[marcoarment]

  IF Advertising were outlawed (as fraud), then 1) products would be evaluated solely by word of mouth (as works fine for Schiit), 2) journalists would be free to investigate corporations, instead of being muzzled by ad dollars, 3) media would be consumed by subscription only - the HBO model - which would improve the quality of media.

 
But:
 
1) Word of mouth is limited and unreliable (cf. Yelp, Amazon reviewers), and is easily corrupted by spam, affiliate marketers, and under-the-table paid recommendations. And if you were starting a new company and had no established reputation before, the only way to get going would be to send a bunch of free demo products to influential people in hopes that they talk about you (fortunately, they usually do in that scenario), which can be objective but too often subtly corrupts their public statements about your products. There's no such thing as organic word of mouth at scale.
 
2) Journalists would mostly be laid off or forced to write Buzzfeed clickbait headlines about 17 Sexy Discount Mattresses To Boost Your Libido With This One Trick The Scientists Don't Want You To Know [Slideshow], because...
 
3) Media is so abundant today that its value is effectively $0 and nobody pays for anything, except with their attention, which is far more easily and profitably drawn by One Weird Trick Slideshow Headlines than boring, expensive investigative reporting. And without ad-supported free media, it's also very hard to grow an audience for something that's historically free like websites or podcasts, because each new person is forced to pay before they can even tell if they're going to like you, and it's easier to just abandon the attempt and go back to what they know.
 
I've bought and sold ads, I run ads on my blog and podcast, and I've done ad-free apps and even an ad-free iPad magazine. As ideologically questionable as ads are, they do provide important value to a lot of people that isn't easily replaced. They help new products get established, they let ad-supported publishers get large audiences, and they let you try, find, use, read, browse, and hear a bunch of stuff online for free. (Like this site.)
 
Ads have persisted for this long because the alternatives are mostly worse.

 

[kstuart]

1) Despite all of that, Yelp and Amazon reviewers are largely reliable, and advertising copy isn't.  Ads are 100% generated by the product sellers, thus are 100% suspect.
 
2) and 3) are based on the current reality where everything on the Internet is free, because of Ads.  If there were no ads, everything would have to revert to 1990 model, where people bought newspapers.
 
Such services as Spotify, and HBO demonstrate that subscription models work.
 
Free content due to Ads makes the Internet far trashier than it was prior to online ads.
 
As far as introducing new products, AFAIK there have never been any Schiit ads...

 

[Wildcatsare1]

  1) Despite all of that, Yelp and Amazon reviewers are largely reliable, and advertising copy isn't.  Ads are 100% generated by the product sellers, thus are 100% suspect.
 
2) and 3) are based on the current reality where everything on the Internet is free, because of Ads.  If there were no ads, everything would have to revert to 1990 model, where people bought newspapers.
 
Such services as Spotify, and HBO demonstrate that subscription models work.
 
Free content due to Ads makes the Internet far trashier than it was prior to online ads.
 
As far as introducing new products, AFAIK there have never been any Schiit ads...

I am sorry, what on Earth makes you think, "Yelp and Amazon reviewers are largely reliable", so no purchaser ever has an agenda when writing a review? I am sorry Man, but your premise is so wrong and naive, on so many levels, its difficult to find a place to start, 100% of all ad copy is not misleading/lies, freedom of speech doesn't apply to only what you wish too hear. Corporations are not inherently evil, there are good and bad ones, just like individuals, companies that deceive and lie on a regular basis will be found out and face the retribution of informed consumers. Who do you propose too serve as the "Truth Police"? People don't buy newspapers anymore, not because of ads, but because of the vastly increased sources of information that they were/are ineffective competing against.

 

[kstuart]

 

  1) Despite all of that, Yelp and Amazon reviewers are largely reliable, and advertising copy isn't.  Ads are 100% generated by the product sellers, thus are 100% suspect.
 
2) and 3) are based on the current reality where everything on the Internet is free, because of Ads.  If there were no ads, everything would have to revert to 1990 model, where people bought newspapers.
 
Such services as Spotify, and HBO demonstrate that subscription models work.
 
Free content due to Ads makes the Internet far trashier than it was prior to online ads.
 
As far as introducing new products, AFAIK there have never been any Schiit ads...

I am sorry, what on Earth makes you think, "Yelp and Amazon reviewers are largely reliable", so no purchaser ever has an agenda when writing a review? I am sorry Man, but your premise is so wrong and naive, on so many levels, its difficult to find a place to start, 100% of all ad copy is not misleading/lies, freedom of speech doesn't apply to only what you wish too hear. Corporations are not inherently evil, there are good and bad ones, just like individuals, companies that deceive and lie on a regular basis will be found out and face the retribution of informed consumers. Who do you propose too serve as the "Truth Police"? People don't buy newspapers anymore, not because of ads, but because of the vastly increased sources of information that they were/are ineffective competing against.

I don't have enough time for every person repeating false Conventional Nonsense like "companies that deceive and lie on a regular basis will be found out and face the retribution of informed consumers".
 
I'll just say that any particular Yelp or Amazon reviewer can be wrong, but in aggregate they are usually correct if the sample size is large enough.
 
No "Truth Police" is necessary when all Ads are outlawed.
 
Then you get a real free market that is not distorted by bad products being effectively promoted by the hottest bikini babe.

 

[Wildcatsare1]

I don't have enough time for every person repeating false Conventional Nonsense like "companies that deceive and lie on a regular basis will be found out and face the retribution of informed consumers".

I'll just say that any particular Yelp or Amazon reviewer can be wrong, but in aggregate they are usually correct if the sample size is large enough.

No "Truth Police" is necessary when all Ads are outlawed.

Then you get a real free market that is not distorted by bad products being effectively promoted by the hottest bikini

OK, to be honest, I am enjoying the music far too much to walk down this path tonight. Perhaps you should try to read a bit more, say the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, would be a great place for you to start. Cheers!

 

[SoupRKnowva]

Yes Schiit has run ads, quite a few actually.
 
And outlaw advertising? what would give anyone the right to do any such thing? the only people to blame for the effectiveness of "cheap" advertising techniques are the population at large for falling for that nonsense

 

[money4me247]

hypothetically, what @kstuart is talking about is impossible nowadays, but I think his underlying message does make sense. how does products that are technically outperformed by competitors do so well (eg. beats)? slick advertising and marketing. in an ideal world, products that perform the best would be the ones that get the most attention...  not products backed by the most advertising dollars.
 
the very nature of advertising is that they primarily appeal to people's emotion & try to engage interest. ads are showy and flashy with less substance. an ad of specs would actually be quite ineffective. ads don't really give you any solid or reliable or unbiased information about the product. 

 

[Wildcatsare1]

  hypothetically, what @kstuart is talking about is impossible nowadays, but I think his underlying message does make sense. how does products that are technically outperformed by competitors do so well (eg. beats)? slick advertising and marketing. in an ideal world, products that perform the best would be the ones that get the most attention...  not products backed by the most advertising dollars.
 
the very nature of advertising is that they primarily appeal to people's emotion & try to engage interest. ads are showy and flashy with less substance. an ad of specs would actually be quite ineffective. ads don't really give you any solid or reliable or unbiased information about the product. 

You are correct, advertising's purpose is to lead to a change in behavior, but we as consumers have a choice on what we spend our $$$ on, we are not sheep, well most of us, and are responsible for our own actions.With kstuart's reasoning politicians would be illegal, wait a minute, he is onto something now 

. If is our responsibility to filter out  the biases in the messages presented, Big Brother cannot hold our hands from the cradle to the grave, would you want to give up your free will for the illusion of Government/regulatory "coddling"?

 

[Zojokkeli]

Hey, if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. 

 

[mcteague]

  The hum in the original units was a mechanical one that you would hear without headphones. The hum you solved with the adapter was an electrical one that is audible through the headphones and is not related.

Thanks for the clarification!
 
Tim

 

[tonykaz]

Beats Adverts are technically accurate in that they model Social Acceptability for a product that is generally considered an anti-social device . 
 
Sennheiser and others missed the market and the opportunity , however , they will catch-up , they see the light now , probably , the Beats are totally cool looking , I wish my HD 600s looked that good .
 
Tony in Michigan 

 

[marcoarment]

Beats are a great thought experiment and counterexample to the idea that reviews and performance are everything. I posit that Beats are good. Not great, but good. [ducks] Wait, let me finish.
 
A common fallacy is assuming that performance, quality, numbers, etc. are everything, and that products can be ranked relatively to each other in a consistent, objective manner. But it's rarely that simple because people have not just different opinions, but different priorities, and geeks like us often dismiss or fail to consider less-measurable metrics that matter to people.
 
Modern Beats models' (current Studio, Solo 2) sound quality is heavy on the bass, but otherwise pretty decent for their respective categories and price ranges (closed, on-ear and over-ear portables, $200–300). And if you like a lot of bass — which many people do — they actually sound pretty good. They're also widely considered comfortable and very stylish, which I can't say about most competing models. You can wear them in public and nobody makes fun of you or thinks you're a geek, which matters quite a lot to a lot of people (especially young people) — in fact, the coolest people a teenager knows probably have Beats, too. People who put them on feel good about how they look to others. You can also try and buy them in person in tons of retail stores, including every Apple Store and most Best Buys, etc., and you can return them if you don't like them after a couple of weeks. And if they ever break, I've heard only fantastic things about Beats' customer support which usually end up in the customer getting a free replacement pair very easily.
 
How many of our better-sounding favorites in those categories (closed, portable, under $300) can claim even half of those benefits?
 
Factors like these help our favorite companies, too, including Schiit. (Oh yeah, this is a Schiit thread…) Their products have performed amazingly for me, but I was first attracted to them not because a review said they were the best-sounding, but because I'd heard that they were at least good, I loved the name, and I loved the way their products looked compared to everything comparable. I first got only an Asgard 2, then added a Bifrost Uber below it because I wanted an external DAC and the stack looked nice, even though I probably would have been served just as well at the time by any USB DAC, and the Bifrost looked nicer next to the Asgard than any other DAC from any other manufacturer.
 
I recently became addicted to a Cable Company-rented HE-6 and EF-6 combo, but I thought the EF-6 was ugly and not my style despite sounding fantastic. I bought my own HE-6 and a second-hand Mjolnir, but the Mjolnir doesn't stack with the Bifrost Uber. So I upgraded to a Gungnir, not because it sounds a lot better than the Bifrost Uber (I can't really tell the difference), but because it has multiple simultaneous outputs (which I wanted) and it stacks nicely under the Mjolnir. (All of which will be in flux again when I buy a Ragnarok as soon as they'll let me.)
 
You may have different priorities, and that's fine. But it's a mistake to assume that everyone has the same priorities.

 

[tonykaz]

Sennheiser can now have one of the Design Houses do a make-over for the HD600 , get them on the cover of Vogue & GQ and the race will be on , the Italians can do a nice Sun-Glasses version of the iE800s for all the Bike Racers to wear and they'll have another HomeRun , follow that up with the big name Baseball Players wearing a Sports version that all the US Postal workers can wear whilst delivering the mail and Viola ! , a triple .     Madison Ave. can come in with a proper marketing campaign ( instead of that silly Momentum nonsense ) , only a small , across the board price increase will be needed .  

 

[valiant66]

  Yes Schiit has run ads, quite a few actually.
 
And outlaw advertising? what would give anyone the right to do any such thing?

 
Outlaw? http://www.outlawaudio.com/ They advertise all over the place!

 

[1adam12]

 
Modern Beats models' (current Studio, Solo 2) sound quality is heavy on the bass, but otherwise pretty decent for their respective categories and price ranges (closed, on-ear and over-ear portables, $200–300). And if you like a lot of bass — which many people do — they actually sound pretty good. They're also widely considered comfortable and very stylish, which I can't say about most competing models. You can wear them in public and nobody makes fun of you or thinks you're a geek, which matters quite a lot to a lot of people (especially young people) — in fact, the coolest people a teenager knows probably have Beats, too. People who put them on feel good about how they look to others. You can also try and buy them in person in tons of retail stores, including every Apple Store and most Best Buys, etc., and you can return them if you don't like them after a couple of weeks. And if they ever break, I've heard only fantastic things about Beats' customer support which usually end up in the customer getting a free replacement pair very easily.
 

 
But, but, but... If you outlaw aesthetic differences consumers would be forced to buy based on technical merit. Do you have any idea how much time we'd save if we all wore government issued khakis and black sweaters? Man, that'd be great!