mike_galloway

iyfcalvin said:

Regarding Lossless, In my opinion, the average person can “hear” the difference. The key to that is whether they can “recognize the difference and appreciate it.  The “average” person today has lived primarily with highly compressed music, lower quality electronics, emphasizing booming and distorted sounds.  They would not recognize the difference at all.  

It’s akin to serving an unfamiliar foreign culinary entree to an American palate and having them recognize and appreciate the flavor while growing up on a fast food, prepared food diet.

The law of unintended consequences -  not putting a charger in every product is likely to increase the number of cheap and maybe poor quality products. Although other companies substandard products are not really Apples problem.

kiltedgreen said:

MacQuadra840av said:

macgui said:

Clearly most of you aren't familiar with high-end headphones. They can range from 2-10x the cost of these Apple headphones, easy.

It's comical the way some idiots pick one feature of these headphones then compare their little POS headsets and claim some kind of victory.

And suggesting that these have to be binned when the battery dies? Idiocy. Replacing batteries in AirPods isn't really very practical, and comparing that to replacing the batteries in the Max is again another exercise in stupidity.

These are pricey for the casual listener. Not all that pricey when compared to a litany of high-end headphones, if these live up to the claims. 

Clearly you are not familiar with Apple's marketing.  These are a far cry from being high-end headphones.  They are just excessively overpriced cans.  You don't have to be so insulting to people in your comment.  No professional recording studio or person would buy these.  They will buy the high-end headphones from reputable companies in the industry that know audio very well.  Apple is not that company.  Apple is known for mediocre audio quality in their products.  Apple does not even allow you to adjust tone quality in any of their speaker products.  These are heavily marketed as BLUETOOTH headphones to use with your iPhone for playing back heavily compressed audio files.  Something a professional audio person would never listen to.  Yes, Apple charges an extra $35 for an audio cable, but again, that is not what Apple wants you to do.  These are just overpriced ugly headphones that no one will be buying, except for a few fools that think anything with an Apple logo is somehow magical.

I’m familiar with Apple’s marketing - I bought the original Macintosh at release and have spent plenty on their products over the years and currently have 4 of their products.

I wasn’t trying to insult anyone, I was just surprised that people were so surprised at the price. I agree, no professional studio or audio engineer would buy these and Apple is clearly not aiming their marketing for these headphones at those people as can be seen from their web site.

You will find that Naim Audio’s NAC 552 pre-amplifier, costing £21,000 doesn’t allow you to adjust the “tone quality” either and such controls are very rare to find on a loudspeaker anyway. As for the mention of Bluetooth, again, Apple are not aiming these are audio engineers, they are being aimed at Apple’s usual audience (Pro Apps notwithstanding).

I think they look very attractive, much more so than the endless lumps of unimaginative black plastic that pass for the design of most headphones. To say they are overpriced is unwise when you have not even heard them; you may be right, but they combine a number of features which for a lot of people will be very appealing. If no one is buying them then I’m not sure why the shipping times are already lengthening unless it’s all the fools, in which case Apple will happily take their money!