Headphone Quality Guide: What Makes Beats 'Bad'

There are a few things that make headphones objectively good headphones, and there are also personal preferences that shouldn't be ignored either. Headphones "sounding good" to you is a combination of comfort, clarity, distortion, isolation, and frequency response. Some of these are personal preferences, but some of them can be objectively good or bad. I would even argue my opinion of a flat frequency response to be superior to other opinions.

I'll start off by explaining what is good and what is bad with headphones. Clarity is probably one of the most important aspects, meaning that sounds are reproduced with little distortion. This is great for everyone. If your headphones aren't very clear, you're not going to hear many of the subtler sounds in a song. Something similar to clarity is the frequency response. This dictates how headphones reproduce highs, lows, and mids. Really deep and low sounds register low on a frequency scale, and highs registering higher. Some headphones, such as Beats by Dre, over-represent the lows and highs while disregarding the mids. In order to get an accurate frequency response, no section should be represented more than another. The sounds should all be about equal. This makes Beats great to listen to bumping music, but you're going to be missing out on subtler sounds in the middle. Many people prefer an over-representation of bass, but you don't need to buy bad headphones to get that. Buying headphones with a more flat frequency response will allow you to adjust the individual frequency levels using software on your computer or phone instead of being stuck with roughly the same frequency levels no matter what you're listening to.

Many people dislike Beats because of their price and how popular they are for what they do. This is understandable, as Beats spends most of its money on advertising. When you're paying double the price for Beats, you're really paying them to advertise. It's genius for them, but bad for the consumer. Try to look into less popular brands, because usually they use almost all your money to develop better headphones instead of spending it on advertising and design. Not to say design isn't important, but you shouldn't be willing to sacrifice design for sound quality.

My headphones? I use Audio-Technica M50s. They're largely considered by the audiophile community as a good entrance set of headphones, as they're fairly cheap with great sound reproduction.

When looking for headphones, I'd suggest not looking at Amazon, Best Buy, or any common stores. I'd check audiophile blogs. They listen to tons of brands of headphones every day and know what sounds good and what doesn't. They're truly passionate about how their music sounds and they aren't going to recommend something that isn't perfect. So if you care about what your headphones sound like, walk on the path less traveled. You may be surprised in what you find.

Top image source: Head-Fi