Why you should hate "Beats by Dre."

Marketing is a powerful tool that is responsible for the success of our favorite products. Sometimes we the consumers can be programmed into thinking that a product is more than it is, simply by how it is presented. I have no quarrels with innovative marketing departments, specially when they are introducing or selling a quality product. While I have seen many fad products come and go Beats by Dre are by far one of those that make my list of misleading and "hype" products.


The marketing used to sell Beats by Dre is a combination of movie, commercial, and music video placements. Dr Dre even wears them in "Three Kings" ft Rick Ross, Drake and Jay-Z.
His line "listen to this beat on my headphones" is a pretty transparent message which he obviously wants us to take seriously.

Let me preface by saying that I am a Dr. Dre fan,
he is one of those producers I still respect and looked up to growing up. However, Beats by Dre are SUB PAR headphones at best. While the love of bass is one that I share with many hip hop heads these headphones go beyond representing pleasing bass response.  The Beats Solo represent the prominent bass frequency (at about 120 Hz)
as almost 3 times as loud. This may seem like a good idea, but something happens to your music and ears when you boost bass like this.

Most bass heavy music (hip hop, dance, dubstep, etc) is mixed to take into consideration the importance of bass in the track. As a matter of fact a lot of money is spent paying mix engineers to balance these songs and make sure the bass sits right in the mix. When you boos t bass this drastically you are going to "mud," or hide the clarity of the mix. This means the shine will be lost (high frequencies are masked by the harmonics of the bass for you engineers) and intelligibility in the vocals will be compromised. At first the bass is fun but after listening to them for any length of time you will experience ear fatigue. This should be the least of your worries. Studies show that prolonged exposure to bass frequencies will result in hearing loss. In order to better hear the highs of the song you will turn up the volume even more, further ruining the little hairs that send the acoustic signals to your brain.

So many teenagers and kids are using these now, it goes without saying that they have an even higher risk of hearing loss as they will be exposed to this ear abuse for more years. The more they lose, the more volume they need, you can imagine the rest.

While Beats by Dre look great, and will also make you fashionably relevant among your peers, not only will you have over spent on headphones (given the quality) but you wont hear those of us that know better, comment on how bad we feel that you do not know any better.

 Here is a a frequency response chart for beats compared to another pair in the same price range. Notice the extreme dip around 8k in the Solo and the missing frequencies around 16k. While this is normal in headphones both Beats models suffer more from this deficiency. In addition when purchasing either model you get very different sound representation.

Needless to say, Beats by Dre are a "hype" product and are overpriced. So what headphones should you listen on? There are a lot of options, but there are few winners.
Monster does not have a history for creating good headphone technology or electronics(ask an audio professional, they may be good on a consumer level, they are often scoffed at by experienced audio engineers). Audio Technica in the other hand, is one of the leaders of the pack. Not only do they create great headphones, but some of the industries favorite microphones as well (At-4040 AT-4033, and AT-4020).

Here is a great set for almost ONE THIRD the price of Beats. In addition they sound at least twice as good. They are the AT-HM50 Professional Studio Monitors:

Check them out on Amazon for yourself, it is no surprise that they have such great reviews on Amazon, I would never buy any other headphones than these. At under 125$ you wont regret trading your beats in for a set of these. You can thank me later, Ill actually be able to hear you.

---Find them here: AT Professional Headphones-----