IEMCrazy
Longwindeus Supremus
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2012
- Posts
- 1,506
- Likes
- 67
OP: The trouble with Beats is also the thing you tend to like about them. Their "strength" compared to other headphones, especially for newcomers to audio like yourself, is that they (when talking about the full size headphones) feature an on-board amplifier to boost the bass response. Unfortunately, while it may seem impressive at first, as your ear adapts to the sound what you'll discover is that while there is a lot of bass quantiity, the bass isn't actually very well controlled. It has little detail in the bass, blooms into the surrounding mid-range frequencies, and the mids and highs are generally acceptable at best, nothing exceptional.
It has been said in an older thread around here that the three stages of being an audiophile are:
1. The new audiophile craves bass.
2. The experienced audiophile craves treble.
3. The serious audiophile craves mids.
I'd like to add a 4th tier: The dedicated audiophile craves balance in all ranges.
What tends to happen is that when you experience your first higher end audio equipment, you pick up on the bass you were previously lacking. As time goes by you discover other things that you dislike about the audio. You upgrade again. You're impressed. As time goes by, you find more faults. You upgrade again. The cycle doesn't end until you've experienced enough ranges of equipment to successfully identify what you do like, what you don't like, what you want to fix, and what works for you. Thus the unofficial tagline here: "Welcome to Head-Fi. Sorry about your wallet."
Here's where it gets interesting. Say you decide to skip stage 1 & 2, jump straight to mids or balance, skip the (excessively over-bloated) bass phase the Beats represent, and train yourself to appreciate the nuiances of higher end audio. Well, now to get proper bass response, you're really going to need a decent amp to power those expensive cans. And along with that you'll discover your iPod or soundcard just doesn't have the DAC quality you were hoping for, so outcomes a new soundcard or an outboard dedicated DAC. Then you realize that all that lossy MP3/AAC recordings you downloaded really aren't that great quality, so you're under-utilizing the performance of your equipment. Time to re-buy your music (or buy on CDs and rip.)
Moving up the audio ladder means your whole signal chain needs to be operating on a similar level. Sure you can upgrade in bits. Nobody will force you to upgrade. But you'll find flaws, come here and ask, and we'll tell you what bit is your weak link, then you'll have an uncontrollable urge to buy an upgrade
Where you go may depend equally on where you want to go in the future in audio, how serious you are about it as a hobby. If you're looking at something to periodically listen to music on you're not in the same target audience as if you listen for hours a day.
If you like Beats, buy Beats. We won't tell you they're good. They aren't. We can identify the failures a mile away. Boomy bloated lows, recessed mids & treble, lack of detail, lack of refinement, etc. But if your music choices are poorly recorded (pop), does it matter? Only you can decide. I suspect you'll upgrade again later, but maybe you'll be happy. Ultimately our tastes may not match yours. You seem to like the bass of Beats. We don't. Probably someday you wont either. Probably someday you'll have different tastes in music as well. You can worry about it later. Your taste in what you prefer is what matters. And not hearing the real deal may be better for your wallet in the long run, anyway
I'll toss in a recommendation or two though. It won't have the bass slam you're looking for in either case, but they're good options at the price point:
Sony MDR-7506. You can get them well under $100, and are pretty much industry standard for studio monitoring applications. You'll see a pair hanging off almost every cinema camera in existence. They're not the best headphones, not by a mile. They have some issues in certain ranges. But for the price they're remarkably accurate, detailed (at the cost of some sibilance due to a spike at 2khz...they're monitoring cans after all), and as a semi-closed back can they have ok bass response. Not the best, but fairly clean and balanced with the treble. They have a slightly recessed mid. If you're doing hip-hop they won't do, they're too detailed, too bright. At the $100 price point there's a lot of sacrifices to be made, and the trade-offs on these make for a fairly good value at under that mark.
Audio Technica: AD700. A very different headphone. Open back (leaks sound but sounds more open), one of the biggest soundstages around. Very clean and refined sound for the price. Almost zero bass however. It's a very Japanese voicing. This is probably not what you're looking for, but they can be had for around $100 if you look, and are great easy to drive performers for what they do. Again, there are sacrifices all around at that price, and here it's the low-end that suffers.
You don't hit "no compromises" until $300-500, and you don't hit "best performance at any cost, even above no compromises" until the $1000 price range. And for both those ranges, the upgrades are something of a waste of money without appropriate signal chains driving them.
You have a lot of good recommendations in this thread. But only you can decide what you'll really be happy with. Buy what you want, not what a bunch of audio geeks that sit and stare an stary-eyed awe over the glow of their vacuum tubes tell you to buy. Even though we know better
It has been said in an older thread around here that the three stages of being an audiophile are:
1. The new audiophile craves bass.
2. The experienced audiophile craves treble.
3. The serious audiophile craves mids.
I'd like to add a 4th tier: The dedicated audiophile craves balance in all ranges.
What tends to happen is that when you experience your first higher end audio equipment, you pick up on the bass you were previously lacking. As time goes by you discover other things that you dislike about the audio. You upgrade again. You're impressed. As time goes by, you find more faults. You upgrade again. The cycle doesn't end until you've experienced enough ranges of equipment to successfully identify what you do like, what you don't like, what you want to fix, and what works for you. Thus the unofficial tagline here: "Welcome to Head-Fi. Sorry about your wallet."
Here's where it gets interesting. Say you decide to skip stage 1 & 2, jump straight to mids or balance, skip the (excessively over-bloated) bass phase the Beats represent, and train yourself to appreciate the nuiances of higher end audio. Well, now to get proper bass response, you're really going to need a decent amp to power those expensive cans. And along with that you'll discover your iPod or soundcard just doesn't have the DAC quality you were hoping for, so outcomes a new soundcard or an outboard dedicated DAC. Then you realize that all that lossy MP3/AAC recordings you downloaded really aren't that great quality, so you're under-utilizing the performance of your equipment. Time to re-buy your music (or buy on CDs and rip.)
Moving up the audio ladder means your whole signal chain needs to be operating on a similar level. Sure you can upgrade in bits. Nobody will force you to upgrade. But you'll find flaws, come here and ask, and we'll tell you what bit is your weak link, then you'll have an uncontrollable urge to buy an upgrade
Where you go may depend equally on where you want to go in the future in audio, how serious you are about it as a hobby. If you're looking at something to periodically listen to music on you're not in the same target audience as if you listen for hours a day.
If you like Beats, buy Beats. We won't tell you they're good. They aren't. We can identify the failures a mile away. Boomy bloated lows, recessed mids & treble, lack of detail, lack of refinement, etc. But if your music choices are poorly recorded (pop), does it matter? Only you can decide. I suspect you'll upgrade again later, but maybe you'll be happy. Ultimately our tastes may not match yours. You seem to like the bass of Beats. We don't. Probably someday you wont either. Probably someday you'll have different tastes in music as well. You can worry about it later. Your taste in what you prefer is what matters. And not hearing the real deal may be better for your wallet in the long run, anyway
I'll toss in a recommendation or two though. It won't have the bass slam you're looking for in either case, but they're good options at the price point:
Sony MDR-7506. You can get them well under $100, and are pretty much industry standard for studio monitoring applications. You'll see a pair hanging off almost every cinema camera in existence. They're not the best headphones, not by a mile. They have some issues in certain ranges. But for the price they're remarkably accurate, detailed (at the cost of some sibilance due to a spike at 2khz...they're monitoring cans after all), and as a semi-closed back can they have ok bass response. Not the best, but fairly clean and balanced with the treble. They have a slightly recessed mid. If you're doing hip-hop they won't do, they're too detailed, too bright. At the $100 price point there's a lot of sacrifices to be made, and the trade-offs on these make for a fairly good value at under that mark.
Audio Technica: AD700. A very different headphone. Open back (leaks sound but sounds more open), one of the biggest soundstages around. Very clean and refined sound for the price. Almost zero bass however. It's a very Japanese voicing. This is probably not what you're looking for, but they can be had for around $100 if you look, and are great easy to drive performers for what they do. Again, there are sacrifices all around at that price, and here it's the low-end that suffers.
You don't hit "no compromises" until $300-500, and you don't hit "best performance at any cost, even above no compromises" until the $1000 price range. And for both those ranges, the upgrades are something of a waste of money without appropriate signal chains driving them.
You have a lot of good recommendations in this thread. But only you can decide what you'll really be happy with. Buy what you want, not what a bunch of audio geeks that sit and stare an stary-eyed awe over the glow of their vacuum tubes tell you to buy. Even though we know better
