Beats by Dr Dre

[FG1]

I have had a look around and quite like the Beats Mixr or Detox.
I know there are others out there, I like the Bose ae2 too. But, if I could get some Beats at a reasonable price I would.
My question is, does anybody know anywhere to get "authentic" Beats at a reasonable price.
Or......
Anybody out there with first hand experience of Beats who would like to give me some pros and cons.

[Specialone]

A mate of mine has some, dunno what model but he's anal about sound quality and rates them, but I wouldn't buy any except from a proper dealer, there are so many fakes around.

[Stuuk1]

I got my mum a set of head phones for Xmas, fairly cheap set of Philips or whatever they were thinking just another set of headphones... They are great! Sounds just like being in a cinema.

[Mr Speirs]

I recently went round HMV doing A/B tests between each 'beats' type of headphone using songs I use for checking PA's.

They pailed in comparison to the less expensive normal brands of headphone manufacturer. Artificially boosted low frequencies which sounded terrible and a high end boost. All this did was make a smiley face frequency response which is an easy way to make any music sound exciting but not accurately representative.

You want to spend a fair amount of money on a set of headphones then you can not go wrong with a pair of sennheiser hd25's.

Pros of beats: dey make you look well bad innit
Cons of beats: they sound gash

[Spank86]

Modern music often has a very heavy drum line with equally heavy bass.

Beats accentuates that (read, makes it worse). Apart form that they're just a well specced headphone.

Not my bag though, IMHO best for rap and dance music, if you want something to listen to real played music as it was meant to sound (according to the band/sound technician) get something else.

Better done on an equaliser than its the headphone I think, at least that can be tweaked.

[disco2]

I got some skull candy hesh they seem ok to me.
I have probably killed my hearing over the years every car I have ever had I have fitted a stupid system in it even the 206 estate I have now can shake a bottle of coke off its roof lol
sad really im 39 lol

[Scythe92]

Go for some decent priced Sennheiser or Shure's. Beats are not worth your time, and an comparable headphone could be bought from one of the decent brands for about half the price.

[cx5]

If I had the money for some new cans then AKG K701's would be near the top of my list.
Available at a good price from 'Thomann'.

[Sid]

Bought some Dre Beats from Vegas last year. The in ear ones. after about 8 months the wired connections at the point of the volume control started to fray and come away. Now have a set of Bose, which are much better quality in build and sound.

[Ceri JC]

I recently went round HMV doing A/B tests between each 'beats' type of headphone using songs I use for checking PA's.

They pailed in comparison to the less expensive normal brands of headphone manufacturer. Artificially boosted low frequencies which sounded terrible and a high end boost. All this did was make a smiley face frequency response which is an easy way to make any music sound exciting but not accurately representative.

You want to spend a fair amount of money on a set of headphones then you can not go wrong with a pair of sennheiser hd25's.

Pros of beats: dey make you look well bad innit
Cons of beats: they sound gash

These are still, to my ears, the best headphones in the world. I have had mine well over a decade, thousands of hours of studio and DJing/live play use. They were getting a bit tatty; foam in the ear pieces was breaking down, etc. It cost less than £20 to replace the offending parts. Every single piece can be bought separately (at a very reasonable price). They now look and sound brand new.

NB: That is for 'serious' music work. I would never recommend the HD25 (or any serious headphone) to be plugged into an iPod/phone/handheld games console. Cheaper headphones will sound far better (as they'll mask the deficiencies of the MP3 format much better).