[autumnholy]

Imma probably be hanged for touching the forbidden word: BEATS...
 
But just wanna raise my opinion:

IMHO, BEATS do change how the headphone market operate. More and more headphones pay attention to packaging and design, the latest being DENON 7100 which is incredibly similar to BEATS. It's not that BEATS are great headphones in terms of SQ, just that they DID impact the headphone market and manage to attract more people into audio (not yet -phile) hobby. 
 
So, what say you guys?

 

[viralcow]

Impact in a bad way. 
 
1. Beats attracting more people to high-quality audio? Funny thing is, four years ago before I got into decent headphones, I scoffed at anyone who spent $$ on them simply because when I compared my trusty skullcandies to my friend's $300 beats, I didn't think they sounded much better. Then I think someone let me try his TF10 and I was blown away.
 
2. Sacrificing sound quality for fancy packaging and design (btw, I hate how the new denons look) because big bulky things won't sell and instead turning headphones into $400-500 necklaces, is, IMO, the worst thing that could have happened to the headphone industry.

 

[autumnholy]

Yeah, bad or otherwise, this trend is undeniably affecting the demographic of headphone industry IMO. More people are paying attention into headphones. Actually, many of my friends and I (personally), we agreed that BEATS were one of the very first "decent" headphones that made us realize headphones can sound so good. Well, of course, is that we compared them to, say, $10-20 earbuds lol.
 
But actually, only a very few of us DID buy BEATS. Most of us (audio enthusiasts) go straight to other brands, eg. the famous M-50, Grados, and etc. I went into DT231 pro then SRH840.
 
BEATS, to me, shows that marketing works (in the perspective of headphone profits)! They're packaged to attract, really.

 

[Beagle]

Quote:

Imma probably be hanged for touching the forbidden word: BEATS...
 
But just wanna raise my opinion:

IMHO, BEATS do change how the headphone market operate. More and more headphones pay attention to packaging and design, the latest being DENON 7100 which is incredibly similar to BEATS. It's not that BEATS are great headphones in terms of SQ, just that they DID impact the headphone market and manage to attract more people into audio (not yet -phile) hobby. 
 
So, what say you guys?

 
wow