The one thing you might expect from Studio is maximum bass punch, but even there it's not world-class. Sure, some are, but my 15-year-old Sennheiser HD-580 headphones are in much better shape, and sound a lot better to my ears. This headphone is four years old, but I remember folks having problems with their Studios even when they were new, which is extra sad because some of those buyers might have assumed that other brands' $300 'phones were equally flimsy.
The creaky plastic headband is barely holding together, the hinges have lost a few screws, and the headphone is on the verge of falling apart (Monster, the original manufacturer, claims it repaired or replaced defective Beats). I borrowed a set of original Beats from a friend, and they haven't aged well. The Studio's build quality is nowhere as robust as, say, V-Moda's M-100 headphones. To them the Studio came off as a triumph of marketing over sound quality. It didn't hurt that the slick and glossy Studio struck a chord with young, fashion-conscious buyers the Studio was exactly the right product for its target market.Īudiophiles were a much tougher, harder-to-please crowd they had grown up with Sennheiser, Grado, Beyerdynamic, and Ultrasone headphones, and they dismissed the Studio en masse.
Of course, those cheap headphones sounded pretty bad, so moving up to the Studio meant the sound was a revelation! Bass, dynamics, and treble detailing were so much better, and Studio sales took off. Before Beats those buyers were content with cheap and utterly disposable headphones, headphones that all too often would stop working in a few months, get thrown away, and get replaced with another set of cheap headphones. No other headphone manufacturer could have imagined that it could sell millions of $300 headphones to non-audiophiles.
There's no denying the Beats by Dre Studio's success, and how it so radically changed the headphone landscape. The original Beats, the creaky plastic headphone hasn't aged well.
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