I, alas, have a ton of experience dealing with incredulous neophytes for whom Beats are their only experience with better phones than iBuds, (the irony of the allusion in the aforementioned name to said phone's brewing equivalent is not lost on me), each of which insist that I can't possibly have heard these Monstrosities, and that I'm clearly being little more than an arrogant, elitist, reclusive audiophile with little better to do with my life than to work 80 hour weeks and eat ramen 3 meals a day just to save up for a slightly better piece of gear that I will soon be looking to upgrade anyways (all quite possibly true, but the provenance of a source of information doesn't overdetermine its validity
). As such, I've had to pop on a pair and listen at least five or six times now. Usually in these situations all I've got on me are my TRIPS, and since those are most certainly not going in anyone's ears other than mine (no seriously...), I can't exactly show them the light. But the experience is the same every time, no matter how I try them (everything from straight out of a Sansa Clip+, to out of an HM-801, to out of a Duet fed Scherzo Andante): muddy, aggressive, extremely poor detail recovery, cramped soundstage...the list pretty much goes on. They're basically a nightmare. I honestly prefer my old Portapros... Oh, and as a quick aside for the "sometimes you need NC" crowd: buy some decent IEMs. You'll get better isolation than with pretty much any close shell OR active NC headphone anyways. Hell, at 350 dollars buy some CUSTOM IEMs...you'll get a 28db pad out of those!
Now, oddly enough, my beef is not with Beats being inherently crappy. Skullcandy phones are inherently crappy, but they're also usually pretty cheap, and they're clearly selling a style aesthetic, and nothing more. My beef with Beats Studio is the second word. The multi-million dollar advertising campaign that should have been spent on R&D and QC that instead got spent on Dre's ugly mug growling dat dis done be what he hear in da studio. No doubt this clarion truth is indicative of the inherent musical prowess within. My beef is with the fact that, much as big beer has done since prohibition vis-a-vie lobbying, expensive, largely off-topic ad campaigns that sell a lifestyle and a social norm rather than a product, frivolous lawsuits against independent companies and constant, ad-nauseum exposure, Monster has essentially managed to bamboozle their way into a level of market share that should have been reserved for the genuine innovators in the headphone field. You've suddenly managed to convince a good chunk of the population to drop 350 bucks (or even 200 bucks for that matter) on headphones? HECK YEA! May I present:
Beyerdynamic
Grado
Audio-Technica
Ultrasone
Fischer
Etymotic Research
Head-Direct/HiFiman
I mean, hell, this is a big ole headphone party, let's invite the massive companies too!
AKG (ahem...HARMON INTERNATIONAL...yes, even with their hideous nuclear-waste green Q702s that are at least still decent phones)
Sennheiser
Shure
Sony
JVC
Koss
Denon
In my mind, are several of the companies I've just mentioned selling products that aren't worth the asking price? You betcha. Are any of them making their living EXCLUSIVELY on products that aren't worth the asking price (and, as a fledgling cable manufacturer discovering just how cheap it is to make decent cable, I can assure you the rest of Monster's lineup ain't exactly bang-for-your-buck either...)? Nope. Frankly, I think Monster is the kind of company that shouldn't be suffered to exist. They contribute nothing even remotely useful to the world, and prey upon the malleability of a largely apathetic, ignorant consumer base. Ever wonder why every big beer commercial is all about ice-cold this or that? Because at 34 degrees your tastebuds are so numb that you can't tell just how poor the quality of the ingredients and the craftsmanship is on their swill in the first place. Then again, the average SPL level of a typical pop/hip-hop/fill-in-the-blank automaton robo-drivel concert has probably had an equivalent effect on the average eardrum, so maybe it doesn't matter. But, for what it's worth given that that there aren't that many minds to change on head-fi in the first place, I for one am grateful to have resources such as this one that afford me the education and knowledge to be happily sipping away on some Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA while listening to Taylor Eigsti on K702s and an Andante.
Viva la vie intelligente!
