How Beats Audio Functions

Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, during the peak of custom hotrods' popularity, every aspiring car enthusiast wanted a hood scoop on their vehicle, even if they had no real understanding of how it would increase the car's speed. Fast forward to today, and if you're a teenager or young adult into hip-hop music, Beats Audio serves as the modern-day equivalent of that hood scoop—a sound technology that's as elusive as it is expensive.

Known as Beats by Dr. Dre, this popular brand was created by the iconic hip-hop artist and producer in the mid-2000s. The Beats brand offers a wide range of products—including headphones, earbuds, laptops, and phones—claimed to deliver the full range of sound that musicians and producers experience in professional recording studios [source: Beatsbydre.com].

"People aren't hearing all the music," Dr. Dre shares on the official website of Beats Electronics LLC, the company he co-founded in 2006 with Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records. "Artists and producers work hard in the studio perfecting their sound. But people can't really hear it with normal headphones. Most headphones can't handle the bass, the detail, the dynamics. Bottom line, the music doesn't move you. With Beats, people are going to hear what the artists hear, and listen to the music the way they should: the way I do" [source: Beatsbydre.com].

Excited to experience superior sound, many music enthusiasts have been willing to spend as much as $300 on a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones or opt for an HP laptop or HTC phone featuring Beats technology. In 2011, the brand dominated 53 percent of the $1 billion headphone market, as reported by market research firm NPD Group [source: Edwards].

However, the question of how Beats Audio achieves exceptional sound—or if it even does—has caused some audiophile writers to become quite critical. A reviewer from Tunelab once questioned, "Aside from the hype and a red 'b' logo, what exactly is Beats Audio?" after struggling to decipher the vague and enigmatic descriptions on the manufacturer's websites [source: Tunelab]. A British audio critic remarked, "Not even Dre can explain his own product" [source: Lucidx.com].

In truth, Beats Audio is more than just that.

The Art and Science of Recorded Sound

To grasp what Beats Audio does—or what its creators claim it can do—you need to understand a bit about the science behind recording and reproducing sound.

Whether you're listening to Gotye or Beyoncé, the music you love takes a complex and sometimes winding journey from the recording studio to your ears. When you listen to, for instance, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," what you're really hearing are various sounds—the vocalist's voice, the bass line, the drums, a synthesizer imitating a string section—all of which are molecular vibrations in the air at different frequencies. Your eardrums and ear structures pick up these frequencies, capable of detecting anything from 20 Hz (20 vibrations per second) up to 20,000 Hz, and can even identify minute changes in frequency, intensity, duration, and direction. Your ears can also distinguish complex elements of sound, like a guitar chord. With such intricate equipment connected to your brain, it's no surprise that we can be quite discerning in our musical preferences [source: Whitehead].

But it gets more complicated. Remember, when you hear a song, you're not listening to the actual singer or musicians but rather a digital reproduction of them. It’s not an exact copy, or even close to it. In the studio, the producer digitally records the players, turning their sounds into ones and zeros, and blends them together with software like Pro Tools. During this process, the sound of the song is altered—sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically—by applying electronic filters to amplify certain frequencies and dampen others, crafting something that sounds just right for music lovers. For instance, the bass might be boosted, or certain frequencies in the singer's voice might be adjusted to make it smoother. This process of tweaking frequencies to find the perfect sound is called equalization. The final digital mix is compressed into an MP3 file that you can download [sources: LeLoup and Ponterio, Self].

But that’s just one part of the sonic journey of a song. It passes through other filters, including your headphones or computer sound card and speakers, which also act as equalizers.

How does Beats Audio make music sound different?

In essence, as the digital version of a song is converted back into physical vibrations by the speakers of your computer or headphones, Beats Audio fine-tunes the frequencies to make them sound more pleasing to your ears. The specifics of how Beats headphones achieve this aren't easily understood, as the Beats Electronics website doesn't provide much technical information, and the five U.S. patents they hold—created by industrial designer Robert Brunner and his team—mainly cover 'ornamental' features, with little explanation about how these might contribute to a more accurate sound [source: Google Patents]. Likewise, a 2011 lawsuit, which has since been settled, involved a dispute between Beats Electronics and Signeo, a competitor that sold a headphone endorsed by rapper Ludicris. The core issue seemed to be whether the designs were too similar [source: Signeo USA et al vs. Beats Electronics LLC et al].

It's known that Dre and Iovine spent around two years testing various headset prototypes, relying on their own finely-tuned hearing, until they settled on a design that they believed delivered the best sound. They also had other music stars—like Jay Z, Mary J. Blige, Bono, and The Edge from U2—try out the headphones to confirm their decision. "There is no standard for what constitutes perfect sound," said Kevin Lee from Monster Cable, the audio company that partnered with Beats from 2008 to 2012, in an interview with USA Today. "We probably went through about 150 prototypes before we got it just right" [source: Jones].

The Beats Audio technology in computers and phones is a little more straightforward. HP, which incorporates Beats into its laptops, was kind enough to share a YouTube video that explains its unique performance-related design features. These include a redesigned headphone jack that’s grounded to minimize distortion, a more powerful amplifier that improves stereo separation, and audio components on the system board that are isolated from other components to prevent interference. But the standout feature appears to be the 'Beats Audio profile,' which critics say is essentially an equalizer setting (EQ) embedded in the computer’s software operating system [sources: YouTube, Tunelab].

What this means is that when the computer plays a song—particularly bass-heavy hip-hop music, which Dre is known for—the software steps in and tweaks the frequencies slightly to enhance your listening experience.

Is Beats Audio really better?

Explaining how Beats Audio functions is challenging enough, but determining whether it truly delivers superior sound is even more complicated. The main issue lies in the fact that people have differing opinions on what constitutes good sound. For instance, some dislike distortion, while others embrace it, as shown by the enduring popularity of The Kinks' 1964 hit 'You Really Got Me,' in which guitarist Dave Davies famously damaged the speaker cone on his amp using knitting needles [source: Buskin].

In 2011, the tech website Endgadget enlisted an independent lab to conduct extensive tests on an HTC phone featuring Beats Audio. The results were surprising. According to reviewer Sharif Sakr, Beats Audio doesn’t actually make music sound more faithful to what the artists originally recorded in the studio. He explained that for this to be the case, the Beats Audio EQ would need to flatten the system's output to reflect the original sound, similar to what studio monitors do. Instead, Beats Audio tailors the sound to match Dr. Dre's preferences, enhancing bass and vocals while dialing down less essential middle frequencies. If you enjoy hip-hop, as Sharif Sakr concluded, Beats Audio delivers a fantastic experience. However, for orchestral music, 'activating Beats Audio does nothing good,' he added [source: Sakr].

However, since most Beats Audio users likely prefer Wiz Khalifa over Yo-Yo Ma, this may not be a concern. The Monster Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, launched in 2008, earned a positive review from the tech website CNET, which praised the headphones' stylish design and outstanding sound quality. The review described the sound as 'exceptionally—shockingly—crisp,' with a balanced mid-range and impressive high-end detail, all without the muddiness often found in bass-heavy headphones popular with hip-hop fans [source: CNET].