price!

I'd go for the Sennheisers. BTW those Beats sound like they may be fakes

to answer why headphones aren't always updated is because some headphones are timeless. Some shouldn't ever be updated, and some are updated due to manufacturing cost.

Personaly I don;'t think the AKG K240 Sextett should have been updated, but the company needed to lower the cost of production to sustain a profit. The K240's are updated but the general design is fairly similar other then the move fromt he sextetts in the mid 60's to the stereo design.

Also Sony MDR-7506, and Koss Pro4AAAT have been around for so long and are still in production because they are like I said a timeless headphone.

i heard many people needed for the beats in yahoo answers, but for me, i like Sennheisers.

Technology does advance, but not as fast as you'd think. Audio reproduction technology has been around for over a hundred years, and the shrinking transistor count of today's computers doesn't help it one bit. In some ways, some kinds of audio hardware made 10 years, 20 years, or sometimes even older, can possibly be superior to today's stuff due to craftmanship and materials quality.

Mostly any advances in headphones today are due to computer aided tweaking of well established designs, and technological advances in the materials available to craft headphones from. If that sounds expensive, well, it is. See the Sennheiser HD-800 and Beyerdynamic Tesla T1 for examples of "clear upgrades of existing products" due to expensive materials and thousands upon thousands of man-hours in design and testing.

As for the Beats and Bose, yes they are mostly marketing. To be sure they ARE better than the $5 iphone earbuds on the rack en masse at wal-mart, but a large part of the price of those headphones is to make up for the marketing involved with them. You think Dr Dre's name comes cheap? You think full page ads in magazines like Time, People, etc isn't expensive? I'd guess that if those cans you're looking at had a random Chinese manufacturer name on them instead of Bose or Monster, they'd cost about 1/3 to 1/4 of what they're currently retailing for. For $50, bose headphones aren't horrible. They're not great, but not horrible. For $220 though, they're a horrible set of headphones. You can do so much more, like an amp and a set of Sennheiser HD555s or Alessandro MS1s... or you could get a set of Beyerdynamic DT-880s and start saving for the amp.

Look at it this way. A pair of Air Jordans costs Nike a few dollars to make (the guys on the assembly line in Malaysia are making about 15 cents an hour), yet they sell them for $80.  Where did that extra $75 come from? Marketing and promotion. Same thing with Headphones. It's the reason that you've probably never heard of AKG or Grado before coming here, and only barely heard of Sennheiser.

I heard the Bose today, i don't think they're as bad as people say. They're actually much better than most entry level headphones (the HD228 is such a joke, even the HD448 sounds pretty awful to me). The Beats are much worse as well. On the other hand i don't know what's so special about noise cancellation (compared to IEMs).

Quote:

Originally Posted by mobbaddict 

I heard the Bose today, i don't think they're as bad as people say. They're actually much better than most entry level headphones (the HD228 is such a joke, even the HD448 sounds pretty awful to me). The Beats are much worse as well. On the other hand i don't know what's so special about noise cancellation (compared to IEMs).

Why don't you look at some more threads and phones before you pull the trigger? Btw I don't think the beats are worth $120
 

I pretty recently heard the QC-15 and they're really not the worst thing in the world. You can absolutely find a better pair of headphones for their price (maybe even half their price), but if you're willing to pay a premium for noise-cancelling they don't exactly sound bad. They easily sounded better than the QC3 and the Denon AH-NC732 (which were shockingly disappointing), but I unfortunately don't remember their sound well enough to compare them to my Audio Technica ANC7. I think they were roughly at a comparable sound quality to my ANC7, but I really can't say for sure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedNara 

Also SoSpecial, thanks for the explanation. However, doesn't technology advance... Even if they are timeless, shouldn't they be able to make better headphones in 5ish years.

There are only so many ways that audio can improve, the rest is just the housing acoustics and the parts used. Yes some transducers are known for different things but the casing the headphones are in and the materials used around the drivers, even the padding  and the headband are key components to good audio reproduction.

The other things you  have to understand is that Audio is subjective. What makes one thing better for you isn't always what is better for me. I may like excessive mids while your more of an "Impact" basshead. Even the most expensive headphones in the world might sound like absolute crap to you if they aren't colored to favor your tastes. That is if you aren't easily impressed( like me) or do not have a discerning ear.

Skarecrow77 

Yes it is all marketing I still have the Beyer DT480 headphones that Henry Lewy turned me onto when I was working on the Sanford Twonsedn Albums.

Over 30 yrs old, still working perfectly ... the only phones I heard that sound near it's quality and build construction re the Grados

If possible please try to do a side by side comparison of the bose/beats with some other closed cans like the Senns, the Shure SRH440, Audio-Techinica ATH-M50, Creative Aurvana Live! (oem version of the Denon D1001), or Fischer FA-004, all of which are less money. I tried the Bose AE2 and they sounded pretty good in isolation but paled in comparison to the other phones I compared them to in terms of clarity, detail, and overall sound-quality. The Bose seemed much more artificial to me, almost like they added compression to make them more punchy while sacrificing accuracy and depth. If you are in the US, I know you can get the Bose, Beats, and Shures (not sure which others) at many Best Buys and they will allow you return them open box so there's little risk involved in trying them out. Also Guitar Centers and Sam Ash stores usually allow you to demo phones at their stores though they don't carry Bose (but do carry the Beats). Most people on these forums would agree that you can do much much better for the price!

how would the beats pro compare with the hd 598 unamped?