Streets by 50 Cents

Celebrity endorsed junk is what they are.

It's pretty self explanatory, yeah. It'll be a cold day in hell before one of these rapper-endorsed products sounds anywhere as good as the price it demands, especially when compared to other headphones.

Ashens on Youtube

 

a lot of money for not a lot. 

 

If this is what passes for studio sound, no wonder loads of new music is crap. 

also...

they're going cheap in Amazon Black Friday (in the UK anyway), no prices yet but every gangsta' flavour is on there. 

 

(also bonus - 8gb sansa clips coming at 19:30 :D )

I don't even think these would be good if they were free. I listened to these at BestBuy and wow, they had some Sennheiser 439's right next to it which are 1/4th of the price, way better.

yeah, but 439's ARE NOT endorsed by Fiddy :P 

 

If people want to buy them, let them! We can all just be smug knowing frequencies exist above 60hz. 

 

Sennheiser HD650 by Mariah Carey. 

Amazon audio reviews are like Youtube political video comments. Reading them gives me ulcers.

 

DreFan65

Item Purchased: Dr. Dre Beats Studios (Amazon Verified Purchase) 

Yo i jus bot DRE BEATZ STUDO>. 

DIS S*** CRAY! i naever saw music liek this b4!!1

my 3 pair of DREs others boke coz of BA55!!! 

 serias, MEGA BA55 like SONY but way cray.

 

buy dese coz qality like DRE VBEATS STUdiO NOT HEER 4EVA

i ain tnever hasd 50 CENT (FIDDY G-UNIT ITS birthDAY) steet but they not as CRAY SUCK . 

 

PIEVE LOVE RESPEC KEEP V BASS HEIGHT! 

 

10 OUT OF 5 but az i cnt raet em 10, serial 5 out of 5 coz THATS HOW AI ROLL. 

(that was an artists impression, not a troll :) )

Honestly these aren't going to be class-leaders, but you could do MUCH worse for the same money. If you like 50 Cent, or just like the design, and aren't paying full retail ($250 or $300, something silly like that), you aren't getting fleeced here (the $130 Amazon wants for them right now is fair). Sound-wise, they're a very colored headphone - warm, relatively spacious staging, decent treble presence, bassy, no harshness or clash, somewhat honky mids; they epitomize the "fun" archetype. Unlikely to please snobs or crusaders, but unlikely to offend anyone else (this doesn't mean they'll be everyone's cup of tea, but they are certainly fair all-rounders, assuming you jive with their quirks). They are not stereotypical "Beats bass blaster" style (don't get me wrong - they're bassy headphones, but they aren't bass-only headphones) - they sound much better than the similarly priced Beats Solo and much more expensive Beats Pro. And are infinitely more comfortable than the later.

Build quality is exceptional, QA concerns aside (I've yet to see a production set with L/R wired correctly - which leads to them sounding very weird until you sort that).

I don't think they're the best way to spend your $150 though. If you want some alternatives, I would look at the Koss TBSE (aka DJ100 aka DJ200), R/80 (I know, way less money, but they're at the table here - honest), Bose AE2 (I know, another "uncool if you want to be an audiophile on the Internet" brand), or Sennheiser HD 380Pro. If you're being faced with a $250-$300 price-tag on the SMS cans, I'd pass - for that money, I'd suggest the Audio-Technica ATH-ESW9, B&W P5, or Bose QC15 (iff you need isolation). ESW9 being the leader for sonics and (in my opinion) looks.
Edited by obobskivich - 11/20/12 at 5:16am

Heya,

 

Really, the whole endorsement thing is getting old, but it's here for the long haul, and we're going to suffer it.

 

That said, I wouldn't care about the endorsement thing if they were using quality headphones from the ground up, and not just producing plastic toys that go boom-boom.

 

The moment I saw the Tiesto release, I thought "Hah, more garbage" until I saw that it was being done by AKG. Think about that. No one out there will probably recommend an AKG headphone to someone who listens to a ton of bassy dance music, right? Yet, here, we have one of the world's biggest electronic DJ's that most people who listen to this kind of stuff know of, putting his name on a headphone by AKG. Kind of has a weird yin & yang thing going on, as I would never expect an AKG headphone to be good for this. But to my pleasant surprise, I'm excited that AKG is putting their work into a headphone that is fun and doesn't look like trashy hiphop jewelry.

 

So maybe the future is bright and some of the later endorsements will be by "who cares" but on some well made headphones, so the result will be some great looking headphones that actually sound great too.

 

Very best,

Honestly I don't think many "celebrifones" are that terrible - sure, they catch a bad rap in venues where it's hip to hate whatever is mainstream. But by and large there are a number of headphones out there with celebrity endorsements slapped onto them that aren't fud. I think the Beats headphones just poison the entire pond though, and there it's really the Beats Solo that do it - fashion accessories more than anything else (and at that, they succeed). Sure, prices have gone up, but I think in a lot of cases there are unrealistic expectations mixing with nostalgic visions of yesteryear and this incessant belief in a Consumer Reports Top 10 scheme to re-affirm the hipster mentality that fuel that complaining; more than anything else at least.

I think too often we tend to stereotype anything with a celebrity figure's name on the side into that "boom boom" category as well.

Oh, I meant to add, I agree VERY MUCH with the bolded part. Seriously, I do not think it will be long until even unrelated celebrity types (lets pick on Steve Martin and Larry King as random examples) will be putting out their own "sound of the studio as the artists intended so you can really hear your music through the best headphones made and the only ones that are any good" $299 product.
Edited by obobskivich - 11/20/12 at 5:53am