BruinAnteater
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 31, 2012
- Posts
- 151
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- 20
I actually found a pair of Beats Pros in a classroom yesterday. After asking around, no one claimed them, so I decided to give em a try with my setup. For the record, my niece had a pair of Beats Solos which I also had tested a while ago. I tested the Beats Pros against my Sennheiser HD700 and HD650s, plus Momentums and Amperiors with this setup:
JRiver -> Uberbifrost USB -> Asgard 2 -> Beats Pro/HD700/HD650/Momentums/Amperiors
My thoughts: first of all, the Beats Pros are far and away better than Beats Solos. The Beats Solos (MSRP: $170) are absolutely horrendous. There is NO style of music that Solos are good at: not hip hop, not EDM, not metal, not anything. They literally sound like a wet napkin has been placed over the driver. My PX360s (MSRP: $150, but can be had now a days for > $85) are easily better headphones than the Solos on every type of music.
The Beats Pros however were surprisingly descent. No, they are not audiophile headphones. Yes the bass still dominates and does tend to bleed into the mids, seriously masking the details, and the highs don't come out great. They do have a sound signature in the style of the Solos, but much more refined: it does feel like Beats put effort into making a more refined headphone while still maintaining the signature parts of the Beats sound (heavy bass). What the Beats Pros do well is give more weight and fullness to the sound of the music, its not an audiophile type of fullness. The method could be likened to using a jackhammer instead of a chisel to carve up a stone: its not the finest craftsmanship, but it gets the job done. At an MSRP $450, they sit somewhere near HD650 territory: on pure SQ alone, they aren't worth near that price, especially when HD650s can be bought sometimes for around $350 (alhough the 650s absolutely require an amp, but an inexpensive Schiit Magni for the desktop or Fiio E12 for portable will befinitely do).
I usually regard the Momentums to be the bass king of the Sennheiser line, but I also feel it has the most bleeding bass of the better end Senns (some of the bass does bleed into the mid, but not much), and I generally find myself listening to the more balanced (but paradoxically more aggressive and energetic) Amperiors. The bass of the Pros definitely hits harder and fills in the music more than either Momentums and Amperiors, but at the cost of detail, seperation, and imagining.
If hip hop is what you wanna listen to, then I can see how the Pros may fit the bill: much hip-hop isnt mastered well, so there isnt much to gain from cleaner sounding cans like Momentums and Amperiors, so you might as well get the bass impact (though for beautifully mastered albums like Snoop Doggs Doggystyle on DualDisc, I'd take the Momentums or Amperiors over Pros). EDM on the other hand is often mastered much better, and is meant to have a wide soundstage, good imaging, etc. For this job I would take the Momentums over the Pros.
When you move into HD700 and 650 territory things change. I love the HD700 for many different types of music: Id say for 65% of music out there, I like the HD700 over HD650, but hip hop is NOT part of that 65%, even if it is a well mastered record. For this, I would prefer the HD650 and maybe even the Pros over the HD700. For EDM, id take the HD700 over the 650s and Pros if I had my good setup (the above mentioned Schiit Uberfrost+A2), but would take the HD650 over the HD700 on weaker setups (HD700 are picky ass headphones), with the Pros still coming in last here.
All in all, I don't find the Pros to be as awful as most Head-Fi'ers do. No, they are not audiophile headphones, they are basshead headphones and are not perfect headphones, yes they are overpriced, but they are NOT bad headphones. I would say most people would probably prefer the Pros over almost all my headphones with the exception of maybe the HD650, which strikes an amazing balance between very good bass and incredible audiophile qualities like soundstage, imaging, detail and nice, tight controlled bass.
Of course the counterargument to "most people will prob prefer the sound of the Pros over Senns" is "most people don't know what good sound is." My counter to that is: good sound is subjective and a matter of taste. If you like tons of bass, then that's what you like: no amount of reasoning or appeals to someone else's definition of what's important in sound is going to suddenly change how a particular sound signature affects you. In other words: no one can tell you what you like and don't like.
My opinion is that the Momentums are the best overall choice for you if you want good bass along with a great overall sound quality, but then again I listen to hip hop, EDM, and all other kinds of music so I need something that works well across the board. What you should do is get a pair of each, test them out and return the one that doesn't suit you.
JRiver -> Uberbifrost USB -> Asgard 2 -> Beats Pro/HD700/HD650/Momentums/Amperiors
My thoughts: first of all, the Beats Pros are far and away better than Beats Solos. The Beats Solos (MSRP: $170) are absolutely horrendous. There is NO style of music that Solos are good at: not hip hop, not EDM, not metal, not anything. They literally sound like a wet napkin has been placed over the driver. My PX360s (MSRP: $150, but can be had now a days for > $85) are easily better headphones than the Solos on every type of music.
The Beats Pros however were surprisingly descent. No, they are not audiophile headphones. Yes the bass still dominates and does tend to bleed into the mids, seriously masking the details, and the highs don't come out great. They do have a sound signature in the style of the Solos, but much more refined: it does feel like Beats put effort into making a more refined headphone while still maintaining the signature parts of the Beats sound (heavy bass). What the Beats Pros do well is give more weight and fullness to the sound of the music, its not an audiophile type of fullness. The method could be likened to using a jackhammer instead of a chisel to carve up a stone: its not the finest craftsmanship, but it gets the job done. At an MSRP $450, they sit somewhere near HD650 territory: on pure SQ alone, they aren't worth near that price, especially when HD650s can be bought sometimes for around $350 (alhough the 650s absolutely require an amp, but an inexpensive Schiit Magni for the desktop or Fiio E12 for portable will befinitely do).
I usually regard the Momentums to be the bass king of the Sennheiser line, but I also feel it has the most bleeding bass of the better end Senns (some of the bass does bleed into the mid, but not much), and I generally find myself listening to the more balanced (but paradoxically more aggressive and energetic) Amperiors. The bass of the Pros definitely hits harder and fills in the music more than either Momentums and Amperiors, but at the cost of detail, seperation, and imagining.
If hip hop is what you wanna listen to, then I can see how the Pros may fit the bill: much hip-hop isnt mastered well, so there isnt much to gain from cleaner sounding cans like Momentums and Amperiors, so you might as well get the bass impact (though for beautifully mastered albums like Snoop Doggs Doggystyle on DualDisc, I'd take the Momentums or Amperiors over Pros). EDM on the other hand is often mastered much better, and is meant to have a wide soundstage, good imaging, etc. For this job I would take the Momentums over the Pros.
When you move into HD700 and 650 territory things change. I love the HD700 for many different types of music: Id say for 65% of music out there, I like the HD700 over HD650, but hip hop is NOT part of that 65%, even if it is a well mastered record. For this, I would prefer the HD650 and maybe even the Pros over the HD700. For EDM, id take the HD700 over the 650s and Pros if I had my good setup (the above mentioned Schiit Uberfrost+A2), but would take the HD650 over the HD700 on weaker setups (HD700 are picky ass headphones), with the Pros still coming in last here.
All in all, I don't find the Pros to be as awful as most Head-Fi'ers do. No, they are not audiophile headphones, they are basshead headphones and are not perfect headphones, yes they are overpriced, but they are NOT bad headphones. I would say most people would probably prefer the Pros over almost all my headphones with the exception of maybe the HD650, which strikes an amazing balance between very good bass and incredible audiophile qualities like soundstage, imaging, detail and nice, tight controlled bass.
Of course the counterargument to "most people will prob prefer the sound of the Pros over Senns" is "most people don't know what good sound is." My counter to that is: good sound is subjective and a matter of taste. If you like tons of bass, then that's what you like: no amount of reasoning or appeals to someone else's definition of what's important in sound is going to suddenly change how a particular sound signature affects you. In other words: no one can tell you what you like and don't like.
My opinion is that the Momentums are the best overall choice for you if you want good bass along with a great overall sound quality, but then again I listen to hip hop, EDM, and all other kinds of music so I need something that works well across the board. What you should do is get a pair of each, test them out and return the one that doesn't suit you.
