The Smiley Smile Message Board

OMG idk where to start I heard all these harmonies I didn't notice at first :) the whole Today album blew me away it already seemed like Brian was mastering this complex yet beautiful sound...Seriously it was so beautiful it could make you cry  :'(..
Has anyone ever tried beats by dre headphones? They are seriously worth the couple hundred dollars.
Ever hear parts of a song that you didn't notice before that swept you away?
At first I didn't know the difference between mono and stereo..now I do and I realize I prefer stereo :)...
When did Brian start working with the wrecking crew & how did it come about?

You spend a couple hundred bucks on any pair of headphones and you're sure to notice the considerable improvement...I can't assume Dr. Dre's brand is superior to many that are out there. 

In the meantime, have you tried Wikipedia to answer your question?

when i first got my ipod i listened to the music through the apple earphones...it was ok...so i switched to sony and they were worse then apple...now i have beats by dre earphones and the music sounds a million times better because you can hear everything so clearly but you won't totally understand me because you have to hear it for yourself.
no it didn't :/

Carol Kaye actually birthed the Beach Boys, told them to write songs about surfing, and performed on all of their records.

The Apple ear buds are deplorable.  You were only going to go up after that.  

Beats are obviously overpriced and overhyped; that the Apple headphones are bad (they are) does not mean you need to spend hundreds on celebrity-branded earbuds to do any better.

I'll bet you're listening to 128kb/s AAC files, aren't you.  Try listening to an actual record sometime!

If you are assuming Beach Boys Today is all Wrecking Crew its not. The Beach Boys are musicians on about half the tracks, Carl on nearly all of them. And the answer is complicated...the first time a sole Wrecking Crew musician played on a BB's record was on "Our Car Club" in '63...first time a BB's song was all Wrecking Crew was "Why Do Fools Fall In Love in '64...first (and last) time a Beach Boys album was nearly all Wrecking Crew was Pet Sounds in '66.

what other bb songs did the wrecking crew collaborated on/

I got the beats headphones for Christmas, they are high quality headphones.

http://www.mediafire.com/?hto7e1hlt2ydme0 (http://www.mediafire.com/?hto7e1hlt2ydme0)

You need to ignore this.

You bought beats? You know you just put most of the money into the brand name, right? Next time you want to spend a couple hundred dollars you should ask around on what headphones to get.

Anything by Beats/Skull Candies/Other big brand names will overprice you for their product, and their equipment is usually never reliable. As far as I know Beats have a bad reputation for breaking easily.

Well I got them as a gift to go along with my HP Beats computer I got for college. I have had no problem with them so far.

Well the OP is like 15.  Dr Dre got him hook line and sinker.  The system is working.

The are way overpriced but at the same time there the best headphones on the market

Once you listen to "all I wanna do" on beats headphone you can't go back

The main point is that they're overpriced for the quality that they provide. You can always buy smaller brand headphones that will provide the same amount of quality, and they will be cheaper.

So your argument here is: Price = Quality? And Beats aren't the best headphones on the market, please don't kid yourself.

What do you recomend for cheap, yet high quality headphones?

I'm more saying while expensive you don't really feel ripped of because the sound quality is so good

I've tried a lot of earphones on the market, best I've had so far

i didnt pay for them either :) i received them from my aunt

I always go for Sennheisers - just a budget pair of them for like, £25 in HMV, but they're such a good company that even the cheap stuff is good - but the last three pairs I had either me, my then-girlfriend, or some ass at a house party sat on them and they broke, so I'm back on el cheapo earbuds  :'(

I got a couple Sennheisers myself.  Earbuds for the office...over the ears for home.  Each in the $70-$90 range

Since I don't know your definition of "cheap" I will give you a list that ranges from very cheap to very expensive.

$15 - Koss KSC75
$25 - Koss PortaPro
$35 - JVC HA-RX700
$45 - JVC HA-M750
$55 - AKG K81DJ
$65 - Song MDR-V6
$75 - Grado SR60i
$85 - Sennheiser HD280
$90 - Audio-Technica ATH-AD700
$100 - AKG K240
$130 - Audio-Technica ATH-M50
$150 - Grade SR125i
$160 - Shure SRH840
$170 - Sennheiser HD595
$180 - Sony MDR7509HD
$190 - Ultrasone HFI-580
$200 - AKG K601
$215 - Denon AH-D2000
$230 - AKG K271 MKII
$250 - Ultrasone HFI-780

Please note that this list was compiled a few years ago so these are most likely cheaper than depicted here.
For in-ear headphones I highly recommend these two sites: http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/epcomp.html & http://store.thinksound.com/
I recently got some wooden headphones from thinksound that I am extremely satisfied with. Please also realize that if none of you are listening to loseless audio, you probably shouldn't even bother going beyond $50 for headphones.

Thanks, that list is what I needed to know. I might buy one of those brands so my beats don't break from being carried around everywhere as my main set of headphones.

Sort of off-topic, but I have no idea why The Beach Boys haven't covered California Love yet. They seem willing to do plenty of other songs that fit their California image (California Dreamin', Hot Fun in the Summertime, etc.), so I don't get why they have yet to cover that  one. Maybe for the next album?

Are those Ultrasone HFI-780 headphones the absolute top of the line best ones to get, or do they just happen to be the most expensive? I guess what I'm asking is, does the price reflect the product?
 

Wow!  Listening now!  You'd be my hero if you did this with:

HCTN (Disco)
Macarena (by Los Del Rio)
Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless) (by Crystal Waters)
that song that the Charlie Brown and the Peanuts dance to on A Charlie Brown Christmas

No joke!  I would listen all the way through for each one!

I'm only down with active noise cancelling headphones (and over the ear ones at that). These ones all utilize batteries to create a way to block surrounding sound (whereas the normal noise cancelling headphones simply have well designed ear muffs, but don't actively block anything). If you live in a city and use public transit, you can't hear sh*t with earbuds or non-noise canceling phones. I think the Bose set runs out about $300, but it's definitely the best I've heard (although, frankly, I don't think you want to be walking around with sh*t that expensive on in the city, especially since the brand name is on the side).

Best cheap option runs you about $100 for the models from Able Planet which have excellent active noise cancellation and well designed ear muffs. They're the best way to go if you aren't willing to spend the money for Bose.

However, if you are mostly going to be listening in quieter areas or at home, then there's no real need to get noise cancellation ones. In that case, just read reviews and go for the best sounding ones (although, I will say that the active noise cancellation sets from Bose are surprisingly at the top of that range as well).

For the price they are some of the best head phones I've ever owned. I could go on with my list, if you'd like. It goes up to $1500. These are merely opinions that I am sharing, but as a self-proclaimed audiophile I enjoy them.

I'm just wondering what people think of Koss headphones, compared to other more expensive ones. Are the more expensive ones really worth the price, or are they just "souped up"(i.e. more professional looking) versions of the cheaper brands. I use Koss headphones and I think they're great. But for all I know, what I think is "great" might go miles beyond that.

I was honestly expecting this thread to be about a potentially awesome Dre-Beach Boys mashup or something. I'm pretty disappointed it's not, actually...

Whatever, he got them as a gift and they are better than the previous headphones he had. He can hear new detail in the music. This is all good stuff.

New guy, it is true that at some point, you should check out lossless (wav, flac, apple lossless or best of all, vinyl) versions of the songs. They will offer you much better clarity, depth, and stereo separation. Also, if you are going to upgrade, definitely check out the above listed headphones, such as the HD280s.  In the meantime, It is cool that the Beats headphones are an improvement over what you had before.

Everybody, he is a new guy. His screen name says so. How about how we discuss the superior quality of lossless/high resolution Beach Boys music through good headphones instead of jumping all over him for not getting the best brand and model?

Speaking of vinyl, there is something I have always wanted to know. Let's say that somebody unwraps a mint condition vinyl, and then copies it directly to cd without even listening to it. How much of a difference is there between the cd and the actual record being played on a record player? Don't laugh at me if this is a "no brainer" type question. I'm a vinyl novice.

If I may split this particular hair still further, that's technically not a BB recording: originally Brian intended it for The Honeys as "Rabbit's Foot", ergo the first BB session that used a crew member was... um... "Hawaii" or "Catch A Wave".

It depends on how well it is transferred. If it is transferred pristinely, it will sound pretty damn close to the original vinyl. If it is transferred into 24 bit high resolution audio, it will sound almost identical.

Pretty much this. It is also highly dependent upon the users equipment. I am heavily into vinyl rips nowadays and am huge on listening to such rippers like "Pbthal" and "Dr. Robert". Of course I have my own equipment, but it is nice to be able to have vinyl audio on the go.

Anyone who is needs a very cheap but also very good sounding headphones, Try the in ear Samsung headphones, Only £25 in Argos.
Got my pair free with my upgraded phone, But I'm totally amazed at the sounds these cheap headphones can produce, Not too bassy too ;D.

over-bassy headphones are the worst. unfortunately, it's what most of the kids have nowadays.

Philips are the worse cheap phones for over bassy sounds as when you go over half the volumn level on your player it gets unlisteningable.
Like I said Samsung are for me the best of the very cheap headphones great mid range and almost no bass too.

Does it ever suck to wake up in the morning and know that you can't possibly learn anything new about The Beach Boys?  :lol

(http://chzmemebase.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/internet-memes-oh-nice-phones-bro.jpg)

Audio elitism  :hat

I'll take your split hair and split it a couple more times...definitely not "Catch A Wave" unless you consider Maureen Love a "crew member"...Hawaii, yes, Hal on timbales...Brian may have intended "Rabbit's Foot" as a Honey's track but its still Brian, Carl, Dave etc...on the session along with Hal and Steve. The reason we go with "Our Car Club" is that it ended up a Beach Boys track and its the first time Dave recalls seeing a Wrecking Crew member joining a BB's performed tracking session....Dave probably would not have known Brian was temporarily intending to use the track elsewhere.

:) it is but as usual i'm always getting attacked for no reason smh...i thought the songs on my ipod were wav files i'm confused can you please tell me what you mean...
yes they are and if they ever break i will definitely check out the ones you suggested :) it just made me appreciate the beach boys music more...thanks for not bashing me :)

wow so he even used the wrecking crew early in his career ? i thought it was just later onb in the bb's career :p

Boots - you are a legend!  Thanks for saying what I wanted to say.   The wikapaedia comment was rude as.  Yeah, the guy is new and asked questions he could of got elsewhere, but he chose to ask them here. Probably more for a discussion really.  If you don't want to answer someones question, then DONT. No need to be painful about it!

No problem, Newguy. Glad to hear that you are listening in-depth to this wonderful music!

MP3 and AAC (iTunes) files are compressed, so they can be much much smaller than .wav files. Where a .wav file might be 20 or 30 megabytes, MP3 and AAC are only about 2 or 3 megabytes. You may have .wav files on your iPod, it depends on how you obtained the tracks. If you bought them from the iTunes store, they are similar to MP3 and not great quality. MP3 basically takes out frequencies that it thinks the listener can't hear, in order to make a smaller file. Here is a primer on the differences between .wav and mp3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5gdwpPrv_8

The best thing for you to do would probably be to rip Beach Boys CDs in iTunes with the Apple Lossless encoder, which you can select in iTunes preferences (Google "ripping CDs in Apple Lossless" for more info). Apple Lossless is a codec that keeps the sound quality of .wav but also shrinks the file to a manageable size. So, the audio is a direct duplicate of what you would hear on the CD.

Also, Google some information on 24-bit vs. 16-bit. CDs are only 16-bit, but 24-bit audio is superior (as on the Pet Sounds DVD-Audio). It is a big world of sound out there and you are just starting to wade into it - Happy listening!

Thanks Wild Honey. I think with all the news and the historic reunion, we are all a little on edge around here, waiting for any new info, et. cetera, so it is easy to get hot under the collar. It's also easy to forget that not everyone is a longtime audio geek like many of us are.

Really though, we are all probably slightly jealous of Newguy for discovering the Beach Boys recently - he has so much great music to get into, without the years of waiting in the wilderness for a reunion. This is the ideal time to discover the band!

If you do begin to use 24 bit you may need to convert it down from 96khz to 48khz. Apple products can only handle 24/48 whilst 24/96 is incompatible. Not all 24 bit audio has 96khz, but a lot of them do.

He used them a lot on his early non-Beach Boys sessions. He started using them a little bit on BB's sessions in '63/64...more in late '64/65...a bunch in '66.

It 's such a beautiful thing :) to hear things you haven't heard before, it makes you appreciate the art so much more I'm sure you can relate since your an avid music listener like myself. :listening
oh ok now i understand thanks for explaining it :) i have all mp3's most of my music is from itunes and cds..and a few from other sources lol
You helped me so much with what you've told/ explained to me... you basically opened a door and showed me a whole new world, i appeciate it. ;D

I wish brian collaborated with phil spector but i know phil didn't think much of the beach boys and brian wilson :/

No problem, Newguy! Happy to help. Yes, it is pretty crazy what better equipment and higher-resolution audio can reveal in this music. At its best, it is so painstakingly crafted and produced that there are always new depths just waiting to be discovered.

This is an inherent advantage of Brian's "wall of sound" production technique. Pet Sounds, for example, always reveals new things to me when I listen to it, whether on speakers or headphones, and whether I am listening to the mono mix, stereo mix, or the excellent 5.1 surrond mix.

Another album that benefits greatly from this manner of listening is Friends. For my money, it one of the absolute top-notch Beach Boys albums. The production is superb and the songs all fit together extremely well. Brian loves to track electric "Fender" bass with upright bass doubling it; this can be heard in great detail on Pet Sounds. On Friends, there are also lots of great woodwinds and strings floating around the soundstage. It sounds like The Beach Boys' switch to stereo allowed them to do quite a bit more with their mixes - unlike the stereo mixes of contemporaneous Beatles albums, the stereo mixes on Friends are very well-balanced and don't sound too dated.

Of course, there is a lot to enjoy on Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, 20/20, Surfs Up.. And especially Sunflower. I don't know if you've gotten into Sunflower yet, but it is another one of the Beach Boys' "instant classics." The engineer, Stephen Desper, recorded it in such a way that it has one of the best stereo images ever committed to tape. Along with Friends, it may be my favorite Beach Boys headphone album.

I seem to recall that you are a big fan of Pet Sounds - my recommendation for you would be to check out the anniversary edition of Pet Sounds that includes both a CD and DVD. The DVD has high resolution stereo and mono mixes in addition to the surround mix. Pop that disc into your computer or DVD player and check out the mono and stereo mixes on headphones - it will reveal new layers of detail in the production. Great stuff.

I really got into the beach boys music last year :) so far i have all the albums you named..at first when i checked out the beach boys i heard today,pet sounds...i was completely blown away so i expected everything else after to be just as good or better. when i heard smiley smile it frightened me and i was overwhelmed/confused :/...i checked out the history of that and smile and appreciated it and now i love it. wild honey is one of my favorites it always great to me even at the first listen :)...friends took me the longest to appreciate mainly because i didnt like the whole first side of it except passing by smh :/...20/20 has many songs i liked i just thought the album was so mismatched it seemed like a pile of songs, it didnt have a flow at all(unlike smile/pet sounds and today)...i'm definitely going to check that out..is it on amazon?(excuse my run on sentences i usually always write like this online lol)
i'm going to check that out :) might show my girlfriend..she knows that's my favorite album of all time so she checked it out and beca

The SACD release of Pet Sounds is probably my favorite next to the 2009 AF release.
The DVD-A & 40th anniversary version suffer from bad compression issues that isn't present in the mo-fi release.

The best headphones I ever had were about the size of Oreos and they clipped around your ears directly - no band holding them together. Hearing the bass on Wouldn't It Be Nice with those things for the first time was godlike.

If I don't have a dedicated Sacd player will I be able to play the mofi pet sounds and, if so, will I be able to notice any difference between it and the previous stereo mix?

Lossless on portable media devices feels a bit goofy unless you have a small music collection and one of those huge 120 gig MP3 players. I'm all for furthering lossless formats being more commonplace, the fact that 128kbps files still pop up from time to time is appalling. But man, you're gonna fit like five songs on your iPod or whatever if you're dealing with lossless. A well-encoded MP3 (V0 >>> 320 imo) for portable media devices should be good 'nough, which is as simple as adjusting a couple settings.

It's hybrid, so yes. Since you don't have a dedicated SACD player it'll just switch over to the CD automatically for you. And yes, the stereo mix that mo-fi did is the definitive stereo mix out there right now. It feels like the mono in presentation, but with the clarity of stereo. It's really damn good.


Oh sure, if you don't have a high gigabyte portable player like I do (160gb) it doesn't make much sense to only be able to fit 5 albums on your device. Though loseless doesn't take up THAT much space, but 24bit loseless takes up a considerable amount of space compared to regular loseless.

Call me an audiophile, but now that I've gone 24bit I can't even listen to other forms of lossy music. The only times I force myself is when I don't have access to such high quality music.

OK, I do not own a pair of Beats headphones. But what I do notice is that they seem to leak a lot. I commute to work by train and a few regular passengers have Beats 'phones...and I can easily hear whatever they're listening to.

At the moment I have some £15 (roughly $25)  Sony earbuds which are OK considering I use them with my mobile phone to play .wav and high quality MP3 files on the train.

iPhone/iPod headphones are notoriously poor, almost anything is an improvement. Often the 'phones that come with many mobile devices are rather poor because most users don't use them with high quality sound files.

From what I've heard from users, those Beats by Dr. Dre headphones are pretty good...but nobody actually pays full price for them.

When I rip a CD on my laptop it converts them to wma files autmatically, is wma better than MP3?

Thanks guess I'll have to track this one down.

As for headphones, I listen a lot on Grado SR80s. Not necessarily a pair you'd want to be seen outside the house in (and they leak like crazy) but they sound fantastic.

No, wma is just the Windows Media Player version of MP3. You can change this by clicking on "Rip Settings" in the top panel, then select "Format."  You can change to Windows Media Lossless, MP3 or WAV from there.

i'm trynna rip songs from a cd i burned on windows to my itunes but it doesnt allow wma files...what do i do? :(

If you don't want to be bothered to convert them into another format, just rip them again in iTunes.

You messed up your quote a little bit there, but I was able to read it. Yes and no. This is a new stereo mix in that YSBIM & Wouldn't Be Nice are completely different stereo mixes, but the rest of them are pretty much the same from the sessions box-set. The key difference is that it isn't compressed like 40th anniversary, and DVD-A version. Even Pet Sounds Sessions boxset had some bad compression issues on a few songs. What you're left with is a new stereo release that brings about much more clarity than the previous versions.

As for the new mixes, I believe YSBIM used completely different multitracks than what were used before (evidently they discovered these new tracks not too long ago), and Wouldn't It Be Nice has Mike restored on the bridge.

i try but it doesnt convert :(

Thanks, just adjusted the settings to wma lossless - had no idea I could do this!

I've heard some good things about the Dr. Dre headphones, but I have not tried them nor read any reviews. I'm only assuming they're "tuned" and tweaked in a way to emphasize or enhance certain frequencies that are popular in 2012's standards of listening, which might be a lot of the positives I'm hearing about them from owners.

But I think the best headphones apart from consumer grade sets are studio monitoring headphones like the AKG K240. I had a pair which I loved but used regularly in studio recording, and they finally reached a point where the heavy use broke them to where they could not be repaired with a soldering iron. I currently have older AKG K141 monitor headphones, which I use regularly,  and they're great too. But something about that K240 pair was just fantastic. AKG studio 'phones offer great quality and they should still cost around $100 new, give or take.

The difference there is the way the sound is reproduced more naturally and not specifically boosted anywhere to make the bass pump louder, or whatever the case might be. But that's personal preference, of course, and depends on what styles of music you're playing.

Which model on the DR Dre's is a good one..I just checked Amazon and there are several models. Thanks. Also I listened to a set of Bose the other day  and they were incredible and felt so good on my ears. Price was $149. 8)

i have the wireless ones :)

I have a pair of Koss headphones and they sound great. They have a certain amount of hiss though. I hate ear buds. They hurt!

Got these for about $40, shipped: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002D03ZW/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details

I think they're pretty spiffy and sound great. Needed them for some radio stuff so my only real requirements were having a 1/4" jack and long cord.

Oh, thanks for this - it's awesome and made my lawn mowin' chores a pleasure, to be sure!  I love your cool headed restraint - I would have blown it by going 52 mins or so.