A few questions

[MrZimmerman]

Hi everyone, first time poster here.

 

This has been annoying me for awhile and I'm not really experienced enough with audio software to know much about it. Basically the laptop I have had for the last few years has had Beats Audio as its installed software and I just get the feeling that its a complete nuisance. It seems to be bass driven in a really ineffective way - sounds muddy and doesn't sound like its using the speakers correctly - almost like its using high tone parts of the speaker to drive it too if you know what I mean. I thought this may have been a compatibility issue but I've done a few casual sets at nightclubs and have found that its really dodgy on expensive systems like that too.

 

It means I have to turn off Beats every time I use my amp (in turn every time I turn my computer on as it resets to be on each time) but when I do this it sounds very tinny and I'm forced to raise the bass levels on my amplifier to compensate (which doesn't sound great either). Its actually at the point where the compressed tracks playing from my IPhone sound better because the sound software is more basic.

 

So a few questions:

 

Is the Beats software coupled with bad Beats hardware?

Is Beats software and hardware just bad?

Can I replace the Beats software with a better one? (Such as community developed freeware)

 

I think I actually broke some speakers because of the software in the past so I'm keen to do something about it.

 

Thanks for any replies,

Sam

[dyohn]

I would remove any software from Beats immediately. Everything I've heard with that name on it (and especially their headphones) sounds like ass to me.

[Raym87]

Beats -> translated = image over function. I second dyohn's comment.

I once tried to convince a relative that their headphones were not that great and recommended she try some others, sennheiser akg etc etc. My recommendations fell on deaf ears so to speak.

[iago]

Is the Beats software coupled with bad Beats hardware?

Is Beats software and hardware just bad?

Can I replace the Beats software with a better one? (Such as community developed freeware)

 

It may be different on a laptop, and possibly involve hardware modification also (e.g. beats branded speakers). On mobile phones it's just digital processing that uses custom equalization (mostly bass boost). The line out (if your laptop still has one) should not be affected by this, but if you would like to get rid of the beats mod permanently, uninstall audio software and use a generic driver.

 

For interfacing to external sound hardware an entry level audio interface (Focusrite, Behringer, M-Audio, Motu, etc.) would be a better solution.