Tried them for a week of pure listening on these headphones... you know the show "Supersize Me"? Yep, exactly what I'm going through. All in the name of Head-fi.
I'll write a comparison review once my Superlux 668Bs come in, but first here is a my rough review of the Studio.
The Studios look very nice, no doubt about that, and you'll definitely catch the attention of everyone around you. In my school, I wear my M50s everyday, but no one even glances at me once. Wore the Beats for ONE day, random people start swarming around me asking me how much did it cost and how it sounded and other whatnot. So, apparently Monster have doing their marketing very well.
Noise-cancelling wise, these cans do their job well. Them being closed as well as the combo of noise-cancelling technology works well to mask noises like bus revs or train screeches/rumbling. My only peeve with this aspect is that they cannot and will not work without batteries, but other than that they work well as travelling headphones due to their compact folding nature and pretty good noise-cancelling system. You can hear the difference in ambient noise if you switch the cans off and switch it back on again.
For the casual basshead, these sound absolutely godly. The bass is thumping, loud and will make you rock out loud. From the audiophile perspective, IMO these cans just make you want to throw away any thoughts of detail pickup and just enjoy the music. I can see why so many first-time buyers get lured into buying these so easily; it was built for first-time listening and for anyone who hears pop or hip-hop music (which are what the aforementioned first-time buyers generally listen to).
Okay, now that compliments are over, lets move on to the criticals.
Note that I had been tasked to listen to them for one whole week. No using of any other cans, just this. For the first three days, my impressions were good. I could not understand why Head-fi hated them so much. Then, on the four day, everything changed.
Somehow, on that day I felt that the music was starting to get a little fatiguing. It still sounded good though, so I went on listening. Another day passed, and I was starting to feel the impact the recessed mids were giving me. The U shaped frequency of the Beats Studio does make pop music sound very nice, but somehow the muddiness of the bass was destroying some parts of the song, especially so in the song "Like a G6". The highs were starting to feel substandard, like the detail was getting grainy and drowned out by the overwhelming bass. It was getting a little irritating.
Fast forward to the last day...
Two words. PURE. TORTURE. My ears have gone past the phase of liking the Beats and are trying to get me to take them off. Guitars sound absolutely crap, like there was a wall of foam surrounding the guitar itself. Vocals remained as the best aspect of the headphones, but are still substandard for cans at a $300 price range. Bass was so overwhelming and had so much reverb that I could barely distinguish one bass instrument from another. After finally putting back on my regular cans (the M50s), they sounded like an epiphany.
All in all, the Studios are definitely for Skullcandy lovers and iBud users. For everyone else, these will probably sound good on the first try, but after using them purely for a week like me, I do not think you will want to buy these AT ALL. Even for the bassheads at Head-fi, they still value good clarity within the lower frequencies, which IMO the Studios do NOT provide at all. Even its strongest point, the highs, even like they should've come from $100 cans. Some people may disagree with me on this, but hey, it's my ears.
Just me and my Beats for one week.
