Beats unveils refreshed Studio headphones with 20-hour battery, improved comfort

Beats unveils refreshed Studio headphones with 20hour battery, improved comfort

You haven’t forgotten about Dre, have you? His Beats Studio headphones — the ones that started the whole celebrity-endorsed portable-audio craze in 2008 — are finally getting a full-on revamp. Well into its post-Monster life, Beats Electronics has addressed the chief complaints of the original. An extension of a modernized silhouette, the new Studio is 13 grams lighter (263g), with improved padding and ergonomics to provide better comfort. Better yet, these over-ear cans pack a headband that won’t snap so easily during extreme bends. Updated noise-cancellation tech enables the Studio to automatically adjust depending on your surroundings — it even intensifies the effect for further noise reduction when the cable (which naturally features an in-line remote and mic) isn’t plugged in.

The days of needing to carry an extra pack of Duracells are gone too; the Li-Ion battery promises 20 hours of music playback. Meanwhile, a variable-color LED displays juice levels and an automatic power control keeps the cells from draining if you forget to turn ’em off. The company’s new DSP, Beats Acoustic Engine (BAE), aims for a voicing of “balance, accuracy and emotion,” and the cans apparently leak out less sound to those around you. So, is it more than just a new take on the bass-heavy S-curve that’s managed to “Keep Their Heads Ringin‘” for five years? You can find out this August for the admission price of $300, in your choice of black, white or red.

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Source: Beats Electronics

Beats is either ‘in talks’ with Apple over new music-streaming service, or it’s just very good at marketing

Beats musicstreaming service is in either 'in talks' with Apple or just very good at marketing

Excuse us, but we find it hard to swallow some of the hype that swirls around the Beats brand. That sounds harsh, maybe, but it’s borne out of experience. Anyway, we do trust Reuters, and that outlet claims to have it on good authority that Beats is “in talks” with Apple over a partnership involving the forthcoming Daisy music-streaming service that was formerly MOG. The word is that Tim Cook attended an “informational” meeting with Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine and “expressed interest” in his business model — whatever that is — and that Apple’s head of Internet products, Eddy Cue, was also present.

In news that is very much related, Beats has also revealed that it’s managed to generate enough buzz around the $12 million acquisition of MOG to raise a further $60 million in investment to help it to launch the rebranded and hopefully expanded service as a separate entity later this year. It’ll be interesting to see how the newcomer plans to tackle the already-entrenched competition, possibly with curated playlists and other MySpace-style ideas, and we’re fully prepared to eat our skeptics’ hats if it succeeds.

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Via: VentureBeat

Source: Reuters

Beats Electronics Is Getting Its Own Streaming Music Service Called Project Daisy

Beats Electronics got control of a lot of digital music rights and technology when it acquired the streaming music service MOG last year. Now, Beats is launching a new service—Project Daisy—to sell you beats by every artist you can think of. More »