Are we in the market of bass over all else?

[Helepolis]

I thought this to myself when I let my girlfriend pop in her Maroon 5 cd driving back from Vancouver a few weeks. While my music tastes various from Metal to even as far as Katy Perry (I know all the lyrics to I kissed a girl and darn well proud of it!) I couldn't say they were a band I was ever partially fond of. Regardless I turned it up from 10 to 20(out of 50) and embraced it but all I could think of was how loud, distorted and over exaggerated the bass sounded. Couldn't have blown my sub, I've been patiently breaking it in for months. So I load up some of my high quality AC DC rips from my iphone and the base lines sound beautiful distortion free. Just to be sure I put on the Shatter sound track, some daft punk and a variety of other bands everything is crystal clear with a few exceptions most of them being top 40 artists such as David Guetta, Rihanna Hedely, etc etc.To be fair though it wasn't every song but a decent portion of them.

I only have a $500 DIY system in my car so I decided to test it on my computer with my Auzentech Hometheater, Z-5500 speakers and Sony MDR-XB700's headphones. Low volume configurations sounded fine but as I tried to turn it up it was yet again garbled over exaggerated bass with the few selected bands. Bullet For My Valentine, Disturbed, All That Remains, Rise Against, Soundgarden and a few others I had tested sounded crisp and clear even when cranked almost all the way up.

Another scenario I had run into was when i was doing a 10k run 3 or 4 months ago I had downloaded Bust a Move by Young MC before the run started. There were like 5 choices of the same song so I ended buying the one that sounded the "best". What I later realized was that the song I downloaded was remastered to sound better with punchy bass lines on my iPhone buds. Ultimately sounded like utter garbage on anything else, worst buck ever spent.

​Then there's things like like the ever so popular with everyone, Beats by Dre. While my experience with them is limited the little time I did try them at a store it was very apparently that they over pronounced the bass lines.

From my experience it really seems bass is where the market is shifting towards, and not the good clean clean stuff either.

Thoughts?

[GoodBytes]

Sadly, we are in the market of bass over all else. Published songs and CD's all boost the bass.

Now you have this weave of "Extra Bass" headphones series, and all "singer signed" headphones (Dr Dre, Heartbeats by Lady Gaga, etc) are now all crazy popualr as people don't know better.. remember they are passing from shitty iPod/iPhone earphones to those. ANYTHING except dollar shop, earphones are better than the iPod/iPhone earphones.

I remember when we had for a few month the Zune MP3 player in Canada, People bought the Zune headphone for 40$, as they were worth 40$, instead of the iPod 40$ headphone which I would not pay more than 3-4$ for.

[Colonel Mustard]

Thumpy bass is nice, why else would one own a nice sub woofer and a pair of headphones such as the XB-700's. I agree that when the bass in music is screwed around with to the point that it sounds muddy it ruins the song. As for Beats, you'd have to be pretty dumb to dish out $200 for those polished turds when there are so many better options available.

[Lyons]

I honestly think this only really applies to pop music. I don't listen to any of it, Maroon 5, Katey Perry etc., but it's probably just the laziness of producers who'd prefer to just put some bumpy tracks on a CD rather that put some quality sound engineering in there. If it's on the itunes top 100, the chance of there being some really serious work being put into production is pretty slim. 14 year olds listening to Ke$ha couldn't care less about the mastering of a piece of music, they're content with 128kb/s rips from youtube. Bass can be nice, but a balanced, well produced song will take my vote any day, especially one that takes advantage of a range of bass, not just big beats. The only way to discourage crap like Beats is to not buy them. All you need are a nice set of transparent headphones or speakers and some quality music, not that pop garbage. Also car systems tend to have exaggerated bass regardless, unless you have a seriously good system. The general trend in car audio is bassbassbass. My $150 set of pioneer speakers for my car are bass heavy and I wouldn't be surprised if I got the same if I spent $200 more.

I'll stick to my Dire straits, Supertramp and Pink Floyd in the mean time...

[Aphexx]

BASS! how low can you go

Death row, what a brother know

I'm guilty of throwing in ridiculous 12" speakers in my vehicles and totally ignoring everything else in there.even now I EQ my headphones on the bass heavy end my fiio is permamently set to level 2 bass. also I am currently actively researching out a sub $250 basshead headphone. bass is a guilty pleasure

it is also the easiest and most accessible way to impress the masses with the recordings and hardware side of it. its difficult to market and describe soundstage and detail. in the 60's and 70's audio was taken pretty seriously and the public was more educated on sound however that slumped in the last few decades, I'm not sure what changed maybe it was the cassette tape maybe it was the walkman I dunno but I am hoping for a turnaround in the industry soon and it seems as if the stage is just being set for this. BEATS. love them or hate them they are making people aware of and more open to spending top dollar on an audio experience. and on the recording side we have bigger drives getting cheaper and cheaper, the need for lossy compressed files like mp3's is diminishing and with more legitimate sites finally coming online to distribute music flac and wav files will take over. ... I hope.

[Leviathan7895]

BASS! how low can you go

Death row, what a brother know

I'm guilty of throwing in ridiculous 12" speakers in my vehicles and totally ignoring everything else in there.even now I EQ my headphones on the bass heavy end my fiio is permamently set to level 2 bass. also I am currently actively researching out a sub $250 basshead headphone. bass is a guilty pleasure

it is also the easiest and most accessible way to impress the masses with the recordings and hardware side of it. its difficult to market and describe soundstage and detail. in the 60's and 70's audio was taken pretty seriously and the public was more educated on sound however that slumped in the last few decades, I'm not sure what changed maybe it was the cassette tape maybe it was the walkman I dunno but I am hoping for a turnaround in the industry soon and it seems as if the stage is just being set for this. BEATS. love them or hate them they are making people aware of and more open to spending top dollar on an audio experience. and on the recording side we have bigger drives getting cheaper and cheaper, the need for lossy compressed files like mp3's is diminishing and with more legitimate sites finally coming online to distribute music flac and wav files will take over. ... I hope.

Hmm, my Beyer-dynamic COP's handle bass quit well, even when there aren't hooked up to my E7(but when they are, its quite the blissful experience). I got mine around $140 ish, but are around $165(US) If you like velour pads over leatherette ones, beyer sells a pair for $30 (amazon. search beyerdynamic edt 770)

that's all I have right now....