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Dr. Dre Has Just One Thing to Say About His New Earbuds

by Lee Bains on January 10, 2009 at 03:47 PM


Late Wednesday night, we gathered in a swank penthouse suite at Las Vegas's Paris Hotel and Casino with Dr. Dre, Interscope-Geffen-A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine and Monster Cable Products' Noel and Kevin Lee to discuss the new Beats by Dr. Dre earbuds. The earbuds are the second offering in the Beats product line, following the headphones released last year.

While the good Dr. wasn't exactly plugging away at prototypes in the Monster laboratories, he did have the company's designers striving to please him for over two years until he was satisfied with the product. "We knew that if we could get headphones to feel the way Dre wants them to feel, we'd have a home run," Iovine explained.

Monster CEO Noah Lee elaborated on the technical specs: "[Dre and Iovine] are demanding not only a deep bass, but the transient kick of the bass. You can feel it. It's not dry; it's not surgical; it's warm." According to Lee, the earbuds' design hinges on a holistic understanding of the devices and the ear itself, using the ear canal as the phones' "resonance chamber."
Technical mumbo-jumbo aside, we did manage to get our hands on a pair of the buds, and we can say that the design -- holistic or not -- does pay off. Switching back and forth between the Beats and a pair of Sony earbuds while listening to a CD-quality WAV file, we did find that the Beats have an edge. As was immediately apparent, the Monster buds were significantly louder than their Sony counterparts. Upon closer inspection, we found the bass to be considerably tighter and better defined in pitch. The overall mix was less muddy through the Beats, as we clearly heard a horn section and a barrage of guitars without any commingling.

That being said, we're music listeners, not producers, so we asked Dr. Dre if he ever used them in the studio.
"After a mixing session, I test them out," he assured us. "I used to go out to the car." The Doctor may be a man of few words, but when it comes to headphones, we'll trust his prescription.

Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine Discuss Monster Earbuds

Tags: beats by dr. dre, beatsbydr.dre, celebrity, ces-2009-slideshows, ces-2009-slideshows-top, ces-2009-top, dr dre, DrDre, jimmy iovine, JimmyIovine, monster cable, MonsterCable, music

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