The president of Beats by Dre has defended the sound quality of his company’s headphones, after they were criticised for being too bass heavy.
Speaking to BBC’s Newsbeat Luke Wood defended his brand’s flagship product. “I’ve certainly heard that as an opinion on the headphone, I disagree,” he said. “We didn’t go to build a reference headphone, something you build in the studio that is really a technical tool to hear when you are recording.”
“If you look at Dre‘s pedigree, Jimmy’s [Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine] pedigree, even my pedigree, we are all recording engineers,” he added. “What we did is build a headphone for playback. What does it sound like right when it is finished? And that is what we’ve accomplished.”
Wood declined to comment on the specifics of Apple’s recent acquisition of Beats, reportedly worth $3 billion. “I’m not here to talk about Apple with you today,” he said. “The truth is that the deal has not closed with Apple, which it will shortly, once it goes through regulatory approval.
“And at that point we’ll actually sit down with Apple and figure it out. But right now, the truth is there’s absolutely no plans made.” Wood compared meeting Dr Dre for the first time to meeting Walt Disney and praised the rapper and producer for his “purity of vision.”
“Everything he’s done has always been about sound, he’s always focused on making the world sound like a better place,” said Wood. “If you think about it, he’s really a sound pioneer. No-one made music that sounded like that ever before, at least in my opinion.”