Though it’s something of a cliché, music is something I truly love. I consider myself an audiophile, though a number of people might disagree with my giving myself such a title. I personally spend about eight hours in a typical day listening to music, though it’s likely to be more like 14 hours if I don’t have lectures to go to. With that in mind, I think it’s understandable that I find it frustrating that, in recent years, appreciating music has been reduced to a fashion statement.
Years ago I was sitting in school, a pair of headphones sitting on the desk in front of me (Sennheiser HD250-II linear, to be precise).
“Those headphones look like bin lids, I bet they’re not as good as my skull candies and they look stupid.”
I could only manage a tired sigh in response to this. Those familiar with the now-discontinued HD250s will know that they can easily outperform a pair of £30 ‘cool’ headphones designed to look good when worn around the neck.
A few years later I find myself being informed that my HD25-1 IIs are inferior to a pair of ‘Beats by Dre’ headphones. Whilst I enjoy picturing Dr. Dre hunched over a soldering iron and a set of precision screwdrivers in pursuit of perfect audio, I have a reasonable grasp on reality.
“Oh, Beats are the headphones used to mix in every major studio* are they? You’ve never been in a recording studio, have you?”
As doubtful of their quality as I was, I had to confirm that Beats headphones were only good as fashion statements. I located a pair of Beats headphones in an Apple store and was able to listen to them for all of 20 seconds before the terrible sound became too traumatic.
It troubles me that people buy these things thinking they’re paying for an improved audio experience; whilst the massive bias toward the low-end may prove temporarily pleasing to some, anyone who knows anything about mastering will appreciate that applying a massive bass-boost during sound reproduction does not produce ‘the sound the artist wanted you to hear.’
It seems that enjoying music has been reduced to walking around with a pair of cheap headphones around one’s neck. I’m not sure if it’s coincidence or a reflection upon modern music, which seems to have been reduced to dancing on stage and ‘singing’ a few words at the same time.
Written whilst listening to lossless audio through massive stupid looking headphones which don’t even have a completely non-linear response.
* This is genuinely a claim made by the product page for ‘Beats Pro’ headphones