[GearMe]

  In comparison, the beats do not deliver the performance for the price. They don't even deliver 1/4 the performance that the price demands. As I said, I have no problem with Monster selling them to uninformed people - it is the consumers fault for not doing any research or testing alternatives.  Still, I can't help but feel as if Monster is cheating their customers in a very big way.
 
Part of the hate for Beats may be to fit in with the audiophile crowd, but I can tell you that I am relatively new to the headphone world (not the audiophile world) - and I hated beats from the moment I heard them in a Best Buy, long before I ever even heard that opinion from someone else. 

 
Monster doesn't own Beats...hasn't for a while.  
 
Beats 2013 models are new products -- which are getting more and more solid reviews by Head-Fiers.  This is easily verified by doing a search or two.

 

[GearMe]

  What's not to hate? They caused the price for real headphones to approach ridiculous levels. Sennheiser increased the price on the HD800 by 50% just to keep up.

 
Interesting logic...
 
I can glean two things from it:
 
1.  By the logic of many folks here, Sennheiser is evil and we should hate them for sticking it to us...assuming they really increased the price "just because they could" due to Beats market influence (rising tide floats all boats argument).
 
2.  Also, if this is truly the case, then the HD800 is significantly overpriced and a horrible value proposition!

 

[lowtek]

I agree with subsonic1050, comparing Beats to Apple doesn't make much sense at all. Apple gets a lot of flak, but they were the innovators in a lot of areas. iTunes+iPod made purchasing music digitally mainstream back when people were still buying CDs. iPhone changed a hell of a lot back when every smartphone was a Blackberry. Retina display? Sure every company is caught up now, but back when it was first introduced other phones had low-res crap displays. I'm sure there's a lot more but I'm not going to continue. Apple has continued to be extremely successful over the past decade or so for good reason. I can't say the same for Beats, except for perhaps superb marketing.

 

[62ohm]

   
Interesting logic...
 
I can glean two things from it:
 
1.  By the logic of many folks here, Sennheiser is evil and we should hate them for sticking it to us...assuming they really increased the price "just because they could" due to Beats market influence (rising tide floats all boats argument).
 
2.  Also, if this is truly the case, then the HD800 is significantly overpriced and a horrible value proposition!

 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/634201/battle-of-the-flagships-58-headphones-compared-update-audeze-lcd-2-revision-2-6-4-13#user_HD800
 

 

[subsonic1050]

I can tell you one thing - I JUST listened to the entire lineup of Beats headphones at a local shop two weeks ago. I had my wife listen to them without any prompting from me whatsoever. She took them off and said "These sound terrible!" Granted, she has heard my Hifiman HE-400 headphones - but the Hifiman headphones were the same price.
 
Regardless of who they are manufactured by - they sound atrocious.

 

[FancyDan]

  Why the hate on Beats? Because Head-Fi told you so! Here, we don't care what you like, all we know is that you could be spending your money on much better sounding and higher quality headphones, regardless of your personal tastes. Here, have an ATH M50!
 

HAHAHAHAHA brilliant

 

[shockdoc]

Listen to a bunch of 'phones and if you honestly think Beats sound better, buy 'em. Who the crap cares what others think? And the vast majority of people will think you're badass wearing the Beats around anyway. Having said that, I was at Office Depot on Thanksgiving evening with a bunch of people listening to my portable rig in line. One guy asked me what I was listening to and what kind of headphones I was using. Had my wife's JVC S400's on. He was there to buy a laptop and look at their headphones and asked me why I didn't have Beats. I let him listen to some they had there including the Beats and then my wife's JVC's. Told him to buy what sounded the best to his ears. He was astonished at what he heard from those little white S400's when he went back and forth on the same track with the Beats. Couldn't believe that the JVC's were 23 bucks shipped vs. 150 for the Beats. If you like Beats, buy Beats. If you like Sennheiser buy those. Are we really that insecure that we have to have other's validate what sounds good you OUR ears?

 

[Primetime86]

http://www.head-fi.org/t/634201/battle-of-the-flagships-58-headphones-compared-update-audeze-lcd-2-revision-2-6-4-13#user_HD800

You don't actually believe they are worth the money?

 

[elkosith]

If one wants to buy beats just for fashion, just buy a fake one. A good fake one. It costs only 1/10 from the original. No one will notice the difference until they heard the sound. I bought  fake beats earbuds for ~$15 and they look almost exactly the same with the $200 original. They sound not too bad either for a fake product.

 

[DonutDeflector]

If one wants to buy beats just for fashion, just buy a fake one. A good fake one. It costs only 1/10 from the original. No one will notice the difference until they heard the sound. I bought  fake beats earbuds for ~$15 and they look almost exactly the same with the $200 original. They sound not too bad either for a fake product.

What if they sounded better?

 

[vantt1]

  I'm struggling to figure out what you could possibly continue on about. I believe you have just garrulously stated what we all already know. The only piece of "new" info there was the analogy with Apple products, which is in my mind, a very poor one. In  my mind, what matters is the performance of the product. You stated yourself that because of the software their products actually perform as well or better than others. Isn't that what matters? Everyone knows that any moron can go out and buy components to build a computer. This moron has done it numerous times since roughly 1997. However, I remember that my first efforts performed relatively poorly compared to commercially built ones, even though I had bought all of the latest and best hardware. Why? Because hardware needs to be correctly chosen to work with other hardware, as well as the software. This is where Apple excels. They may not stick all of their money into the hardware, but they do spend a lot of time carefully selecting their components to work in harmony with one another and with their software. This is possible because they make only a few select computers, all made and sold by them. Contrast that to PC's, which are made by every manufacturer under the sun as well as by consumers - and couple that with Microsoft, which until just the last few releases has struggled to make an OS that won't crash every 10 minutes. (It should be noted that I am NOT an Apple fanboy, and don't own a single piece of Apple gear - although I do appreciate their attention to detail). 
 
In comparison, the beats do not deliver the performance for the price. They don't even deliver 1/4 the performance that the price demands. As I said, I have no problem with Monster selling them to uninformed people - it is the consumers fault for not doing any research or testing alternatives.  Still, I can't help but feel as if Monster is cheating their customers in a very big way.
 
Part of the hate for Beats may be to fit in with the audiophile crowd, but I can tell you that I am relatively new to the headphone world (not the audiophile world) - and I hated beats from the moment I heard them in a Best Buy, long before I ever even heard that opinion from someone else. 

The software to the hardware would probably be 'popular music', I guess.
 

What if they sounded better?

They do.

 

[62ohm]

You don't actually believe they are worth the money?

 
Price/Performance wise, maybe not really. There are a lot of high price/performance ratio cans, mostly mid-fi cans. But what if I wanted the best dynamic cans in production? Can't really go with Beats for that purpose now, can I?

 

[vantt1]

I think the HD800s should sell for exactly the same price as Beats. That would be interesting. "Hmm, should I get the 'Best headphone in the world' according to Beats, or the best headphone in the world according to some reviews and the audiophile community?"
 
That would be very interesting.

 

[thisissomebs]

  I think the HD800s should sell for exactly the same price as Beats. That would be interesting. "Hmm, should I get the 'Best headphone in the world' according to Beats, or the best headphone in the world according to some reviews and the audiophile community?"
 
That would be very interesting.

 
"I think the Beats still are better, I mean the HD800's are ugly! How could I ever impress my ignorant friends?"

 

[62ohm]

   
"I think the Beats still are better, I mean the HD800's are ugly! How could I ever impress my ignorant friends?"

 
This. I almost get myself other TOTL cans due to the looks of the HD800. Was that close on pulling the trigger on K812 instead, all simply because of 'looks'.