"Beats audio" - Explained. (Deliberately sounds BAD when switched OFF?)

[White Lotus]

  Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I just watched this video on youtube, and I was skeptical. I found this which suggests that with Beats Audio off, it's a flat EQ.
http://imgur.com/a/MV0pW 

 
I'm not willing to be swayed by the samples you have provided - I'm sorry. 
 
I will remain agnostic about this to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I would need harder proof. I've tested BEATS audio myself, and it (to me, subjectively) confirmed what the original video describes. 

 

[pchang01]

Well according to the person who posted it, it was white noise played through the headphone jack, analysed by Voxengo SPAN.
 
If the poster was to believed and the program wasn't faulty, to me, I would rather believe that than anecdotal evidence.
 
According to this table as well, the frequency response of the One remains fairly flat from 32Hz all the way up to 8kHz, but there were only one data point beyond that (16kHz) which was quite a bit lower.
 
Putting a detrimental EQ on a phone which you cannot change is nothing like what they do on the laptops, which is an easy fix. I find the context in which the issue is brought up in the video (with over 800k views) very misleading.

 

[epicFAIL]

 
 it basically explains this:

Devices with "Beats Audio"  by default, actually have a botched EQ setting, to sound "Dull". 

When you engage the "Beats" profile, the EQ becomes a little more "V" shaped. 

 

 
and that's all?

 
only EQ settings change?

 

[ab initio]

and that's all?

only EQ settings change?

I would hope that's the only thing it would change! Who would want their fancy "beats" setting to add artificial distortion when engaged?

Cheers

 

[proton007]

What else *can* be changed? I don't think they'll make separate hw.

 

[bigshot]

   
and that's all?

 
only EQ settings change?

 
Frequencies are what you hear. The rest are things that are different from what you hear.

 

[dvw]

I would hope that's the only thing it would change! Who would want their fancy "beats" setting to add artificial distortion when engaged?

Cheers

I don't remember which one. But some PC actually advertise audio by Beats. I guessed they also licensed their "technology".

 

[epicFAIL]

What else *can* be changed? I don't think they'll make separate hw.

 so why is it considered a totally different sort of technology?
 can eq settings be not mimicked?

 

[RonaldDumsfeld]

EQ and volume it's possible to adjust.
 
If it really is applying compression on the fly that's very bad. There is nothing you can do to get the dynamic range back.
 
In many ways applying compression when you were in a car or walking in a noisy environment makes sense. Many more devices will do it as a matter of course soon.
 
But not being able to turn it off? Really?

 

[kraken2109]

   so why is it considered a totally different sort of technology?
 can eq settings be not mimicked?

So people that don't know think it's a good thing and buy it.

 

[epicFAIL]

  So people that don't know think it's a good thing and buy it.

 
oh....

 

[DisCHORDDubstep]

Beats audio apparently compresses the audio signal to a significant degree, and it applies a small phase change on certain frequencies.

 

[ToneDeafBirdy]

Hey, hopefully you see this even though this an old post. I have a laptop that is great with performance but the biggest only downside is the stupid beats audio. It is true when i turn it off the audio sounds like crap. How did you manage to remove beats audio eq completely so that it does not interfere with the sound? Please any info or links would be greatly appreciated as I hate listening to music on beats lousy settings. Thank You!

 

[castleofargh]

usually if you can't selectively remove something while keeping the drivers, you can still bypass such effects using any of the bit perfect solutions (kernels streaming, wasapi, or asio). google is your friend for that as you're clearly not the first person in the audio world who had to look for bit perfect playback on their respective system ^_^. we pretty much all came there at some point for one reason or another.

 

[U-3C]

One of the first things I recommend people doing when getting a new computer is to play around with the audio enhancements, and try turning them off either via the "Disable audio enhancements" option in Sounds or simply bypassing them with custom drivers. I think a large reason why onboard audio is attacked so often isn't because of interference, but with how the drivers intentionally mess up the sound. When I bought my mobile for my build, everything sounded terrible. And a quick frequency sweep showed everything was so v shaped, EQed far beyond the point of clipping.

Uninstalled the stock realtek driver, installed cousin drivers with Dolby Headphones (I wanna play games. ). Magic. Sounds just as good as my dedicated DAC. Hell, the noise floor is even quieter than my outboard DAC. XD

Didn't know that windows 10 automatically updated everything, so my new computer automatically installed the realtek drivers back, so one say I woke up and OMG MY EARS!!!!! :eek:

But yeah, if you can't remove the drivers, even a cheap external DAC will do the trick to bypass them.