Despite Patent Settlement, Apple Pulls Bose Merchandise From Its Stores

Apple has long sold Bose headphones and speakers in its retail stores, including in the time since it acquired Bose-competitor Beats Audio, and despite the lawsuit filed by Bose against Apple alleging patent violations on the part of Beats. That's come to an end this week, though: Apple's dropped Bose merchandise both in its retail locations and online, despite recent news that the two companies have settled the patent suit.

Comments

Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

And so is Apple.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Jane Q. Public]

And so is Apple.

Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware.

Further, that slight price difference is fully justified, given the engineering research Apple puts in to ensure that the hardware all works together in complete harmony; most PC manufacturers rely on Microsoft to do that job via drivers and software bridges.

The result is a machine that takes very good advantage of the hardware you do get, and the physical engineering is seldom matched by rivals at anything like the same price point.

So say what you will. Yes, Apples tend to be a bit spendy. But what you get for the price is very fine indeed.

AND -- before I forget -- Macintoshes make some of the best Windows PCs on the market! Without needing VMWare or any third-party VM, Apple (unlike Windows or Linux) fully supports dual-boot out-of-the-box. Just install your favorite version of Windows in Bootcamp, and you have the best of both worlds. Boot into OS X, or Windows. (I know you can do that with other OSes, but they all require 3rd-party VM software to do it. Apple builds it in.)

So when I want to run a game, FPS for example that isn't on Mac... I just restart, and I get the FULL Windows performance... not bogged down via some VM.

But wait! There's more!

I can ALSO install VMWare on the Mac, and if I don't need full performance, I can load THE SAME Bootcamp Windows install via VMWare without rebooting... and while I don't get the same performance as booting Windows, it's not a separate install, it's the same one. I can run all the less-resource-intensive Windows apps all I like, without rebooting.

So it's the best of three worlds. I've got OS X, which is a great OS in many ways, plus I can boot straight into Windows and get full Windows performance, plus I can run less-intensive Windows programs anytime I want via VMWare, without having to install 2 different copies of Windows. It's the same in VM as it is in native boot... down to the very last file.

Nobody else does that.

Long and short: my Mac can kick your PC's ass in most ways (same build date and price range), at being a PC, AND be a Mac as well, with all that comes with that.

If you don't think that justifies a SMALL increase in price for the very same hardware, you haven't tried doing it.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

[the] price difference is fully justified, given the engineering research Apple puts in to ensure that the hardware all works together in complete harmony

Apparently, autosuggestion is a very powerful marketing tool. :)

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[cyn1c77]

And so is Apple.

Apple products are expensive, but generally have good design and performance.

Bose and Beats have good design, but have always been deemed to have poor performance by people who actually review them for their sound qualities.

I'm not hating... check the reviews.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[BronsCon]

Without needing VMWare or any third-party VM, Apple (unlike Windows or Linux) fully supports dual-boot out-of-the-box.

That's a function of the bootloader, not the OS. GRUB, the default bootloader for most Linux distros of any popularity, supports dual-boot, tri-boot, quad-boot, however-the-fuck-many-boot, right out of the box. In fact, the Windows bootloader supports this, as well, though it's a bit more work to set up.

I'm sitting here typing this on a Mac, because the platform does have its advantages, but dual-boot isn't something unique to the Mac.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Zontar The Mindless]

Bose headphones have always been overpriced, and don't hold up under heavy use.

In my experience, real professionals use Sennheiser. At least, when I worked in radio, about 80% of the DJs and engineers I knew used Sennheisers, and laughed at me when I asked whether Bose was really any good--"on TV, sure".

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware

Actually, the high-end Mac Pro is currently cheaper.

I know you can do that with other OSes, but they all require 3rd-party VM software to do it. Apple builds it in.

This has nothing to do with VMs.
Bootcamp is little more than a setup and partition tool. You can have multi-boot (keyword: bootloader) on all PCs including Macs, but you can't just go ahead and install OS X on most of the ones not designed in Cupertino.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

Of course, they're consumer crapware, as opposed to actual pro/hi-fi gear like Sennheiser, Audio Technica, AKG, Bowers & Wilkins, et al.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I've priced them out against something like Sony, that's correct.

However, against Asus, who IMO makes better products, they are much more expensive. Let's do it now.

Holy shit, the only Apple laptop that doesn't use Intel Integrated, is the 15" Macbook Pro with Retina display. It's come along a lot, but still sucks if doing anything 3D that actually uses the graphics card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
Differences: +.1GHz Lenovo
256GB SSD (Lenovo) vs 512GB SSD (Apple)
Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (Lenovo) vs 2880 x 1800 (Apple)
Screen size: 15.6 (Lenovo) vs 15.4 (Apple)
Graphics: 860M (Lenovo) vs 750M (Apple)
Weight: 5.29 (Lenovo) vs 4.46 lbs (Apple)
Apple lacks a built in Gigabit Ethernet port. It has 2 Thunderbolt ports (basically can be considered proprietary, given usage at the moment)

Cost?
  $1,269.99 vs $2499
So 2 laptops with almost all specs, exceeding the Apple's specs for the same price. (~230 for a 512GB SSD, if you want to increase storage that way, which still puts it at 60% of the cost)

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

it's part of the OS

When was the last time YOU wrote a fuckin' bootloader? Last time I did that was oh, about... a week ago. It most certainly IS a separate piece of code--maybe bundled with other bits of the OS, but it isn't the same binary. A bootloader needs to be SMALL. A kernel can be quite LARGE (and that is the OS *proper*).

Citation, because I fully expect you to be a dumb shit and claim I'm wrong:

BootX (/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX) is the default bootloader on Mac OS X.

BootX is also the name of an open source bootloader (different from Apple's BootX) that allows dual-booting Mac OS and Linux on "Old World" machines.

At this point, BootX draws the Apple logo splash screen, and starts the spinning cursor. If booting from a network device, a spinning globe is drawn instead.
        Depending on various conditions, BootX tries to retrieve and load the kernel cache file.
        The next step is to "decode" the kernel. If the kernel header indicates a compressed kernel, BootX tries to decompress it (typical LZSS compression is used, as you compress this kind of data once but expand it many times). Since the kernel binary can potentially be a "fat" binary (code for multiple architectures residing in the same binary), BootX checks if it indeed is (fat), and if so, "thins" it (figures out the PowerPC code).
        BootX attempts to decode the file (possibly "thinned") as a Mach-O binary. If this fails, BootX also tries to decode it as ELF.
        If the above fails, BootX gives up, draws the failed boot picture, and goes into an infinite loop.
        If BootX is successful so far, it saves filesystem cache hits, misses and evicts, sets up various boot arguments and values (such as whether this is a graphical or verbose boot, whether there are some flags to be passed to the kernel, the size of installed RAM), and also calls a recursive function to flatten the device tree.
        Finally, BootX "calls" the kernel, immediately before which it "quiesces" Open Firmware, an operation as a result of which any asynchronous tasks in the firmware, timers, or DMA get stopped, etc.

If you mean bundled the same way OS X is, then GRUB is part of the OS too, since distros package it up with the kernel.

You fail. Please do not ever write system software because it would be worse than The Poettering. This comment is on par with you claiming that iOS is part of the "Linux theme". FFS, you keep showcasing how ignorant you are about system dev, so please do us all a favor and SHUT THE FUCK UP.

The worst part is that you make some pretty intelligent comments--until you get into talking shit out of your ass about things you clearly don't know diddly about. So again, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Chuckstar]

I always think it's funny when people get really snarky making wrong grammar corrections.

"Their" refers back to "Apple and Bose", although "stall" should be plural. The sentence is saying "so why should we care about which crap is pulled from Apple and Bose's respective stalls".

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[ihtoit]

not a pro, but I do love my Sennheiser flyspeck, and my Audio Research cans are pretty much the best sounding I've ever used. no idea what the coil hardware is, or what the magnets are, but it's like being kissed on the neck by Shahin Badar. I had a Bose radio, it went back because I thought it was broken. Sounded like shit. Or that could've been Radio 1.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

You missed the point, too. [...] I don't know any other OS that quite supports this.

That's not an OS feature.

That's REALLY an advantage.

I don't see an ADVANTAGE there. It's a convenient feature (also available under different systems, as pointed out by an AC here), but rarely necessary.
You don't need to access your game from the host anyway, since you want to game natively.
As for your other software, you can also use WINE/Crossover and if that fails have a little barebones XP (like Gamers Edition @ ~250 MB) that can run the rest. (You can have that installed in ~5 minutes (!) and be done with it.) In my experience VMWare will boot up a virtual disk faster, so there's really little point to keep anything besides the graphics intensive Windows-only stuff in your actual Windows.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Dog-Cow]

You are an idiot.

I was using the same NT 4 install as a native boot and under VMWare, under the original VMWare beta. Back before it was Workstation, back before Player or any of the server products existed. Back when you had to build the kernel modules by hand after tweaking the kernel. Back when the only VMware version available outside the company was for Linux. Back before OS X was released.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you haven't tried Bootcamp recently. You can install bootcamp and then run that bootcamp image inside Mac OS X, but it will get deactivated as it will be seen as a separate installation.

That said, VMWare, or Parallels works far better than VMWare does on Windows itself. Like I can run VMWare on my Mac and any low-spec D3D game and get roughly 80% of the performance as Native Winodows does. On a desktop Windows doing VMware with a windows client, you're lucky if you get 50% out of the virtualized GPU.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Zontar The Mindless]

I'm not responsible for the Wikipedia article.

I'm not responsible for the fact that he was stupid enough to play with a gun while he was high.

I'm not responsible for the dog-crap his band started putting out after he offed himself.

But he was an excellent and innovative guitarist, composer, and bandleader who deserves heaps more recognition than he got.

I've long since outgrown idols. But I continue to admire him for his music.

Who cares what the man looked like? The point is to listen.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Zontar The Mindless]

Admit it, Jane. You not only inhaled--you drank the bong water afterwards.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[disambiguated]

Yep. This is really more a function of the (guest) OS than anything else. As long as the guest is OK booting under either hardware (physical and virtual) dynamically, it should work fine. It's been a long time since mainstream OSs couldn't do that. It can be a little tricky to set up the VM to use a physical partition, though. That's the part that bootcamp does for you, which is nice, but it's definitely not the only way to make this work.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Second, it's not a separate bootloader, like GRUB or Chameleon, it's part of the OS.

If you have "a bootloader as a part of the OS", I think you're sitting in front of a hypervisor/VM system. ;-) Otherwise the things you just said make little sense to me.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

I make my living as a writer and editor

Use your skills where they make a difference, then. Hint: in many cases a "grammar train wreck" is fine as long as the meaning is not ambiguous. Conversations and comments on slashdot are two such cases.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[drinkypoo]

Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware.

So what? Apple makes their decisions on a different basis than I do. They choose parts based on maximum availability and profit. I choose parts based on price:performance ratio. I can build much more machine for significantly less money. Who cares if some other corporations are also trying to milk me?

I can ALSO install VMWare on the Mac

Yeah, I can also install vmware on my PC, and run MacOS in it, because some people have worked around the roadblocks that Apple put in the way to prevent users who pay for their software from doing that. How odd that Microsoft will permit me to virtualize their OS, but Apple won't. It's almost like they're bigger assholes than Microsoft. No, wait. It's exactly like that.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only person in the world who thinks Bose products look totally aweful and boring?

If you want to spend way too much money on a schmuck brand, then go for B&O. Whether you like their looks is personal opinion, but at least they've got something original. And they've made some very impressive sounding speakers in the past, typically made with high-quality, durable components. Overpriced? Definetely, but at least you get *something* for your money. They *know* they're schmuck and they really go for it, lol.

Bose is expensive, made with crap components (they are the only major speaker brand that uses cheap LDF for their 'bass module', and their satellite speakers are made out of plastic), looks like crap (wow another black rectangle), and sounds like crap (no highs, no lows).

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[occasional_dabbler]

They have some nice niche products not related to the noise-cancelling tech. I used to travel a lot for work and a pair of these made life a little more comfortable; you can't wear headphones all the time. They are expensive and the sound is quite coloured, but the bass and the volume you get from such a tiny thing is impressive. I had an equaliser setting saved in iTunes to flatten them out a bit.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[ray-auch]

But mainly, as I clearly stated above, what you are missing with other products is that you don't have the option of dual-booting AND, at the same time, running the SAME foreign OS install in VMWare or the like. If you want to do that you are stuck with 2 different foreign OS installs, and your files won't be in sync.

I didn't say dual-booting was unique to Mac. Read it again. What I wrote was that it's BETTER. Especially if you have VMWare. While that's a third-party product, it enables you to do what other OSes won't do, even with VMWare.

Without specifying which VMWare product it is a bit difficult to see what you are getting at - workstation or full ring-0 hypervisor like ESX ?

If you mean just the option of booting a virtual disk (vhd) which you can also use in an emulator, Windows has had that for 5 years (since 7) without needing a third party emulator (VirtualPC from MS).

If you mean having the option of booting a vhd and having also a full hypervisor that can run that vhd as a virtual machine, built into the OS, Windows has had that for six years on the server OS versions, and two on client (Windows 8) - Hyper-V is built in along with native-boot-from-vhd.

There are also Linux options for both boot-native-from-vhd and built in hypervisors.

So, struggling a bit to see what it is you think other OSes can't do ?

Re: Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

So many errors of logic; so little time. You assume that everyone places the same values on device capabilities that you do. Bluetooth file transfers with other devices? Meh. But it sounds important to you; so buy whatever device solves your problems. But an umbrella condemnation of users' decision-making capacity because their valued don't align with yours is irrational. And the gratuitous, thinly-veiled homophobic comment doesn't advance your argument.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware.

Wrong. Apple appear similar, but you have to factor in upgrade costs where Apple's version of a given card can be 150-200% that for a regular PC. You also have to consider Apple build in obsolescence where each OS version bump knocks off a hardware release for no reason other than killing that line and rendering it worthless in the pre-owned market. No one wants a machine that can't have the current OS.

So spare us of your Apple zealotry, a standard PC will shit all over Apple's equivalent for less money and have better hardware and software upgrade options. But you can't accept that, you're a fanboi that probably cannot use a real UI and loves the kindergarten OS X crap.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[The Grim Reefer]

Because you complained about modding like a twat, modbomb on the way to as many posts of yours as I can, once I get me one of them piles of 15 I get regularly.

While I understand the sentiment, as I have been tempted to do the same in the past, I respectfully ask you to not abuse the mod system this way. The mod system is meant to be used to rate each post on it's own merits, not the poster themselves. I'm not judging Jane.q here, but even trolls can make a good point on occasion.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Anonymous Coward]

B-O-S-E:
Better Off with Something Else

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[vux984]

"Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware"

This is true. But give a PC buyer a choice between a PC that comes with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, thunderbolt, wireless 802.11ac, and 4 usb 3 ports at one price and another PC with the SAME CPU and RAM and harddrive but comes with wifi keyboard and mouse, no thunderbolt, wireless-n, and 2usb3 ports + 2usb2 ports that costs $300+ less and nearly all them will have no reason to justify the expense of the premium model.

That is the issue with Macs. They sell you stuff you don't need, don't care about, and can't use. Wireless-ac being forced down our throats for example... what home user cares about it? What is it going to talk to at 1.3GPs? Or bluetooth peripherals? wifi gear is half the price, tends to do better on battery -- hell logitech makes solar wifi keyboards now. Or thunderbolt?Why exactly is every imac user paying for two of them? I've yet to meet a single home user with a single thunderbolt peripheral.

Save one -- bunches of pissed of macbook pro owners who need a thunderbolt to ethernet dongle because apple didn't deign to give a pro laptop a built in network port.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Kumiorava]

We can always go and compare a gaming rig to a proper business laptop, but that just doesn't make sense. There are few important things missing from the configuration from Lenovo. First is the IPS panel, you are able to get 4K TFT monitor for far less than retina resolution IPS panel. Second major issue is that Apple comes with proper 8h battery life while Lenovo will run out around 4h. Third is professional Windows license, which OS X certainly compares to.

If you try to get true Lenovo mobile workstation then the $2500 starts to be a bargain. There are valid reasons why you are able to get the machine you linked in that particular price and Lenovo mobile workstations with lesser specifications for far higher price.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Soluzar]

Beats is worse than either though, by a long way.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Kumiorava]

Also I forgot to mention that Apple SSD PCIe drives perform about twice as fast as your average SSD on SATA port... which does not come cheap as well. Together with double capacity you are looking at performance that even money cannot buy for this particular Lenovo machine. Higher-end Lenovo's can easily match that, but it comes with a price.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[gnasher719]

When was the last time YOU wrote a fuckin' bootloader? Last time I did that was oh, about... a week ago.

And you think that makes you qualified to talk about the value of commercial hardware? I don't think so.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[gnasher719]

Yeah, I can also install vmware on my PC, and run MacOS in it, because some people have worked around the roadblocks that Apple put in the way to prevent users who pay for their software from doing that. How odd that Microsoft will permit me to virtualize their OS, but Apple won't. It's almost like they're bigger assholes than Microsoft. No, wait. It's exactly like that.

Microsoft's _business_ is to sell their operating system. Apple's _business_ is to sell computer hardware. If you claim that you can't see the difference then you are either deeply dishonest or an idiot.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Skarjak]

Did we just witness the writing equivalent of an internet tough guy?

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Skarjak]

I wish I had mod points. The guy you're replying to is a tool.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Khyber]

"Actually, the high-end Mac Pro is currently cheaper [extremetech.com]."

It's pretty obvious these guys never heard of Pricewatch.com - I just built their same $10,000 computer for less (and it's still selling for that price on Apple's website.)

Their quoted price on the case was ~$160 on newegg. $130 on pricewatch (from TigerDirect, everyone else is still pushing $160 or higher)

Again, $160 for the PSU. Same PSU - $130 (via tigerdirect.)

$2750 for the CPU. $2600 (and again from TigerDirect.)

I'm already a couple hundred bucks cheaper. We haven't even gotten to motherboard, RAM, GPUs, or Storage or OS license, yet.

On to the motherboard. $280 for a mobo that only supports 32GB Non-ECC and no thunderbolt? Found a better ASRock mobo for $260 that can do 64GB ECC DDR4 (The X99M Extreme 4) AND IT HAS THUNDERBOLT, plus more connectors, and is STILL mATX. (Again, Tigerdirect via pricewatch advertising)

$3400 each ($6800 total) for the dual FirePro W9000s? A SINGLE S10000 OUTPERFORMS and costs ONLY $2300, but we want exact hardware so let's drop TWO in for the fuck of it. (found on Google Shopping) So we're at $4600 on the GPU side.

Just the GPU price discrepancy alone DESTROYED extremetech's price argument. Do I need to keep going?

Windows machines, on a hardware-for-hardware basis, have ALWAYS been lower-cost than Apple's equipment. There are tons of images floating around doing comparisons over the years - Windows machines always come out at LEAST 10% cheaper, and quite often upwards of 50% cheaper for the same hardware options.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[anagama]

As an aside, I have one of those logitech Bluetooth keyboards with the solar panel and the ability to store connection info for three devices and then switch between them by pushing one of the three physical select buttons. Was awesome -- for 9 months. Now it won't turn on at all.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[DaMattster]

And so is Apple.

I respectfully disagree. My MacBook Pro which I got around July of 2012 has been 100% reliable. It has never needed any warranty work whatsoever so unlike the Windows laptops I've had in the past. I've had Dell, Gateway, Sony, Toshiba and each and every one of those machines have needed at least two significant repairs under warranty. I will give you that Bose is overrated. I've found some cheap WalMart noise cancelling headphones that work just as well but then again my hearing isn't 100% sharp anyhow.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[BronsCon]

I'm so glad all of you stepped in to trash this guy, I just don't have it in me to deal with that level of ignorant anymore.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[weilawei]

you don't have the option of dual-booting AND, at the same time, running the SAME foreign OS install in VMWare

Hrm, VMware Workstation 5.5 is getting a bit long in the tooth, but...

VMware Workstation 5.5 Configuring a Dual-Boot Computer for Use with a Virtual Machine

Many users install VMware Workstation on a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer so they can run one or more of the existing operating systems in a virtual machine. If you are doing this, you may want to use the existing installation of an operating system rather than reinstall it in a virtual machine.

[...]

To support such installations, VMware Workstation makes it possible for you to use a physical IDE disk or partition, also known as a physical disk, inside a virtual machine.

You are incorrect. QED.

Re: Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[BronsCon]

You can get 3rd party bootloaders for Linux and OSX, as well, and you don't need a 3rd party bootloader for Windows to dual-boot. Not sure what your point is.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[frank_adrian314159]

Yes. And you can have my AKG headphones when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers. Even at the cost of a comparable set of Beats headphones they are so much better than those PoSs. Same for Bose. I can actually hear balanced sound and detail from my AKGs. I use them for audio editing. I can definitely hear the difference. I say to anyone that buys either Beats or Bose (or other consumer stuff) to at least upgrade to a prosumer level of headphones from one of the manufacturers listed in the parent post - your ears will thank you.

Re: Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[BronsCon]

What you fail to see is that I addressed the fact that what he claims is only possible on OSX is, in fact, possible in Windows and Linux, as well. You can, in fact, install a second OS on a separate partition and both boot to it and run it in a VM, in both Windows and Linux; you can also do the same installing a second OS on a virtual disk. Bootloader support is there in Windows and most major Linux distros, out of the box. Hell, you can boot 3, 4, or any arbitrary number of operating systems you wish on a Windows or Linux PC; you just can't natively boot OSX on one.

That you can't boot OSX on commodity PC hardware, which hasn't been blessed by Apple, is an artificially enforced a shortcoming of OSX, as Apple does actively work to prevent that. Were apple to remove the "genuine hardware" checks (which Chameleon bypasses) from the kernel, OSX would boot just the same on any PC build with supported (whether blessed or not) hardware. And, before anyone jumps on my for trying to make this a religious issue, I'd like to point out two facts:

A) I'm a Mac user and
B) "Blessed" is Apple's own term.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[frank_adrian314159]

Sennheiser? Yes.

Their HD202s have been available 5/$89 at BSW for the past ten years (which is also why you see Sennheisers in radio a lot). They're good enough for voice work and are often used in recording studios for tracking. And even at their low cost they still sound better than Beats or Bose stuff.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[BronsCon]

That's what I prefer to do. Sometimes I get my facts mixed up, but I tend to admit it when it's pointed out to me, and often even thank whoever corrected me. It's the only reason I still have excellent karma despite being regularly downmodded for posting correct information. :)

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[sa1lnr]

"at being a PC"

Hardware wise it is a PC. And they have been for quite some time.

Re: Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Barsteward]

step away from that mirror before it breaks

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

It can be a little tricky to set up the VM [...] That's the part that bootcamp does for you

Ok, Repeat after me:
Bootcamp has nothing to do with VMs. Bootcamp is just a user friendly (i.e. dumbed down) partition editor and Windows configuration "preparer." In addition, Bootcamp sets the startup drive to boot into Windows. Period.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[AK Marc]

Whether or not the OP was a train wreck, the correction was wrong. Those are separate issues.

Also, English is proscriptive, not descriptive (yes, I know the Grammar Nazis hate that), so if the meaning is clear and unambiguous, and likely to have been used by a native speaker, then it's "correct". His train wreck was correct enough, and more correct than the wrong correction issued after.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[barc0001]

"my Mac can kick your PC's ass in most ways"

Except upgrades. Try updating your video card after a year and let me know how that works out for you. One of the strengths of my PC is that I replace a couple hundred dollars worth of parts couple of years and remain modern. The Apple upgrade cycle is a tad more costly. Step 1. Time machine everything. Step 2. Take paycheck(s) to Apple vendor. Step 3. Restore backup from Time Machine to new Apple machine. Step 4. Craigslist/Ebay old machine after wiping to recoup a percentage of your outlay on new Mac.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

Uhm, you know that the S series is for servers? But anyway:

a single S10000 draws 375W compared to 550W for a pair of W9000's [~= D700], while offering nearly identical performance. [http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Launches-New-DualGPU-FirePro-S10000-Aimed-At-Datacenters-Virtualization/]

You also know that it's been a while since the Mac Pro was announced. I should have omitted the word "currently" in my statement, of course.
I don't agree with their choices either, but dude, "better" and "ASRock" in the same sentence? Seriously?
And just another side remark. You know the difference between Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2?
So, all in all, you haven't really convinced me with your post. I suggest you have a closer look at the specs of the Mac Pro vs. extremetech's "clone." Though I would have personally preferred the old chassis versus the "can" if just for upgradeability's sake.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

but stop calling it some kind of fucking bargain

It's not a bargain, it's a workstation. And (at that time) was cheaper than any comparable DIY build. The point stands.

you pay a shitload with almost zero upgrade capability.

No shit, that pisses me off big time.
You have suggestions for a laptop with a metal case, Thunderbolt 2 (!), USB3 and a discrete graphics card?
I've looked hard, but can't find anything that fits. And I refuse to buy one of these retina MBPs, because everything is soldered and there's no space for 2 HDDs (I currently have an SSD in the optical bay and a HDD in the regular bay).

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[AK Marc]

But mainly, as I clearly stated above, what you are missing with other products is that you don't have the option of dual-booting AND, at the same time, running the SAME foreign OS install in VMWare or the like.

Because dual-simultaneous OS isn't "dual boot"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-booting "Multi-booting is the act of installing multiple operating systems on a computer, and being able to choose which one to boot when starting the computer." Dual booting is a subset of multi-booting with only two OS.

So dual-booting means choosing the OS on boot. I've done that in the early '90s with Windows. Yes, you can dual-boot NT without too much trouble. Maybe it wasn't until 4.0, but NT 3.51/ NT 4.0 dual boot was common. Two independent OSs, that counts, even if they are just versions of the same.

I didn't say dual-booting was unique to Mac. Read it again. What I wrote was that it's BETTER. Especially if you have VMWare.

Your words were different than you claim you meant. "Apple (unlike Windows or Linux) fully supports dual-boot out-of-the-box." makes it sound like you indicate Windows and Linux *can't* dual-boot out-of-the-box.

I'm not sure if there's a term for multi-OS (simultaneously) beyond VM. And Windows does build in VM support these days. Not sure how much is for VMWare and how much for VSphere. I just load VMWare, and run things in it, rather than loading a primary OS, and virtualizing others within it.

While that's a third-party product, it enables you to do what other OSes won't do, even with VMWare.

That's not what you said, and not correct even with your correction. I've used Windows with VMs loaded within the OS with no "extra" work.

What I think you are claiming is you can run OS1 and virtualize OS2, or boot into OS2, with no functional difference between the virtualizied OS2 or dual-booted OS2. I'm not sure, given that you are spending so much time insisting you didn't say what you obviously did (we can see the entire thread), you aren't explaining what you meant.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Aighearach]

Yeah, I can also install vmware on my PC, and run MacOS in it, because some people have worked around the roadblocks that Apple put in the way to prevent users who pay for their software from doing that. How odd that Microsoft will permit me to virtualize their OS, but Apple won't. It's almost like they're bigger assholes than Microsoft. No, wait. It's exactly like that.

Microsoft's _business_ is to sell their operating system. Apple's _business_ is to sell computer hardware. If you claim that you can't see the difference then you are either deeply dishonest or an idiot.

You establish a reason that could explain the difference in behavior, but that doesn't refute the claim in any way; or even attempt to.

Is your thesis that any honest person who is not an idiot knows that selling software leads to better morals and ethics than selling hardware? I assume anybody with an IQ bigger than their shoe size can figure out that that is absurd, and hardware vendors can be morally good or bad. There is nothing about hardware itself that requires a company to suck. And software is so abstract, there is an almost unlimited range of moral choices available; a software company should have no trouble being immoral or unethical. And indeed, if you look at just the things MicroSoft was found guilty of in the 90s, we know they have a history that includes both immoral and unethical behavior.

On the technical specifics here, in the past MS didn't like virtualization because by opposing it they could negotiate better terms with hardware vendors. Because of the scale of the market (people mistakenly think this comes from monopoly) the same hardware pressures involve OS companies like MS, because their attitude towards hardware is determined largely by their contracts with the hardware companies. So it is a fake difference.

I gotta ask, did you not know all that (which is ignorance dishonestly shilling itself as being knowledgable) or are you just an idiot?

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[AK Marc]

So the problem is that OS X is too shitty to load hardware-independent, like every other OS does. Because you can do this with NT and Linux, as the "host" as well, but not with OS X as the second OS, because OS X refuses. Not because of some limitation of the primary OS.

You aren't being modded down because people miss the point. You are being modded down because you are wrong, and refuse to listen to anyone else.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Aighearach]

Of course, they're consumer crapware, as opposed to actual pro/hi-fi gear like Sennheiser, Audio Technica, AKG, Bowers & Wilkins, et al.

I'm not sure if you got that wrong on purpose, or really misunderstood the point that much.

The claim is not that they are consumer crapware. The claim is that they have low performance compared to other brands at the same price that don't have the name familiarity. In other words, they are lower quality than an equal-priced generic.

The ones you listed are all from a different price point, and are not the ones people are comparing them to when talking about low performance.

$100 bose headphones have about the same sound as a $20 JVC, but with nicer pads and a better cord. The $40 JVC has equal quality pads, and actually better sound. But the bose still has a nicer cord. Luckily, copper wires of sufficient capacity to carry the signal all sound the same.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Aighearach]

I disagree that they need to go up to semi-pro to get better sound. They can spend the same money on any generic and get good sound. Even sony sounds better at a lower price than bose.

The reason bose sells a lot is because the hi-price hi-fi stores know to demo a *cheaper* generic against the name brand. Then they can use the pitch, "you get what you pay for." Which is true, in a very literal sense; you pay some amount, and what you got for it is what you got for it.

My advice to consumers, and this is true for almost all products not just headphones; only buy the highest label-price brands if you're buying at the highest price bracket. The very best of the best is better than the rest, for sure. For everything in the middle 95%, the same price with a less known brand will usually give you more bang for your buck, for the simple reason that name familiarity increases the price. You still have to check reviews on individual models though, there will be a few "stinker" generics to avoid.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Aighearach]

There are lots of blind wine tastings, BTW.
You might be European, I think they fell out of favor when the French snobs were rating much cheaper California wines as being equal.
Here in the US there is wine tasting fad right now, with lots of blind tasting events. Interestingly, these are mainly used to sell mid-priced wines by showing that they stand toe-to-toe with big names. Prove to the consumer that you're selling something as good as the fancy stuff, they might buy a case.
Or, you just don't pay attention to wine tasting and so of course you can get "never" as an easy answer. ;)

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Khyber]

ASRock tends to be better than ASUS. If we went beige box route, I could drop the price so far as to be laughable, even using some premium stuff like SuperMicro motherboards.

How about we run top of the line mac pro right now, since it's still their absolute top-of-the-line computer. I'm at $9,599 maxed out. 64GB RAM But only 1833MHz DDR3 (My motherboard was 2133 DDR4.) The Apple RAM costs $1200. I can get that same amount for $900.

On the GPU side, yes those are server cards, but that is still PCI-Express, and again, a single one equals dual W9000s. At 2/3 the price, and roughly 2/3 the power consumption. Throwing two of those in is a no-brainer and you're still saving a couple thousand, easily.

Thunderbolt 2 vs Thunderbolt - well, the only thing that needs that kind of bandwidth is the monitor, for now. But HDMI can do that off one of my GPUs, so I wouldn't even worry about that. It's almost useless, and I prefer dedicated peripherals anyways.

Apple charges too much of a premium, period. Even with the change to a beige EE-ATX box (which is still not that expesive) and flip over to a good SuperMicro board for $500 that can support 1.5TB ECC DDR4 Memory, comes with 4 gigabit ethernet ports, and more good stuff, I'm still sitting well under Apple's price.

Apple just costs too much. I could build one of these for workstation/OpenCL stuff and still have enough money to build a lesser one for gaming, for the same cost, and a whole lot more power together.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Jane Q. Public]

Because you complained about modding like a twat, modbomb on the way to as many posts of yours as I can, once I get me one of them piles of 15 I get regularly.

I mentioned a problem with inappropriate modding. I did not "complain about modding like a twat".

Slashdot members are supposed to be responsible adults. That includes modding appropriately, not just marking down because "I Disagree" or because you don't like somebody's personality.

If you modbomb me, it will only reflect on yourself. Sometimes it really is too bad that modders aren't listed when they mod.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Jane Q. Public]

Interesting but beside the point I was making. It wasn't about what VMWare can do, it was about how well the OS supports it and vice versa.

Those are interesting links, but they just reinforce the point I was making: in VMWare, on OS X, there is a simple one-click option to set up a Bootcamp partition as a virtual machine.

Unlike the examples at those links, it does not require technical knowledge or a lot of configuration. AND, Apple's own VMWare bootcamp drivers assure that you get (approximately) the same operation from your peripherals in your OS and your VM.

So yeah: Apple is still doing it better. These don't refute the point, they're examples.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Hamsterdan]

"even most Linux distros do not explicitly encourage the use of dual-booting"

It's part of the setup when you install linux

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[exomondo]

We can always go and compare a gaming rig to a proper business laptop, but that just doesn't make sense.

As always, it depends on what you are looking for. Arguing specs and price is just retarded when you aren't specifying a use case, whether you spend more money on a faster SSD or you sacrifice battery life for a more powerful GPU depends solely on what you are going to use it for so unless you are comparing identical hardware you can draw absolutely zero conclusion until then.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[danomac]

I don't know about the good design and performance part - wasn't it not too long ago that there were a plethora of overheating MacBook Pros? I think it was even posted on slashdot...

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

How about we run top of the line mac pro right now

I'd rather wait for a refresh and compare it then. It would be false from a pragmatic/scientific standpoint to compare apples with oranges ; )
Alternatively, compare it to hardware, which was available in 2013. I agree that they should have went down with the price by now.

But software-wise, OS X (+ streamlined pro-apps) beats Windows IMO. I'll pay a premium just for that without thinking about it twice.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

Pressed submit too early.

[TB2 ...] the only thing that needs that kind of bandwidth is the monitor

I disagree. There's a huge difference and much more applications than just a monitor. You can connect a box of ASICs for instance.

I prefer dedicated peripherals anyways

I prefer internal peripherals too, but TB2-connected stuff is a very good addition, if you have the extra lanes supported by the motherboard.

ASRock tends to be better than ASUS.

Dunno, for me they're almost the same with a different price-tag and the ASUS brand having the higher-quality components.
Obviously no ASUS brand can be reasonably compared to a Supermicro or Tyan board, but we digress here.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

You still have to check reviews on individual models though, there will be a few "stinker" generics to avoid. Like Samsung, avoid them like the plague!

FTFY ;)

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[qpqp]

A $150 Beyer Dynamic will always sound way better than a $150 Bose.*
*For current values of always, BD and Bose.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[red crab]

Third, even most Linux distros do not explicitly encourage the use of dual-booting, and have a whole system setup including walk-throughs telling you how to do it, built right into the OS. .

Could you name just one Linux distro that does not "explicitly encourage " the use of dual-booting. It's not even clear what do you mean by that term, have you actually ever seen a message on any Linux installer that tells you its "dangerous" to load multiple operating systems on one disk. I am asking that because I've seen that laughable message during Windows XP installation. Or have you ever come across a situation where the Linux installer has failed to detect another already-installed third party OS.

This is Slashdot; please don't write down anything unless you have researched it. But yes, some fuckhead has modded you up as "Informative"; so times are changing, even Slashdot readers are not the ones like they used to be.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Dishevel]

So you have never used a computer other than a Mac. Right?

Because every PC I have ever owned supports dual booting. Dual Boot support does not lie in the hardware but in the bootloader. I have multiple machines right now that will boot in to 2 or 3 and one even has 4 operating systems installed.

Long and Short is this. You have so little knowledge of computers that your opinion is useless.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Shirley Marquez]

My problem with Apple is more about the lack of choice. My preferred desktop platform is a desktop PC with expansion slots and no built-in monitor. Apple won't sell me one of those. They discontinued the last one they offered, the Mac Pro, which was outside my budget in any case.

What they want to sell me is sealed boxes that I can't expand or upgrade. And they force me to buy a new monitor every time I want to upgrade my computer, which substantially increases the cost of the upgrade cycle, unless I buy a Mac Mini - but that has no GPU so it is unsuitable for my purposes.

I do like their laptop hardware. If I were shopping in the $1000 and up price range for one I would certainly consider a Mac. But my portable hardware is much less expensive than that.

Lack of choice is also a problem with iOS. There my problem isn't so much the limited hardware choices, though they don't have anything for really budget-conscious buyers. A more serious problem is that Apple holds absolute veto power over what apps are available. If they choose not to approve an app, that's the end of the story; you can't get it. (On Android the developer has the option of offering the package for sideloading and/or selling it on an alternative application store. Windows Phone is just as locked down as iOS.) There are entire classes of app that Apple categorically prohibits. Not just adult content, but also language interpreters, and browsers that don't use Apple's HTML rendering engine and Javascript engine. (Reference: http://www.trustedreviews.com/... Said engines, by the way, are basically the ones from an old version of Safari and are inferior to the ones in the current version of Safari, so any third party browser is guaranteed to offer inferior performance to Apple's own browser.)

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[gordo3000]

I think, and am no expert, that while the majority of hardware on a mac is the same as any old windows PC ( and these pieces are hardware are what completely determine user experience from a hardware perspective), there are certain pieces of hardware that because they are only sold on a mac, had no drivers available.

so for example, the isight camera and mac mice and keyboards have not traditionally had windows drivers written for them. but that doesn't mean I can't buy a laptop with a built in camera of equal specs and claim I have built an equivalent computer.

I say this as no expert, but as someone who used to build my own computers for the fun of it and install random OSs just to see what everyone was talking about.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[gordo3000]

huh, how can an OS be unfit or fit for number crunching? number crunching is the least OS relevant task I've ever run across. can you give even a single example where the OS interfered with a number crunching application?

And my experience is windows is generally worse because you have a number of background applications putting a resource drain on your machine.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[Jack Griffin]

I'm not hating... check the reviews.

Are these the same people that recommend timber volume knobs, and $1000 speaker cables? Bose make decent products, somewhere above consumer crap but below high end like Rotel, KEF, Cambridge etc Much like Apple really, it is expensive but it is half decent. Beats however is just crap...

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[gordo3000]

I thought his point was crystal clear. A software company will, by competition, want to offer software that is as versatile as possible to make you want to spend hundreds of dollars on that software.

a hardware company, on the other hand, offers software only as a complement to their hardware. And so frankly, using their software on any other hardware than their own they don't care about. so they won't waste time and money programming software that does X which does not support their business and by extension, their customers (you know, the folks who already own apple hardware). Of course, the base of OSX is an open source OS, so yeah, people have figured out how to modify config files just right to make it play with other hardware (and in some cases, written more complete drivers). But it isn't some trivial set of hardware checks they are bypassing. If so, it would be effortless to maintain a hackintosh. But it isn't effortless unless you buy very specific hardware, and even then it can still be a real PITA when you go to update the OS.

Of course, I have a lot of complaints of the apple direction of making everything glued down, irreplaceable or user upgradable ever, etc, etc. But that is relatively recent (i.e. started after my last computer upgrade) and so up till now have been a happy customer. I don't know if that will continue, but I so strongly prefer OSX I think it will for now. I still have a couple years at least before I cross that bridge so maybe they will come back to the light?

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[gordo3000]

I know very little about headphones, but just looking them up, AKG seems to have tons of headphones in the same range and style as Bose (100-300 USD). Of course, almost all of bose falls in that bracket, but AKG seemed to have 5-6 offerings around there as well.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[gordo3000]

actually they can't. there are some great studies (out of france) and one off tests written about for years.

wine tasters, professionals I mean, cannot tell the different between a white and a red at the same temperature if you add dye to the white (tested at the Bordeaux institute I believe). And there are great stories of wine writers and tasters not being able to identify either of two wines they were given (turned out, no one got it right, and they were the same wine served at a temperate difference of 5 degrees).

Yes wines taste different. And wine tasting is basically the same as clairvoyance. Wine tasting is the greatest reality distortion field ever.

Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been

[bitSmiter]

All of that... made easy to use.

I've set up bootloaders on Win/Linux/BeOS before. But Apple's system doesn't require you to know a damn thing about how it all works to set it up.

Nothing that Apple does is all that original. They just reduce the complexity of it. 'Time Machine' backups being another fine example. Easy to set up, brainless to use, easy to restore.

One crap audio brand battling with another

[CRCulver]

Both Bose and Beats are fairly ordinary products that have simply learned to dazzle the public with good marketing. An element of fashion is also involved, as Bose used to be marketed in posh fora and Beats has a distinctive look and Dr Dre endorsement. So, I can't feel sorry for either party -- or for Apple whose own acquisition of Beats betrayed their own tradition of fairly decent sound -- in a bitter patent battle. For what it's worth, after evaluating a few Beats 'phones and being immediately disappointed, I invested in a pair of AKG 701s (see my Amazon review) that offer what one immediately recognizes as better sound, and are around the same price (and well below audiophile woo-woo).

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Anonymous Coward]

>Product Description

>There are houses, and then there are mansions; there are cars, and then there are Bentleys, There are headphones, and then there are AKG K 701s — get the idea? AKG K 701s aren't for everybody, only people who demand the best performance from their phones and absolutely will not compromise on sound quality. If that's you, then prepare to be throughly satisfied. From the first time you feel their luxurious 3D-Form ear pads and self-adjusting cushioned leather headband, you'll be throughly impressed by the exquisite craftsmanship and appreciable build quality. And that's before you plug them in.

And this clown has the nerve to whine that Beats "dazzles the public with good marketing", lmao...even Apple wouldn't lay it on that heavy...sheesh.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[_merlin]

AKG isn't even that great. For pro work these days people are moving to Audio-Technica and Shure.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Anonymous Coward]

I invested in a pair of AKG 701s

No, you bought a pair of AKG 701s.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Anonymous Coward]

The Beats I've used were all pretty much identical. And almost all were used in studios where audio engineers needed something cheap that was identical in almost any studio they go into. The idea being, they know what sounds good when mixed on this reference piece...that said, most reference devices actually sound plain or bad on their own.

Personally, I thought they sounded decent for electronic or urban music. Seems like that was what they were tuned for. I HAD a pair (actually a few...I've worked in the industry and they were gifts, but I regifted most almost immediately)...and I used them for a while, but this isn't the type of music I listen to. The thing people don't get is that almost every genre has headphones tweaked for that particular listening enjoyment (err...not always by design but by audience). I always find it amazing that audiophiles want 'flat'...this is nice is you want to listen to 'audio' as opposed to music. Unless I'm doing sound design work where the stuff is intended to be in a variety of types and styles of music (i.e., owned a company that use to provide instrument samples / libraries for synth companies), I'm not going to want to listen to anything flat. The cult of audiophile is really a bunch of guys that delude themselves that vinyl isn't coloring music, and that flat lifeless music is the only way to listen to anything.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[CRCulver]

That appears to be Amazon's own text, and not AKG's. I can find no reference to this text on AKG's own site, and doing a search on portions of that Product Description bring up only Amazon or sites that have scraped Amazon.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, these audiophools who do their casual hobby listening on pro mixing gear kill me...super accurate monitors just make your ears tired because they reproduce even the highest frequencies that are barely audible and add nothing to the music but engineers need to hear during mastering because different types of media have different frequency ranges that need to be accounted for. But you know what they say about a phool and his money...

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[dgatwood]

I always find it amazing that audiophiles want 'flat'...this is nice is you want to listen to 'audio' as opposed to music. Unless I'm doing sound design work where the stuff is intended to be in a variety of types and styles of music (i.e., owned a company that use to provide instrument samples / libraries for synth companies), I'm not going to want to listen to anything flat.

Audiophiles—at least the ones who competently seek ways to improve quality, as opposed to the pseudoaudiophiles that spend $200 on a power cord—often listen to a wide range of music. For us, flat is a virtue, because any accentuation of frequency ranges that makes one style of music sound better invariably makes another style of music sound worse.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[sound vision]

"Flat" relating to headphones usually means a flat frequency response, unless you are talking to people who don't have a clue (which is a very real possibility). A flat frequency response is the goal of a high fidelity system, the very word "fidelity" means trueness to the original source, which is what you get with a flat frequency response. The idea that a speaker needs to distort the sound because it "sounds good" is absurd, and in fact it's the exact same rationale audiofools have for preferring vinyl. Vinyl inherently has an uneven frequency response (among other things) and it is those characteristics that give it is distinctive sound, leading some to prefer it. It is distinctive but it is low fidelity, just like a poor set of speakers. Besides, if you want the treble or bass jacked up or some other frequency band notched, that's what equalizers are for. Although it should be noted they are called equalizers because the intent is to bring an equal loudness to all frequency bands - aka, a flat frequency response. To compensate for speakers that are not already flat.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Anonymous Coward]

recreational and professional needs are different. mastering a track on professional equipment makes sense, but may not always make for the most enjoyable extended listening experience.

some enthusiasts like tube amps like some video gamers prefer a cool color temperature.

myself, for the music i enjoy, i hate anything other than very well-controlled bass, and i love treble, so i enjoy higher-end grados for recreation - wouldnt necessarily want to master all genres on em though.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[CRCulver]

"Invest" in this case is a venerable old metaphorical usage (see "to make use of for future benefits or advantages" in Merriam-Webster), meant in this case to express my outlay of a considerable amount of money in the expectation that these particular headphones would provide me with such long listening enjoyment that the initial purchase price would hardly seem excessive.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[CRCulver]

You consider $230 a considerable amount of money? Do you live in Sub-Saharan Africa or some shit?

I live in Romania, where the headphones I mention cost around half the average monthly salary. There's a wide range between Third World poverty and your presumably US income, and many Eastern Europeans would balk at spending so much for headphones.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sub-Saharan Africa we consider the $2 for the "Samsung galaxy S i9000 replacement earphones (free shipping worldwide)" a considerable sum of money, you insensitive clod. Fucking 1%-ers and your stupid jokes.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[ChrisMaple]

People who create music go to a lot of trouble to make it sound just right. If your playback system isn't flat, it doesn't sound like its creator intended, so it's inferior.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Aighearach]

That's like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any work done in photoshop because it's more true to the source or some shit. Sort of like how audiofools never seem to have a problem wacking off to lossy jpegs but put on an mp3 and you'll never hear the end of it.

No, it is like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any extra photo filters applied after the artist has already completed and distributed the image. Yes, of course the artist uses photoshop; just like the recording professionals use distortion!

The reason you want a flat frequency response from the speakers is because the sound has already been properly distorted by the artist. Just like, a computer monitor with accurate color will reproduce the colors the artist chose in photoslop!

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[dgatwood]

True. On the other hand, we also go to a lot of trouble to make sure it doesn't sound like crap on systems that aren't flat, because we know that some people will listen that way. I've spent many hours doing critical listening in my car, through iPod headphones, etc.

IMO, as long as a system has reasonably smooth response, even if it isn't flat, it sounds acceptable. Where you get into trouble is when your speakers are too small, and in a misguided effort to boost the bass response, the hardware engineers put a huge bump in the lower mids, making everything sound... I guess floppy is the best word I can think of to describe that mess. But as long as your speakers are big enough to produce real bass response down to at least 30 Hz at the typical listening distance (bass tends to fall off faster than treble with distance, so listening difference is critical), flat isn't necessarily that important.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Aighearach]

Dude, like, you know, butt-rock was the 80s.
`73 was a pretty awesome year in music though. Crocodile Rock, Dark Side of the Moon, Aerosmith, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, Tequila Sunrise... and that only brings us from January to April!

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[qpqp]

down to at least 30 Hz

Not everyone has a thousand bucks lying around for one of these speakers, though... 30 Hz... Man, I'm happy, when I get 50-60 ;)

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Zontar The Mindless]

No, it was the 90s/early 00s. I quit listening to US FM radio when it was decided that Nickelback was worthy of airplay.

I left the country just a couple of years later. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[sjames]

Flat is desirable because it makes it easy to appropriately color your current choice in music with the eq.

It's important to define audiophile. Some like quality equipment that produces superior results when used properly. Others (audio weenies)spend thousands on cables that don't work any better than a typical consumer cable and then 'break them in' for some reason, buy magic crystals to hook on the connectors and pay $50 to have their room conditioned over the phone.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[sjames]

They used to. Now they just make it 'loud' unless the musicians have enough clout to insist otherwise.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Aighearach]

By `91 or so "Butt-rock" was already a synonym for Hair Rock, which is basically Glam Metal where the music sucks or is not notable; all glam, no metal. Butt-rock means the same thing, just with an insulting way of describing glam.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Chuckstar]

Except to truly appreciate what the artist "meant", you'd have to use exactly the headphones they used when mixing. If they used Beats, and you use ones with "flat" response, you're still getting the "wrong" experience. Even more complicated, you really need to be using the headphones that an artist thought you'd be using. They might be using headphones with "flat" response in mixing, but purposefully dialing back on the bass knowing what the effect would be for fans listening through Beats, such that the experience the artist "meant" is best experienced through Beats.

Probably makes the most sense if people just use the headphones that provide sound they like, and not try to act all self-righteous when posting on the internet about headphones.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Nyder]

You consider $230 a considerable amount of money? Do you live in Sub-Saharan Africa or some shit? Try something by Audeze next time, mister big spender.

I'm an American and I think $230 is a considerable amount of money to spend on stuff. Mainly on crappy headphones.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Zontar The Mindless]

I seem to recall that it started after an "No Rock But Rock" ad campaign that got turned into "Butt Rock" by various wags because it was being used to push stuff like Nickelback and Seether. That was in '91, IIRC. "Glam" to me means New York Dolls, Roxy Music, and Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane period. KISS were also sort of glam. Not the same thing at all as Glam Metal/Hair Metal which is not the same thing at all as Butt-Rock.

Maybe it depends on who you talk to, or what part of the country you live(d) in.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Zontar The Mindless]

Or maybe you're right. '91 and '01 were both pretty traumatic years for me personally, and I still sometimes get memories of the two periods mixed up.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[thegarbz]

I always find it amazing that audiophiles want 'flat'...this is nice is you want to listen to 'audio' as opposed to music.

That's funny. I don't remember taking a hearing aid to a concert so I could turn up the bass on live music. Flat response is what I want my speakers to produce. If bass is what was supposed to come out of a song, then the producer / engineer should have taken care of that at the mixing desk.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[drinkypoo]

Hair rock and Butt rock are definitely the same thing. And Glam rock definitely also means the same thing today. Perhaps there's a distinction to be drawn between glam and glam rock just as there is between punk and punk rock, which are completely different genres. Nickelback and Seether are whine rock.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[thegarbz]

Except to truly appreciate what the artist "meant", you'd have to use exactly the headphones they used when mixing. If they used Beats, and you use ones with "flat" response, you're still getting the "wrong" experience.

You haven't met any real audio engineers have you. I don't even think Dr.Dre would use Beats headphones when preparing the final track for release.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[abhi_beckert]

"Flat" relating to headphones usually means a flat frequency response, unless you are talking to people who don't have a clue (which is a very real possibility). A flat frequency response is the goal of a high fidelity system, the very word "fidelity" means trueness to the original source, which is what you get with a flat frequency response. The idea that a speaker needs to distort the sound because it "sounds good" is absurd, and in fact it's the exact same rationale audiofools have for preferring vinyl. Vinyl inherently has an uneven frequency response (among other things) and it is those characteristics that give it is distinctive sound, leading some to prefer it. It is distinctive but it is low fidelity, just like a poor set of speakers. Besides, if you want the treble or bass jacked up or some other frequency band notched, that's what equalizers are for. Although it should be noted they are called equalizers because the intent is to bring an equal loudness to all frequency bands - aka, a flat frequency response. To compensate for speakers that are not already flat.

Anybody with enough money for a pair of good audiophile headphones will be buying the "pro" beats, which have neutral sound by all reports (I've never tested them).

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Lehk228]

I am american, I would balk at spending $230 on headphones, right now I am using a $30 logitech USB headset, and to me that was pricey for headphones, but worth it because being USB it gets it's own sound device when plugged in and I can route certain sources to headphones while others still go to the speakers.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[ColdWetDog]

But you know what they say about a phool and his money...

That he would be better off springing for a spell checker?

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[ColdWetDog]

$9,500 ER bill.

Land of the free, my ass.

Not exactly free, but a $9500 ER bill is pretty cheap.

USA! USA! USA!

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Aighearach]

Your mistake is that you're describing Glam Rock, which came earlier, 60s-70s. Glam Metal came later, late 70s-early 90s. "Butt Rock" is Glam Metal, not Glam Rock.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Your.Master]

That's about the 70th percentile for household income (thus, a higher percentile for individual income). A median average US household makes around $50k, and a mean average US household makes around $60k, the 20% difference reflecting considerable skew from very high income households. That is household income, not individual salary, and most married Americans are dual-income (I couldn't find stats specifically on unmarried but living together, but I would guess that's even more likely to be dual-income than married), so a typical US salary is considerably under 70k.

There might be a language barrier issue here. The term "X figure" talks about the number of digits of dollars (excluding everything past the decimal) over the course of a year. A mathematically inclined person might rephrase that as saying it's "on the order of 10^X dollars". So a 6k figure job is a job that pays massively more than a googol of dollars.

You have assumed (reasonably, IMO) that he meant 6000 dollars per month. It's just not what he actually said.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[Streetlight]

And the electrons go better one way than the other in that high priced cord.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[AK Marc]

I've never seen people quote salary in monthly salary, even in Europe, but then, I've not been to Sweden.

Re:One crap audio brand battling with another

[AK Marc]

"Flat" when I hear it generally means "compressed" The louds are softer. The soft parts are louder. The volume is flatter.

Although it should be noted they are called equalizers because the intent is to bring an equal loudness to all frequency bands - aka, a flat frequency response.

Yes, almost what I was saying. Flat is equal loudness. Now, there are some who mean with reference to frequency, and others who use it with regards to overall volume. But "flat" is usually a "bad" thing. "Oh, that sounded flat"

Tit for tat

[93 Escort Wagon]

I imagine Beats/Apple isn't too happy with Bose's shenanigans regarding telling NFL players they can't wear their Beats headphones until 90 minutes after the end of the game.

Of course the players do it anyway, and Beats apparently pays the fines for them... but still.

Incidentally, the NFL isn't doing very well with regards to their endorsement deals - first Microsoft, and now Bose.

Re:Tit for tat

[rmdingler]

True.

And the NFL isn't doing very well with their Beats women & children shenanigans either.

Re:Tit for tat

[Anubis IV]

I imagine Beats/Apple isn't too happy with Bose's shenanigans regarding telling NFL players they can't wear their Beats headphones until 90 minutes after the end of the game.

This.

I just wish they'd compete on audio fidelity instead of who can be more petty, since that's one thing that both of those brands are sorely lacking.

Re:Tit for tat

[rtb61]

Reality is by far the majority of products in the modern market place driven largely by 'exclusivity' compete on PR=B$(lies for profit) and idiot pseudo celebrity endorsement (liars for profit) and of course contaminating and corrupting every internet review web site they can. This of course because in the face of reality, the majority would mock the crap out of the rich idiots buying 'exclusivity' like it means something beyond being a poseur douche.

Re:Tit for tat

[tlhIngan]

I imagine Beats/Apple isn't too happy with Bose's shenanigans regarding telling NFL players they can't wear their Beats headphones until 90 minutes after the end of the game.

Of course the players do it anyway, and Beats apparently pays the fines for them... but still.

Incidentally, the NFL isn't doing very well with regards to their endorsement deals - first Microsoft, and now Bose.

The problem is you have a conflict of endorsements.

The NFL is being paid directly by Microsoft and Bose to promote their stuff - Microsoft and Bose can put "Official NFL Product" on those things.

The problem is, the teams and players don't really see much of that money because it goes straight into the league. Sure, they may get a few bucks in the way of stadium improvements and such, but you can bet most of that money isn't going into their paycheques.

So the players and teams often have their OWN endorsement deals. This money goes directly to the team and the players themselves. Sure some goes back to the NFL in terms of league fees and whatnot, but it's extra income for the team and player.

So what's a player to do? Be forced to wear Bose which nets them ZERO dollars in the end? Or wear their Beats which nets them millions in extra dollars in their pocket?

It's obvious why the players are defying the rule. And in fact, you have to admit, it's getting a LOT of marketing for Beats as well - I mean, they're being fined, in public, for wearing Beats. With photos. In the news. Now what is better marketing - the player wearing it on the field or a news conference, or having it plastered all over the news with closeups of the offense with news they're being fined for wearing Beats headphones (and barely a Bose mention!).

It's actually kind of brilliant marketing - Bose gets made out to be the bad guy, and Beats gets plastered all over the news section, so much so that the $10,000 fine is well worth it - marketing expense.

List of NFL Finable Offenses, with fines.

Heck, one wonders if they're going to get a bunch of stickers to stick over their Bose headphones with the iconic "b". I mean, it doesn't get more interesting than that - they wear Bose headphones, but they're sporting the "b" that clearly indicates Beats.

Re:Tit for tat

[gnasher719]

I imagine Beats/Apple isn't too happy with Bose's shenanigans regarding telling NFL players they can't wear their Beats headphones until 90 minutes after the end of the game.

Could it be just the simple fact that every time Beats headphones are sold Apple makes profit, every time that Bose headphones are sold Bose makes profit, and Apple prefers Apple making profit vs. Bose making profit?

Re:Tit for tat

[Teresita]

Is this the same NFL that forced their coaches to use Microsuck Surface tablets?

Re:Tit for tat

[Bite The Pillow]

As soon as the beats agreement was in place, Apple probably had a plan to draw down bose inventory. When it reached a certain point, possibly after existing purchase agreements were complete, the inventory was removed.

Apple rarely gives this kind of warning, preferring to make changes instead, or announce as late as possible. Tying this to some sort of revenge makes no sense.

If it were in response to patent lawsuits, the plan was based on the risk of losing well before the outcome could be known, and a supply chain decision would have been made that we are just now seeing.

Apple does not throw a fuck you tantrum.

Beats

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple really, Apple now owns their main competitor (at least in headphones and small bluetooth speakers). Just business, move along, nothing to see here.

They are competitors

[MikeMo]

It's plain and simple: now that Apple owns Beats, it makes no sense to sell their competitors products. It just isn't done.

Re:They are competitors

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't plain to many here on Slashdot, though. You have to understand we still have lost souls from the 90s holding a grudge because Microsoft didn't distribute everyone else's browser.

So for their sake, let me try to put it another way:

Complaining at Apple about this is like complaining that your ex girlfriend's new boyfriend isn't letting her sleep with you.

Re:They are competitors

[oji-sama]

They do sell headphones from several other manufacturers though. They only dropped Bose.

Re:They are competitors

[bluegutang]

Remember when Microsoft used its monopolistic position in one market (OSs) to unfairly favor its product in another market (web browsers)?

How is that different from Apple using its position in the high-end phone market to unfairly favor its product in the headphone market?

Re:They are competitors

[ColdWetDog]

Apple stores are hardly the only place that Bose products are marketed. Just go through any airport in the US. Watch any NFL football game. Watch a football game in an airport for a really depressing experience.

And Apple hardly has a dominant position on high end marketing of marginally useful stuff. Look at any in-flight magazine.

I hate airports (and don't much like Bose either).

Re:They are competitors

[joocemann]

...especially since their former product's business tried a low blow lawsuit on their newly acquired product line... This is a most likely outcome, and surprisingly newsworthy (since I think this is a pointless discussion).

Re:Clueless

[CRCulver]

AKG's I can't speak for, but having used noise cancelling headphones I won't settle for ordinary ones. It doesn't matter how good the speaker in the earpiece is, if its competing with noise from outside, its not a clean sound.

Fair enough, if that's what your listening preferences are. I can only represent my own way, and I listen mainly to a genre of music and with a personal approach that emphasizes contemplative listening, so I generally don't want any activity going on around me as I listen, and noise-cancelling technology is outside the kind of headphone I look for you.

Re:Clueless

[CRCulver]

Sorry, that should have read "and noise-cancelling technology is outside the kind of headphone I look for."

lol

[Charliemopps]

So 3 companies, all of whom make electronics that consist of about 99% hype and about 1% tech, sue each other?

What's funny is Bose has been at this a very long time. Don't buy Bose people! It's a scam, it's always been a scam. There are plenty of good stereos and speakers out there, Bose doesn't make any of them. And beats? That's literally the cheapest Chinese headphones they could find this month and they slap a Dr Dre sticker on it.

Re:lol

[TechyImmigrant]

Bose noise cancelling headphones are not a scam. They were qualitatively far far better than anything else on the market when they came out and they still seem to be better today.

I'll be taking my rather ancient set of QC3s on the plane tomorrow.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they should try them. We're not talking some vague imagined 'cleaner sound' here, anyone can slap on a pair of QC25s, listen to silence, then turn the noise cancelling on, and listen to what real silence sounds like.

It's absolutely clear when you hear it, what a difference Bose tech makes.

Beats? Not a fan, they were all bass and no noise cancelling. The salesman tried to convince me they were studio quality, but I guess this is a rap studio?

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they weren't. That's just what Bose's marketing pamphlets said. Audio Technica ATH and Sony MRDs were, or at least that is what most people who compared them said.

And besides, active noise canceling is largely trumped simply by a good ear seal.

Re:lol

[chromaexcursion]

40, 50, + years ago Bose did original research in speaker design. It changed things.
They patented it.
If physical patents were treated the same way as intellectual property patents are now, Bose would rule audio.
Is Bose over priced? yes. I won't pay for a name, but some will. At least it works.
All Beats has is a good marketing director.

Re:lol

[TechyImmigrant]

I call BS. The Sony's barely worked. I tried them back to back with the Bose.

Active noise cancellation is not about HiFi. It's about high background noise environments like on airplanes or in offices.

Try a set of Bose QC3s in a quiet environment, listening to music through a stereo of any quality will not be better than something with a large seal and a half decent speaker, but that's not the point. I doubt people could actually tell the difference in a quiet environment. If there's nothing to cancel, cancellation doesn't help. But in a high noise environment, the Bose are clearly better.

Re:lol

[radarskiy]

I've had good results with some of their phased array equipment. Then again, most people don't need a phased array.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former audiophile (my ears are getting old), here is my take on Bose. Yes, Bose did some research on speaker design. To say it changed things...? Well, Bose went one direction, whereas the mainstream speaker companies went another direction. And a lot of other companies, and the NRC of Canada also did research. For more info (maybe not much on Bose) see Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms by Floyd Toole (Aug 22, 2008) (book or kindle) if you want too much information.

Research: one thing common in marketing audio, automobiles, --- political ideologies, can be summed up as: we did research (or thunk it up, or it was revealed to us) and we have unique technology/knowledge/beliefs that is superior to any other speakers/ political ideology. Just pick up any issue of Popular Science of Mechanics from 1970 to 1990, or listen to Faux News.

A little thought (gee!) will quickly reach the concept that research or clever insight by one person is rarely exclusive, and rarely exhaustive (there is a lot more going on that their insight doesn't address).

Bose's direct/reflective (I think that's what it's called) technology in it's early 801, 802 and some other models created a large sound-field with a large sweet-spot, or almost no sweet-spot. (A sweet spot is the place the listener sits to get the full stereo effect). This can be, hmm, I'll use the words very different and seductive. On the other hand, those Bose speakers could suffer from comb filtering effects, lumpy frequency response, phase shifting effects, and limited frequency extension at both high and low frequencies. Not exclusive to Boze, sometimes instruments sounded larger than life. The 20 foot long piano.

Other Boze Speakers not using the direct/ eflective lack the large sound-field effect. About 1998 I needed new speakers, and tried with an open mind to check out Bose products. I found:
1. almost exclusively sold at the time in Bose owned stores
2. information, specifically frequency response specification were not provided by the company. this was/is very unusual for a speaker company. I eventually figured out that the entire Bose line at the time had little frequencies below 50hz.

The rest of the speaker/audio community was mostly working toward flat frequency response, reduction of box resonances, controlled dispersion or the sound coming out of the drivers, and greater extension in low and high frequencies.

A joke among audiophiles, in response to the great success of Bose--they sell by far more speakers in America than any other company, is "Friends don't let friends by Bose."
The rational reason (there are irrational reasons) is that Bose does not offer good value. For $X00 spent on Bose, it is almost generally possible to get a better speaker from another company for the same amount of money.

Final issue, look up the lawsuit between Bose and Consumer Reports. Bose sued Consumer reports over a review. Consumer Reports eventually won, but Bose almost bankrupted them. Which may partially explain why you rarely see any reviews of Bose in the audiophile press. And Bose likes it that way.

Re:lol

[AmiMoJo]

I borrowed a friend's Bose QC3s and compared them to my own Audio Technica and Sony noise cancelling headphones. They were on a par with the Sonys and slightly better than the ATs, but not by much. The Sony cans where more comfortable as well, especially in terms of the feeling of pressure in your ears you get from noise cancelling.

Having said that I use some fairly cheap Sennheiser in-ear monitors on aircraft now. The isolation is better than any noise cancelling headphones can ever hope to achieve and they are easier to sleep in too.

Re:lol

[abhi_beckert]

My non-noise-cancelling closed ear SRH-440's have better sound than any pair of headphones Bose has ever made and they cut out more background noise as well. I recently wore them trackside at a car race to prevent hearing damage, worked perfectly.

Re:lol

[dj245]

Bose's direct/reflective (I think that's what it's called) technology in it's early 801, 802 and some other models created a large sound-field with a large sweet-spot, or almost no sweet-spot. (A sweet spot is the place the listener sits to get the full stereo effect). This can be, hmm, I'll use the words very different and seductive...........

Gee, thanks a lot. You just made good stereo seem terrifically exciting. I have single sided deafness and can never expereince stereo. Nobody, even doctors or audiologists, ever really explained what I am missing out on. Maybe they were being kind.

Re:lol

[BronsCon]

For me, the problem with Bose has always been that they only sound "acceptably okay" at relatively low volumes, they tend to massively distort at what I would consider a normal listening volume. I've noticed this in both their speakers and their headphones.

Of course, when you lower the noise level, or remove the noise altogether, you also lower the required listening volume, which may be enough to bring Bose headphones back into the "acceptably okay" range, especially if you'll be using them in very noisy environments, where isolation (what you call a "good ear seal") blocks, at best, half the noise. This isn't my use case, so I can't justify the cost of a pair of Bose phones just to test that, but their ANC is among the best, if not the best, on the market, which is why other companies bother to license it, while I don't see anyone licensing ANC tech from Audio Technica or Sony.

Honestly, give me Sennheiser drivers and Bose ANC and I'll be a very happy man; the Sennheisers I use currently are great, with no noise cancellation whatsoever, until my boss forgets that his mouth can, in fact, close while he's eating almonds and M&Ms.

Re:lol

[Khyber]

"It's about high background noise environments like on airplanes or in offices."

I'm sorry, those are nowhere near high background noise environments.

Here, let me show you what a high background noise environment is like. This is from my old job as an LCD panel repair tech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I suggest you turn your speakers down 'lest you get them blown.

And that's not including the noise from the forklifts outside of the clean room, semi truck pulling in for loading, etc.

Re:lol

[BronsCon]

Well yes, Bose speakers from 40-50 years ago were great. They lost their way in the late 80's and were way off course by the mid 90's, though, and they make crap today. Their active noise cancelling tech is really the only thing they do that's worth buying anymore. Sad, really.

Re:lol

[Khyber]

" I have single sided deafness and can never expereince stereo. Nobody, even doctors or audiologists, ever really explained what I am missing out on."

Stereo Harmonics, binaural beats, various harmonies between notes when played in separate channels (easier to perceive in stereo than in combined mono.)

Lots of stuff you're missing out on.

Re:lol

[TechyImmigrant]

I don't frequent those places, but if it is that loud, active cancelation audio headphones do not make good ear defenders.

Re:lol

[AK Marc]

I bought the Bose. They didn't work for me. Filtered the low, but made the high worse. Not sure whether the highs got louder, or just comparatively so, but definitely were more comfortable off than on.

Re:lol

[AK Marc]

I wish people planning on putting things on YouTube would film in wide, rather than portrait mode. Also, given the reaction of others there, that's not "background" noise. That's a specific sound from a specific machine.

Re:lol

[AK Marc]

A small amount of directionality is all you are missing out on. That, and back in the '60s they played different instruments through different channels, and didn't mix the channels. So you'd get sound in one ear, then the other. Like the song was talking to itself. It was mostly annoying, but some swore by it.

My hearing problem is that I can't hear voices well. Audio tests put me as exceptional hearing. Much better hearing than most. But put me in a situation with minor background noise, like an airplane, and I can't understand voices. They just kind of sound underwater when I'm in a noisy environment. I've not ever seen anything about it. Though I've heard of DSP hearing aids that block all but voices, but they are expensive, and unfunded (by insurance and such) for a 30-something with perfect hearing. I got my eye floaters diagnosed on Slashdot, maybe someone will recognize this and let me know what it is, even if there isn't a cure.

Re:lol

[Khyber]

That's from a specific machine IN ANOTHER ISOLATED ROOM. You're only seeing the insertion aperture of the polarizer inside of the clean room.

Also, I hit the video record button while the screen was oriented in landscape, but the phone was facing downwards towards the floor and likely thought I meant to do it in portrait. As soon as I realized it (almost instantly) I just went with portrait since there was no way I was likely to get that happening again that day.

Re:lol

[hankwang]

"I use some fairly cheap Sennheiser in-ear monitors on aircraft now. The isolation is better than any noise cancelling headphones can ever hope to achieve"

What model? I have cx-300-2 noise-isolating earbuds, which I'd call fairly cheap at around EUR 35, but I wouldn't say they perform better than bose/beats noise cancelling headphones. Whatever else I see in a quick Google is several hundred dollars.

Re:lol

[hankwang]

"The problem with Bose has always been that they only sound "acceptably okay" at relatively low volumes, they tend to massively distort at what I would consider a normal listening volume. [...] especially if you'll be using them in very noisy environments"

Cranking up the volume to drown out envoronmental noise sounds like a good pathway towards a hearing aid by the time you're 50 years old.

There have been occasions that I actually asked co-travelers on the train to lower their volume because I could hear their hip hop beat over my own music that was playing through my own noise-isolating headphones. I suspect that those people are already semi-deaf...

Re:lol

[BronsCon]

especially if

I'm assuming you realize what that means and were just making a point. Since I was also making a point, allow me to clarify. A "normal listening volume" is one at which you can hear the music over the ambient noise in the room; "especially if" means "in addition to this case, there are other, possibly more common, cases where this happens". In short, you don't have to listen to Bose drivers at eardrum-splitting volumes to hear them distort and, without active noise cancellation, they're typically going to be driven at a level where the distortion is glaringly noticeable.

Even when they're not "driven to distortion", they're still just "acceptable okay"; is that what you want in a >$100 pair of headphones? Probably not; consider that you can get noise isolating headphones with drivers that blow away anything Bose currently puts out for half the price and get the same listening experience, as the outside noise that does get through in your average semi-quiet listening environment (e.g. anywhere you don't have to blast your eardrums to drown out the background noise) will be roughly equivalent to the distortion you'd get from the Bose drivers. Where the Bose set wins out is in louder environments, and they license the tech, so why not buy a pair from someone else, with better drivers and the Bose ANC?

In short, I don't think we disagree, I think my point was simply not made clearly enough the first time around.

Re: lol

[MMC Monster]

The joke my audio installer used was 'no highs, no lows, must be a Bose'. (I obviously bought something else.)

Re:lol

[jayteedee]

Sounds like we lived thru the same history.

I remember that jingle "Friends don't let friends by Bose."

I actually like this one a little better: "No highs, no lows, must be Bose."

I actually did kinda like the 301's back in the early 80's (series 1, NOT series II). In a small room, the vane could move the tweeter sound around and help with poor room acoustics. Still, doesn't compare to an adequate sized room, a REAL tweeter, or a REAL set of speakers, but good for the late 70's and early 80's. I still stuck with JBL's and Advents in that age though.

Re:lol

[Lord Flipper]

On the other hand, those Bose speakers could suffer from comb filtering effects, lumpy frequency response, phase shifting effects, and limited frequency extension at both high and low frequencies.

Ah yes, the old motto: "No highs, no lows... it must be Bose!"

Re:lol

[Lord Flipper]

A small amount of directionality is all you are missing out on.

A small amount? Are you kidding? Imagine, if you will, that your eyes are closed... Now.... Even missing part of the higher frequency range on one side, only, means you lose any precision, whatsoever, about a lot of things, including where a sound emanates from, the size of the place you're in, how close walls might be (which echoes of your footsteps, or speech, would otherwise tell you), and (given moderate environmental/background noise) conversation directed at you from your "disabled" side... etc.

And total hearing loss on one side, only, makes all those impacts far more devastating to what your hearing is basically trying to do, for you, all the time, whether you're conscious of it, or not.

I was doing recording/mixing with some "traditionalist" white-boy Blues musicians, years ago. And the spokesman for the band said, "No, we want to keep this "real" not like "studio" music... so, no reverb or echo or any "tricky" stuff."

I tried explaining the difference between "dumb" microphones and tape, and the simplest human hearing that we all have, and how reverb's basic usage was to put the "Real World" sound back into the analog recording... and how it, and echo were, on a basic level, trying to replicate the same effect that having real world sounds not only in both ears, but "bouncing" around inside the seemigly odd architecture of your ear lobes, was also about being able to pick out sibilants in speech, and the difference between oboes and french horns... and forget it! They weren't budging.

So, they ended up with a nice, "clean" recording all right. And it sounded nothing like their music (which was top-notch, by the way) did in real life, which was supposedly what they "thought" they were after. In other words it had about as much to do with "reality" as your "missing a little directionality" only hints at. Not much, in other words.

Re:lol

[Lord Flipper]

My hearing problem is that I can't hear voices well. Audio tests put me as exceptional hearing. Much better hearing than most. But put me in a situation with minor background noise, like an airplane, and I can't understand voices.

I'm not a doctor; just so we're clear. But, you might have more of a "notching-type" hearing loss.

Some people can "hear" the sounds of speech, easily. And only increasing volume might, or might not help, always. The thing with speech is that a consonant, or even the very first part of the sounds of syllables is actually very brief, compared to the "body" of a sound. It's about the "attack" "body" and "decay" of tones.

Believe it or not, if the initial attack, which is in the high end range of the spectrum, is muffled, briefly, then words like bay, day, may, nay, pay... etc, will be indistinguishable. We'd hear the "ay" but not the most important part of the word. Some people say, speak louder. That works, sometimes, depending on distance from the ear, background noise, etc. Some people will turn their head slightly, or even cup their hand behind their ear, and that might work far better than "simpler louder."

It's that narrow-band loss of frequency, in the high end, that explain all those partial "remedies." High freqs are narrow waves, and they bounce off (are reflected by) nearly everything. Low freqs are very wide waves that follow walls, floors, ceilings, etc. Even a guy with a very low voice (baritone or lower) has much higher freqs that are the initial part of syllables... so, we might hear 99% of what he says, but find it nearly unintelligible.

Cupping hands behind an earlobe gives the higher freqs that many more times to "bounce" and be heard, far more clearly. The reinforced sibilant makes identification of the "note" easier, even, technically, slightly "after the fact."

These things are tricky to diagnose correctly, for the simple reason that most hearing tests are done with headphones, so the sibilants and partials have direct access to the natural reverb chamber that the inside of the ear lobe provides. A good hearing specialist will be able to administer a variety of tests, including one that aims to reveal exactly this sort of loss. I'd get it checked out. Oh wait, I DID get it checked out. Was very helpful for me.

P.S. Not sure "notching" is a proper term, certainly not all pro hearing specialists would use it, as far as I know. But, think of a parametric equalizer. if a common parametric EQ divides total range of frequencies that humans hear into, say, ten "bands," then it's safe to assume each "band" includes quite a number of adjacent freqs, right? So, what the parametric part does is it allows us to narrow the range of freqs, within any of those arbitrary bands, so that only a few, or if needed, a lot, of them are affected by a 'boost" or "cut." It's a bit more "surgical" in that regard. Going the other way, dividing all the freqs into 2 parts (treble, and bass) is barbaric in comparison. And using volume, instead of EQ, just makes the same "problem" louder. HTH

Re:lol

[AK Marc]

A small amount? Are you kidding?

Nope. You get a surprisingly large amount of directionality with one ear. Much like 95% of depth perception is unaffected by the loss of an eye. It's just the annoying 5%, that's mainly close-up work that makes it really really annoying. I've worked with the deaf (including one-ear loss) and my mother is blind on one eye, so I have asked thousands of questions of those with problems, and have had temporary conditions that rendered one ear or eye unusable for a period, which validated my earlier discoveries.

That you are an audiophile doesn't mean that anyone else cares about the extra ear. It mattered a whole lot more in the wild, when small noises needed precise directionality to live.

Re:lol

[AK Marc]

The only reasonable theory I heard previously is that other people's brains filter out background noise better, and I'm stuck with a poor noise filter. One could classify it as a form of "brain damage". And your explanation should be discovered in the numerous hearing tests I've had. The tones are repeated at various frequencies and volumes, and I have to press a button when I hear something. Some were even conducted in an anechoic chamber with the tester in another room, unable to see me, so as not to influence the test. That should have eliminated the effect of the headphones, as none were used.

Re:lol

[AK Marc]

Oh, on looking more, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... looks to be more like what I have. Normal hearing, but problems processing voices.

Re:Clueless

[dgatwood]

AKG's I can't speak for, but having used noise cancelling headphones I won't settle for ordinary ones. It doesn't matter how good the speaker in the earpiece is, if its competing with noise from outside, its not a clean sound.

For casual listening, yeah. For serious external noise, though, noise isolation is a lot better than noise cancellation. I have a pair that lets me play back existing tracks at a manageable level while beating the ever-living crap out of a drum kit. Now that is clean sound.

Re:Why would Apple continue selling Bose products?

[ThomasBHardy]

There's a chance it goes deeper than that.

Not only did Bose sue Apple after Apple acquired beats, but they also started playing dirty pool with tactics like the NFL headphone rigamarole. Apparently something about Beats + Apple sent Bose into the heavy offensive strategy. Now Bose has to fight the fight that they started.

Re:Clueless

[ArcadeMan]

Can to tell us the brand/model of your better-than-active-noise-cancellation headphones?

Re:Clueless

[ArcadeMan]

Can you tell us / Care to tell us

Note to self: stop posting after midnight.

Re:Clueless

[dgatwood]

You know, I honestly don't remember. I only use them when I'm playing kit, because they're basically built into hearing protectors, and weigh about as much as my Macbook Pro. :-)

Re:Clueless

[TechyImmigrant]

Can to tell us the brand/model of your better-than-active-noise-cancellation headphones?

He's deluding himself. What he's using is ear defenders.

Try this... Stick your finger in your ear. Create a good seal so outside sound is well blocked.
Do you hear nothing? No, you hear a background roar of muffly rumblings.

Or try putting ear plugs in and sit still. Do you hear less? Yes.
Now move your head. Say just slowly move it around. You hear a bunch of noise from the ear plug itself rubbing in your ear canal.

A sealed cavity around your ears traps in all the local noise. It's worse than nothing.

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Re:You could see this coming

[TechyImmigrant]

> I have a feeling that Bose' CFO is not happy but not unhappy. It's business.
I have a feeling that setting the lawyers on an effective retail outlet for your goods is really bad for business.

If someone sued me, I'm certainly not going to do business with them in the future.

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Re: Sour Grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Batman!

such drama

[slashmydots]

And here I am with cheaper Sennheisers that are superior quality. I guess I'm just too darn smart to fall for marketing plugs, celebrity endorsements, and companies slapping their brand name on inferior products in exchange for basically bribes.

Re:Clueless

[tlhIngan]

Do you hear nothing? No, you hear a background roar of muffly rumblings.

Actually, a small (but not insignificant" amount of sound comes from around the ear as well - bone conduction can transfer the lower bass notes to the ear directly (it's why you can't have perfect silence except by being in an anechoic chamber). Of course, your ears when wearing ear defenders does crank up its gain - people in anechoic chambers do report hearing blood rushing through their veins in the ears, their heartbeats, etc. All noise conducted through the body.

It can get pretty freaky.

Re:Please can they all lose!

[Zontar The Mindless]

Uh... what?

The things is, it never does

[aepervius]

All monitor have color correction and use different technology, then people perceive color sometimes differentely. The same for music. No matter the quality of your head phone or louspeaker, in the very end your tympanon your brain and the air and configuration of the room or headphone will change it. Frankly that's why so amny A/B test shows audiophile to be audiofool : they are fooling themselves into thinking a super expensive equipment with whatever response frequency will be better quality. The reality is that the crushing majority of the population is not able to tell quality difference in A/B test.

Re:The things is, it never does

[drinkypoo]

All monitor have color correction

No. Most monitors do not have color correction. They have no way to tell what colors they are putting out, so they have no way to correct their color output. A few flat panels have color correction built in, but they are very expensive.

Re:The things is, it never does

[ColdWetDog]

Depends on your current pharmaceutical load. Remember the 60's? (Or was it the 70's?)

Re:You could see this coming

[Kijori]

I'm a commercial litigator. While it's true that companies would prefer not to sue their key partners, in reality it's very common for companies that work together to be involved in litigation. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they like it, but if you work with a company for a long time it's inevitable that you will have some disputes that you can't settle amicably. To an extent it's just a cost of doing business.

Bose headphone worth it?

[AqD]

Do they sell any quality headphones? Better than Sennheiser's including the types that require specialized amp? Or only garbage like Sony's?

Re:Bose headphone worth it?

[EmagGeek]

I have a Bose-X pilot headset and it works pretty damn well. The consumer-variant noise canceling headphones, on the other hand, have a very unsettling low frequency rumble to them that makes me nauseated.

Re:Clueless

[Geeky]

I'm about 80% deaf in one ear, so instead of higher frequencies I get permanent tinnitus, which is basically exactly that - it varies according to things like heart rate. It's like listening to an old modem, or something like a ZX Spectrum loading a game. 24x7. It came on as an adult, so it took a bit of getting used to - some people can't cope and suffer depression or even become suicidal over it.

One less inhabitant...

[mschaffer]

One less inhabitant in Apple's walled garden.

seriously... this is news?

[smash]

Seriously, why the hell would a company sell their competitor's stuff in their own store when they had just been sued by them? Even if they weren't sued, apple have their own line of audio gear now. It's just stupid to promote your competitor's product in your own store.

Reactivation on hardware change

[tepples]

As long as the guest is OK booting under either hardware (physical and virtual) dynamically, it should work fine. It's been a long time since mainstream OSs couldn't do that.

Does a Windows guest still require the user to telephone someone in India when switching between physical and virtual machines after having used up all Internet reactivations?

Re:Reactivation on hardware change

[qpqp]

No, there's cracks for that. On the other hand, why go the extra effort to save MS money? Hmm...

Re:Clueless

[robbyb20]

Ha, I thought it was all highs and lows and no mid range, must be bose. Then again, they don't hit those either very well. I had 2 acoustimass 3s for about 10 years, then started to replace with bowers and wilkins and was amazed at what I wasn't hearing with the other speakers. Totally different soundscape now.

Re:You could see this coming

[TechyImmigrant]

A commercial litigator saying it's OK the sue. Whoodathunk?

Shortsighted

[iamacat]

The primary focus should be on driving people to your stores and selling products with are your core competency. It's understandable that an Apple store will not sell Windows laptops or Android phones. But they should absolutely have a decent choice of keyboard, mice and headphones. If not, people who simply want a Mac with different keyboard will go to shop in Best Buy rather than Apple Store. But there, core Apple products will be presented side by side with with competition and without regard for complete experience that Apple wants to create for customers. While I am there should I pick up an $99 Android tablet for kids to watch Netflix rather than spending $399 on an iPad mini? Hmm...

Bose quality has declined

[forrie]

I remember back years ago where Bose was pretty much defacto standard on great audio. Today, they're not bad, but the quality (IMHO) has declined while their prices have gone up -- I believe they are significantly overpriced for what they deliver today.

Now if only I could afford Bang & Olufsen high-end equipment :-)

Apple is having a temper tantrum, they'll get over it. But it seems like a political move to pay Bose back for starting trouble -- I could be mistaken.

Re:Why would Apple continue selling Bose products?

[exomondo]

Apple bought Beats; why would they feature a competitor's product in their stores?

Because they make a profit selling them, which is why they also stock the products of competitors like Sennheiser, Urbanears and RHA.

Re:Clueless

[AK Marc]

AKG's I can't speak for, but having used noise cancelling headphones I won't settle for ordinary ones.

I can't use them. My hearing hasn't failed as fast as it's supposed to. A few undred dollars on some Bose noise canceling headphones, and they are quieter off than on (on being the cancellation feature). When they are on, and there's a regular high-pitch noise (like a plane engine or other sound above 10kHz), they increase the sound. They filter out the low well, but not the high. So I'm not sure if they are eliminating everything else, making the whine worse, or actually increasing the volume of the higher-pitches.

Noise cancelling isn't about making better sound, but isolation without needing isolation. I don't travel carrying a cone of silence.

Yeah, Apple is doomed.

[Brannon]

Those guys are so bad at selling things, that's why they barely even have a market cap of $600B.

Re:Yeah, Apple is doomed.

[iamacat]

Apple's very survival can be traced directly to accepting an $150 million investment from Microsoft. Success of iPad and subsequently iPhone is a direct result of porting iTunes to Windows and opening app store to 3rd parties. Today's market cap of Apple is in no way related to decision to break ties with Bose, or Fitbit. My bet is that in long term cumulative consequences of these decisions will place Apple back into the spot before Steve Jobs came back. It will be them against the world, and the world will win.

Re:Why would Apple continue selling Bose products?

[AK Marc]

I'm apparently the only person who follows Beats/Bose and NFL so little that I didn't hear about that.

Re:Clueless

[ShaunC]

I listen mainly to a genre of music and with a personal approach that emphasizes contemplative listening

Smoking a bowl and cranking up the Floyd? That's the good life!

They don't have a lock on that market anymore

[moogla]

Even the Beats knock-off STREET ANC cans from SMS have the noise cancelation that is reviewed as being as good as the QC line, while being cheaper, and having a different mix of connectivity options and styling choices.

Bose has got to start differentiating themselves or innovate instead of leaning on brand inertia.

Re:Clueless

[joocemann]

Can't you walk over to where this equipment is and then post?

Armchair CEOs

[Brannon]

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with Microsoft--Apple sells Microsoft software in its stores right now. Apple has by no means broken ties with every non-Apple company. They have to make nuanced decisions about how to deal with partners and competitors and they just might have more information on which to base those decisions than you do.

I just always find it hilarious when some random internet dude living in his Mom's basement is certain that Apple is doomed. I found it hilarious when Apple was at a $10B market cap, and again at $50B, and then again at $100B, and then again at $200B, and then $300B, $400B, $500B and now $600B.

Normal listening level

[hankwang]

I think we need to resort to specifying listening volumes in dB(A) levels, since I can't imagine driving even a bad headphone to distortion levels at what I call 'normal listening volume'. For me, that's probably around 70 dBA, "normal speech at 3 ft".