daveny5
And I saw ZZ Top before they had beards!! (True..... in New Orleans). 

Me too. At the football stadium at FSU. It was not packed at all, the stage was on the field facing the 50 yd line and we were in front of the stage maybe 8 or ten rows up. They were GREAT, but you knew that. I was really impressed at hw tight they were.
Saw the Eagles on their Witchy Woman tour, opened for YES on their Close to the Edge tour.
I grew up listening to a portable AM radio especially at night... Art Roberts then Ron Riley on WLS and John R. on WLAC in Nashville. They boomed into south Georgia. I REALLY wish I had recorded some of those shows, especially John R. "...Earnie's Reord Mart".
 
My first band... 1964. I well remember the first stereo records that said on the package that the "stereophonic" recording would play on your mono player.
 
I also spent countless hours with my Hallicrafters SX-43 listening to the world and verifying 50 countries.
 
Julien
 
 

+1 to what AT said.  My entire life I have been hearing "the sky is falling" when it comes to music.  It's grumpy, crotchety old man talk.  I remember having low quality transistor radios and even crappy boomboxes that were loud but awful sounding.  It never stopped me from wanting better.  My son just bought his first pair of real headphones and I guarantee that they are much better than anything I could afford when I was his age.  Yes, he listens to low quality mp3s on his phone just like most of the world these days because it is far more practical and convenient to do so.  It's no different in principal to choosing to eat ONLY food prepared entirely by scratch from only fresh, organic ingredients or eating prepped food.  Most would agree that scratch is better yet our society's leaning towards prepackaged food (How many of you eat only freshly baked bread?), but it does not stop us from recognizing the difference and appreciating it.
 
By the posts here, you would swear it was standard for every home to have a pair of 50k Infinity reference speakers in every home .  What I recall being in the average home was the bog behemoth system with the rack changer in the 70's and cheap integrated component systems in the 80's with the occasional mid-level component system .  With the exception of audiophiles, people who upgrade often got loud ported speakers that provided boomy distorted bass.  I think in my entire 20's I came across maybe three systems in the home of an average joe that came anywhere close to reproducing something even close to what the master recording likely sounded like. 

robert_e_bone
Now THAT is funny - and sad.
 
Bob Bone
 

What's even funnier and sad Bob is the fact that the ear buds have now been replaced by expensive Beats Dr Dre Solo's!!!  So we have people downloading poor-quality MP3s from iTunes (being the biggest retailer) and on to their iPhones or iPods (poor quality playback device, but yet people will happily pay premium for them) and then played back in Beats Solo HDs (premium price for these too)!
 
Q: So where's the logic of shoving HQ-Audio converted to compressed low quality audio and shoved through high quality expensive headphones?


A: There isn't any logic behind it, it's just about pure image - they look good and trendy!

Isn't  the Loudness control/button for the decreased highs and lows that come with lower volume? I usually like things fairly flat. If anything I may put the bass +2, mid 0, and treble +1 and keep the Loudness off. I used to pump the highs more.

I heard some of those headphone and was really disappointed.

RickJP909

robert_e_bone
Now THAT is funny - and sad.
 
Bob Bone
 

What's even funnier and sad Bob is the fact that the ear buds have now been replaced by expensive Beats Dr Dre Solo's!!!  So we have people downloading poor-quality MP3s from iTunes (being the biggest retailer) and on to their iPhones or iPods (poor quality playback device, but yet people will happily pay premium for them) and then played back in Beats Solo HDs (premium price for these too)!
 
Q: So where's the logic of shoving HQ-Audio converted to compressed low quality audio and shoved through high quality expensive headphones?


A: There isn't any logic behind it, it's just about pure image - they look good and trendy!

Beats by Dr Dre serve a particular market and are neither as good as they claim or as bad as their detractors claim.  Although they don't sound like Bose, the marketing principle and end result is not all that different; take any sound  turn it into a particular sound popular with target audience.  Neither has any business being used for recording but serve end users well.  IMHO the philosophy and target audience for "Beats" is not much different than the target audience that Cerwin-Vega speakers targeted in the late 80's and early 90's.  I highly suspect that criticism lobbed at Beats would not ring nearly as loudly if not for the association with rap.  If the exact headphones were put out with a different name, they would simply be seen as just another set of headphones,  above the quality of SKull Candy but not audiophile quality.  Yes, they are overpriced for what they are, but so are most things attached to a celebrity name.

jbow
Isn't  the Loudness control/button for the decreased highs and lows that come with lower volume? I usually like things fairly flat. If anything I may put the bass +2, mid 0, and treble +1 and keep the Loudness off. I used to pump the highs more.

That's exactly what the loudness button is for. Our ears don't hear the lower or higher frequencies as well at lower volumes. The loudness button compensates for that.

I see that a lot of people are feeling annoyed that their mix winds up getting played on ear buds and I am paused to wonder if perhaps the way forward is to mix different versions for different devices?
 
For example: one mix for stereos and a different mix for ear buds, etc.
 
Then the consumer simply downloads the appropriate version for their device from the web-store. I'm imagining that the ear bud version would be pretty slap dash but surely there is a way to optimize fizzle?

Royal did you bother reading this thread?

As it's my own?... Not even slightly... I take it you've been discussing exactly this?... Well I'll just slink back off into my dark corner...