Back in the sixties and early 1970s , when customs hotrods were at the solar apex of trendiness , every would - be motorhead wanted a hood scoop shovel on his drive , even if he did n’t actually have a cue how it would make the car go quicker . Today , if you ’re a teen or twenty - something and into hip - record hop music , the equivalent of the hood liquid ecstasy is Beats Audio , a levelheaded - reproduction technology that ’s as cryptically amorphous as it is costly .
Also know as Beats by Dr. Dre , the behemoth - selling articulatio coxae - hop creative person - turned - producer who ostensibly developed it in the mid-2000s , the Beats brand include a variety of gadgets – headphones , earbuds , laptopcomputers and phones – that are blow as having the capability to reproduce the full spectrum of sound that musical artists and producer try in professional transcription studios [ reference : Beatsbydre.com ] .
" People are n’t hearing all the music , " Dr. Dre explain on the Web situation for Beats Electronics LLC , the Santa Monica , Calif.-based ship’s company that he cofounded with Jimmy Iovine , chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records , in 2006 . " Artists and producer work hard in the studio perfect their speech sound . But people ca n’t really hear it with normal headphone . Most headphones ca n’t handle the bass , the contingent , the moral force . Bottom occupation , the music does n’t move you . With Beats , people are go to hear what the artists hear , and listen to the medicine the way they should : the way I do " [ source : Beatsbydre.com ] .
Eager to know that aural nirvana , plenty of medicine lovers have been unforced to plunge down as much as $ 300 for a twain of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones , or to choose an HP laptop or an HTC phone equipped with Beats engineering . The brand enchant 53 pct of the $ 1 billion headphone mart in 2011 , according to market researcher NPD Group [ reservoir : Edward ] .
But how Beats Audio in reality achieves superior sound – or whether it does so at all – are questions that work some Web author audiophiles into a lather . " Besides a bunch of ballyhoo and a red-faced ' b ' sticker , what ( if anything ) is Beats Audio ? " a reviewer for Tunelab once groused , after flummox over the terse , sibylline descriptions on manufacturers ' Web site [ seed : Tunelab ] . " Not even Dre can excuse his own product , " a British audio commentator sneers [ beginning : Lucidx.com ] .
Actually , there ’s a little more to Beats Audio than that .
The Art and Science of Recorded Sound
To understand what Beats Audio does – or what its maker claim it does – you first have to do it a little number about the scientific discipline of recording and reproducing audio .
Whether you ’re a fan of Gotye or Beyoncé , the medicine you enjoy goes through a building complex , at times convoluted route from therecording studioto your ears . When you ’re listening to , say , " Single Ladies ( Put a anchor ring on It ) , " what you ’re actuallyhearingis a bunch of unlike sounds – the singers ' voice , the bass line , the drums , a synthesiser mimicking the sound of a string section – that are vibrations of molecules in the air at unlike frequency . Those frequencies are picked up by your tympanic membrane and other structures in your pinna , which are able of detecting absolute frequency from just 20 Hz ( 20 vibrations per sec ) all the manner up to 20,000 Hz , and noticing and analyze tiny shifts in frequency , intensity , duration and counselling . They also can differentiate between character of complex sound such as a guitar chord . With that form of sophisticated gadgetry connected to your brainiac , it ’s no admiration that we tend to be picky in our melodic taste [ source : Whitehead ] .
But it gets trickier . Remember that when you listen to a birdsong , you ’re not actually get wind the singer or the backup musicians , but rather a digital breeding of them . It ’s not an exact written matter , or really even nigh to it . In the studio , a manufacturer digitally records the various players , exchange their sounds into a mess of ones and cypher , and then blends them together , using criminal record - bring forth package such as Pro Tools . Along the mode , he actually alters the sound of the song – sometimes subtly , sometimes dramatically – by using electronic filter to promote some frequency and suppress others , until he gets something that he suppose sounds good enough to sway the socks off medicine lovers . He may strengthen the bass part , for object lesson , or accentuate or dampen certain frequency in a singer ’s voice , to make her sound placid . The procedure of tinkering with frequencies to get a more pleasing compounding is calledequalization . The resulting digital montage is then squeeze to produce the MP3 file that you download [ reference : LeLoup and Ponterio , Self ] .
But that ’s just part of the aural journey of a song . It get through other filter , including your headphones and/or your information processing system speech sound lineup and speakers , and they act as equaliser , too .
How does Beats Audio make music sound different?
Basically , as the digital version of a song is translated back into physical vibrations by thespeakersin your computer or your earphone , Beats Audio again tinkers with the frequencies , altering them in a fashion that ’s supposed to sound good to your ear . How exactly Beats headphones do that is n’t easy to discern , since the Beats Electronics World Wide Web site is slim on technical information , and there is n’t much in the five U.S. patent of invention that the ship’s company own , all of them actually create by Silicon Valley - based industrial designer Robert Brunner and colleagues . The feature film cited in the filings are mostly " ornamental " flourishes , and there ’s little account of what would make them produce a more accurate sound [ source : Google Patents ] . likewise , in a 2011 lawsuit – since settled – between Beats Electronics and Signeo , a rival manufacturing business that marketed a earphone back by the rapper Ludicris , most of the dispute seems to be about whether the headphone see too interchangeable [ source : Signeo USA et al vs. Beats Electronics LLC et al ] .
We do recognise that Dre and Iovine reportedly spent two years trying different headset prototype with their own finely - tuned capitulum until they ground a design that , in their perspicacity , offered the best sound . They also had various music stars – Jay Z. , Mary J. Blige , and Bono and The Edge from U2 , among others – try out the headphones to corroborate their verdict . " There is no benchmark reference for what infrangible perfect auditory sensation is , " Kevin Lee of Monster Cable , an audio company that partnered with Beats from 2008 through 2012 , told USA Today . " That ’s where Dr. Dre add up in . We probably run about 150 prototypes before we got it just powerful " [ source : Jones ] .
The Beats Audio engineering science in computers and phones is a second less of a enigma . HP , which utilise it in laptops , was kind enough to post a YouTube video that detail its classifiable performance - related design features . The latter includes a redesign headphone squat that ’s been grounded to abridge distortion , and a more potent amplifier with better stereoscopic picture breakup . Also , the audio components on the computer ’s organization board are isolated , away from other parts that might mess up with the signals . But the key feature seems to be something called the " Beats Audio visibility , " which audiophile critics say is a fancy name for the balance setting , or EQ , on the computer ’s softwareoperating system[sources : YouTube , Tunelab ] .
What that means , basically , is that when the computer dally a song – specifically , the sort of a basso - heavy hip - hop music that Dre produces – its software automatically jumps in and pick off the frequencies a little more , for your welfare .
Is Beats Audio really better?
If you retrieve we had a tough time excuse how Beats Audio works , it ’s even ruffianly for us to say whether or not Beats Audio really produces superiorsound . Part of the problem is that hoi polloi have different opinions about what sounds just . Some mass hate aberration for example , while others really like it – certify by the popularity of the Kinks ' 1964 tally " You Really Got Me , " for which guitarist Dave Davies cut up the speaker retinal cone on his ampere with knitting needles [ root : Buskin ] .
The technical school Web site Endgadget , which in 2011 charter an main research lab to submit an HTC sound equipped with Beats Audio to extensive trial , came up with some intriguing finding . Contrary to its advertising , reviewer Sharif Sakr write , Beats Audio does n’t in reality make euphony that ’s more faithful to what the musicians play in the studio apartment . " For this to be true , the Beats Audio EQ would need to drop the system ’s yield , to make euphony vocalize more faithful to the root transcription – just as studio monitor do , " he write . alternatively , what the technology does is reproduce music the way that Dr. Dre likes it to sound . Now , that ’s not necessarily a bad affair . It pick off medicine to emphasize the bass and vocals , while depressing the " less interesting " center frequencies . If you like hip - hop , reviewer Sharif Sakr conclude , Beats Audio makes it sound great . For orchestral music , in contrast , " activating Beats Audio does nothing near , " he add [ germ : Sakr ] .
But since most hoi polloi who buy equipment with Beats Audio are more concerned about Wiz Khalifa than Yo - Yo Ma , that probably does n’t matter . The Monster Beats by Dr. Dre headphones , loose in 2008 , garner a positive revue from the tekki Web website CNET , which praise the sleek look of the headphones and also was impressed from a listening stand . The earphone had " an exceptionally – one might say shockingly – crisp " auditory sensation that was " balanced in the mids and truly telling in their pitch of in high spirits - end detail " without the cloudiness sometimes found in the bass - operose microphones favored by pelvis - record hop rooter , it reported [ source : CNET ] .
I have to let in to being amuse by audio consumers ' obsession with hearing a Sung dynasty that sounds exactly as the creative person intended it . When I was a high school soph in the early seventies , my institution to rock’n’roll was listening to a vinyl transcript of the Rolling Stones ' 1969 springy record " Get Yer Ya - Ya ’s Out ! " that one of my classmates surreptitiously played on the cheap turntable - in - a - suitcase unit in the audiovisual lab , rather of the Gallic vocabulary platter we were supposed to be studying . The sound that came through my headphones was mono , not stereophonic , and the dad and hisses from the badly worn record player acerate leaf probably made the Stones ' lively version of " survive With Me " sound even grungy than if I had been in the front row of their concert . It sounded terrible , and I absolutely was enthralled by it . If some manufacturer can come in up with a gadget that could take back the feeling of that moment again , I ’d give just about any toll for it .
