They might be the most popular headphones on the market, but Beats By Dre are often criticised for their sub par sound quality, tagged as more of a fashion accessory for high profile sports stars than a quality sound product. That the headphones are too bass heavy is the most common complaint, to which company president Luke Wood has defended in an interview with BBC Newsbeat.
“I’ve certainly heard that as an opinion on the headphone; I disagree,” he says. “We didn’t go to build a reference headphone, something you build in the studio that is really a technical tool to hear when you are recording. If you look at Dre’s pedigree, Jimmy’s [Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine] pedigree, even my pedigree, we are all recording engineers. What we did is build a headphone for playback. What does it sound like right when it is finished? And that is what we’ve accomplished.”
Whether or not Apple agree, the company still bought Beats By Dre for a whopping $3 billion back in May.
You can read our article 'The Emergence of Headphone Culture' to find out why we think the headphones don't cut it.