There's a big difference between giving people choices and giving people a choice, and while Sleek Audio
did the smart thing by doing the former, Radiopaq is carelessly banking on the latter to still go over well. Rather than producing a set of
earbuds with customizable acoustics to fit whatever genre you find yourself into, Radiopaq's custom tuned earphones take that personalization away from the end-user. Oh sure, you could plop down for four different sets to handle your classical, jazz, pop and rock records, but that would easily go down as one of the most absurd decisions you've ever made. The company proclaims that each set actually can be used to enjoy other genres, noting that each pair is simply optimized for one specific style. Each package will go for £59 ($86), so make sure you choose carefully -- does your allegiance lie with
The Cranberries or
Taylor Swift?
[Via
Pocket-lint]
posted Apr 10th 2009 6:32AM
Wow, this is a fairly silly idea.
Branding them as pop/jazz/whatever is pretty stupid because you'll get people thinking it'll sound rubbish with any other type of music, and that'll put them off regardless of how much you try to convince them otherwise.
Now, if they'd branded them as something like enhanced bass/enhanced treble/"vocally balanced" or some other fancy spin terms it might make them seem much, much more attractive.
Yeah , maybe to you, but when I read meaningless spin terms meant to impress those who dont know much, I just walk as far as possible.
That might not work for you or me, but it works on a lot of people. Hence how businesses like that Monster lot survive.
Title screw out.. OUR instead of OUT..
SCREW UP*** I guess being up late does affect ones typing abilities!
Well.. I'd rather bang Taylor Swift with my penis, but I'd bang neither in my ears. Do I win?
Every time her music video comes on TV, my gf spends the duration telling me its not accurate to the original R+J. Ruins the whole thing. :P
Apparently, according to your avatar, you did.
She's flat on almost every note when she sings live
I was literally blown away the first time I heard her live...I was like, wow...this doesn't sound like the song at all. It sounds like your song that got run over by a rhino.
autotune doesn't even help, her live voice is...*blech* god-awful!
This is seriously a craptastic idea. But then again, there have been even sillier marketing gimmicks that have succeeded.
knowing about audio filters and reading this made me laugh. You could buy some nice headphones for $86, even grados. You forgot to tell us all about their high performance features!
Custom tuned for best experience with your style of music
Tangle free cable for easy of use and quick storage
Bi-Directional noise isolation for you and others around you
Unique design and light weight metal construction for comfort and custom tuned acoustics
Eleven part audiophile chamber construction for balanced reproduction
Multi-strand high perfomance audio cable
Corrosion free gold plated 3.5mm audio jack plug
Three sizes (L/M/S) of in-ear silicone gel cushions included with all Radiopaq earphones for perfect comfort, fit and noise isolation
Sounds like the $10 headphones at walmart minus the "Eleven part audiophile chamber construction for balanced reproduction"
Thank you.
All they need is a "Made for iPod sticker"
translation:
"Made for ignorant dumbasses who don't know that just because a cable is white, doesn't make it any more compatible with an iPod"
They say balanced reproduction and yet these things are supposed to be "tuned" to different music styles? Huh?
Seriously, I want a speaker/headphone/earphone to have a flat frequency response curve. If the speaker is good, it will sound good. Unless the music has been produced badly.
For a second, I could have sworn you called Grados 'nice' headphones, but it must have just been tricky wording.
I never thought that you would need special headphones or speakers to produce particular sound settings. Aren't speakers just, umm, speakers that reproduce an auditory range. You can then set the sound that comes out and the sound that doesn't using a high tech equalizer available on every media player in the world.
Am I missing something because I feel that this is "Headphones for Dummies" but not in book format.
You're not missing anything. Anything they have done to these headphones to 'tune' them
*HAS* to make them worse. This is pure marketing.
Yes, you're missing something. The way you're talking about it, you think speakers have a flat frequency response. 99% don't even come close, they boost or cut at certain ranges of frequencies. So they've designed these to boost or cut commonly used frequencies in certain styles. Still stupid, but... ya.
And those "high tech equalizers" you speak of are really rather terrible when it comes down to listening on quality equipment vs an actual eq.
This is a great article to learn about frequency response: http://forumDOTecousticsDOTcom/bbs/messages/34579/131062.html
(replace DOT with .)
@ Charles M: you're missing something too buddy. If ALL you listen to is Jazz, you certainly could have an improved timbre from your earphones if they are tuned nice. BUT you're not going to get nearly the improvement you would if you got a pair of, say, Sennheiser HD 595s.
What? Earbuds with a gimmick?
Besides, my player has it's own "equalizer" settings...as do a large number of them....
Well, i like Grado's best with rock. And i like Senns more for jazz. So yes, i do believe you can tune buds for the type of music. And everybody harping on them without listening is a fool.
Or you can buy one nice pair of professional quality Shure's or VModa's (or even Beyerdynamic's if you like the big comfy kind) and get great sound all the time.
cranberries...no doubt in my mind
Meh. It's not like I carry a different player for different genre of music, so carrying around different buds for aural pleasure is just silly. Good marketing though.
I going to go out on a limb here and say that it's supposed to say "Radiopaq launches custom tuned earphones to single OUT your audio" not "single our your audio".. I mean come on.... the 'T' and 'R' are totally neighbots (Joking with the last words spelling? You'll never know)
One could just buy a good pro-sumer pair of earphones, with a relatively flat frequency response curve, and adjust the PMP's equalizer settings according to one's taste. However, I pretty sure Radiopaq will nice profit off of consumer ignorance and laugh all the way to the bank! ;)
Oh good, more things to lose...
it should be the goal of speaker companies to create a FLAT response curve. it is not the job of speakers or in this, case earbuds to modify the music. the artist and all those involved created the music the way they wanted it. why would you want speakers to modify the original intent?
I agree wholeheartedly, James. I want my output devices (i.e. speakers, phones, buds, etc.) to have a flat response curve. And, if I really want to modify the sound, I'll let my equalizer and sound processor do the job.
What a load of bullshit deep fried in zero trans fat snake oil.
Half the time, I think the writers of this blog failed a basic economics course. You have to consider the value versus the price. The writers tend to focus almost exclusively on gee whiz features and functionality. If it happens to personally bankrupt you along the way, well it was worth it, right?
:P
oh i love taylor swift, nah really i need to find her so she can sit on my ding-a-ling, lol no but really thats rude of me!