1. What is it?

2. Why is it only with HP?

3. How much better than regular sound is it?

4. Does it have a chance of becoming a standard?

5. Does it need to be in your MP3 player and mobile phone too?

6. Do you pay extra for it, or does it come included with the computer for the same price?

They say Beats headphones are successful.  I’ll just say I see them around, there’s definitely penetration.  And at those price points, money is being made.

Now Jimmy Iovine is trying to remake sound, to get people to listen to a higher quality.  I’m all for it.  But history is against us.  People have been settling for shitty sound since the nineties, when boom boxes became stereos.  Then we’ve got the lousy iPod earbuds and the crappy computer speakers and everything points against any change in the status quo.

So, can Jimmy make a difference?

Sound is different from headphones.  Headphones are an accessory, a status item, a badge of honor.  Sound is…ethereal?

Is Jimmy making all the money here?  Does the upside flow solely to him and his cronies?  Or can we enlist others, can we make it a movement, for the good of all?

7. How does it work?

8. Does it really work?

9. Why aren’t other manufacturers on board?

Dolby became a cassette standard in the seventies even though in most cases, tape hiss was not seen as a problem and people rarely used the sound processing.  But Ray Dolby got all the cassette deck manufacturers to sign up.  Then again, there was a flagship product, the Advent cassette deck, which with chrome tape and Dolby set a standard that intrigued customers and caused manufacturers to emulate it.

Is there such a thing as a desirable HP computer?  Or is HP Chevrolet, seen as a commodity.  In other words, is this battle being fought with one arm tied behind our backs?

Maybe we need a new brand.  With a special color, like the white cables on the earbuds of iPods and the red cables on Beats headphones.  So someone can evidence their membership in the club easily, someone can see the desirable product carried around.

Then again, today people carry around cell phones, not laptops.  Maybe the sound processing should be introduced in Android handsets.  Go straight to the manufacturers, Motorola and HTC.  Or get Google onboard.  Hey, Google’s fighting Apple?  Give them some ammunition.

You see it all comes down to Apple.  Apple controls music.  Apple controls sound.  If Jimmy wanted to improve sound quality, he should have gone to Steve Jobs.

But maybe Jobs wouldn’t listen.  Or maybe Jobs is greedy.  Or maybe Iovine is greedy.  But division prevents a standard.  And unless Jimmy’s scheme becomes a standard, it’s irrelevant.  Beats don’t have to be a standard, but branded sound quality does. What’s the name again?  What stars are involved again?