Not quite what I meant
Of course that was what you meant! Heh, just pulling your leg there ;D
When I friends ask me to suggest a headphone, I suggest them Beats first. If they nudge me to give them better suggestions, I ask if they looked up any other headphones. If they provide two options, I ask why they chose those two options. It's not worth trying to convince people to jump into HD800's and have them blame me because there's not enough bass quantity.
I like circle jerking my headphones in their respective threads because it does two primary things; justify my purchase and learn strengths/flaws of a product by user feedback.
If it weren't for Head-Fi, I find it fairly hard to justify a purchase that could very well go into a better investment.
The funny thing about some advertised Beats alternatives like the V-Moda M100 is that the M100 has been the
least durable headphone in my collection. The M100 is also advertised to be durable. Unfortunately they are not. It didn't like my FiiO X5, X3 and X1 2nd gen because the 3.5khz peak in the M100 can become really aggressive. The kevlar cables started unraveling, the left driver died on me 3 times. V-Moda told me I couldn't send them back anymore and that I'd have to buy a new M100. Little did I know, when I opened the shell myself, it was simple solder crack. The headphone cups also started cracking after taking them out in the -10 Celcius canadian weather and into warm buildings. I have yet for my 3 other portable alternatives to have this bad durability.
I do the same thing with smartphones. If someone asks me what I would recommend for a smartphone, I ask them "Do you prefer Android phones or iPhones?" (I'd never recommend a Windows phone to someone who can't decide on their own), and they usually say "I don't know, which one's better?". I tell them iPhones are better because you can get more accessories for them (people get really annoyed when they find out that no shop stocks cases for their Huawei or Moto E), they are more secure (the biggest vulnerability in any system is the user, so iOS' locked down nature and walled garden approach helps), easy to use and are all-round consistent performers. Anything wrong with it within 12 months, just take it to Apple. No need for proof of purchase (after all, it's an
Apple iPhone), and even if it's out-of-warranty, if it's something that shouldn't go wrong (not damaaged) within a reasonable amount of time from the original purchase date (usually 3 years I think, as per Australian Consumer Law), Apple is pretty good with abiding by ACL.
In the long run, it also saves me from having to deal with email problems, phone running slow (if they had chosen a bottom-of-the-barrel model like the Galaxy J1 or something - if they went with an iPhone they can't cheap out on it), ransomware locking the phone down, wakelock issues draining the battery etc. Repairs are also a breeze due to the abundance and affordability of parts, great modularity of parts (very little need to solder stuff like the charging port and power button), and high value of the device (so in most cases it won't be "better off buying a new one"). iPhones also stay relevant for longer, because Apple doesn't make 20 models a year and can actually support the software (I still see a lot of people using iPhone 4's/4Ses, but not many still using a Galaxy S2 or HTC One X).
If whoever's asking for a recommendation tells me "I don't like iPhones", I ask them "Why?", they'll say "I just don't" and then I'll say "Well, it's your loss, because iPhones are the best
".
Products like Apple devices and [post-2013] Beats headphones are easy to recommend because they are designed to sell, appeal to, and impress the masses who generally don't know what's "objectively good" and judge a device rather by their external appearance and social image that they carry, while also actually being sufficiently satisfactory in real-world use without needing to have impressive specs on paper (because large numbers (screen resolution, GHz/no. of cores, GB of RAM for phones and Hz'es and ohms for headphones) does not equate to good usability). When it comes to smartphones and headphones, "good" is subjective. If someone could determine what's "good" for them, they don't need to ask me for advice.
I also see celebrity/iconic figures representing a product to be looked down upon. However this is what happens when you mix two favourite things together:
Originally Posted by
Tiddlesworth /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I won't fall for some cheap marketing trick... oh
Marketing is not always a bad thing.
Haha, I remember that.
This reminds me of when my Studio Wireless got bricked by a software update. The update stopped at step 2 of 3, and the headphone's battery gauge just oscillated back and forth, like this:
When I performed a hard reset the LEDs went out and the headphone wouldn't turn on again. I was fairly sure they were out of warranty, but when I took it to the Apple Store, somehow the Genius put it in for warranty service and a couple of weeks later, I got a brand new set because they couldn't fix my old one.
empire shouldn't have been allowed even a toe hold in the market
