I kept hearing they were “better” so ultimately I went to a store and listened to them, and they sounded like crap—it was way overly distorted and muddy.

What is he talking about?

Granted, I listened to a rock track, and I assumed that for a line geared toward listeners of hip-hop “better” meant all bass and nothing else.

This guy have no idea about that product, he is a hypocrite.

What do you think? Have you ever heard anything regarding any of the products that would lend any credibility to their claims of being better? I sure haven’t.

I don't own such headphones and my oppinion was different. The headphones offer such a great isolation, but they can't really handle very powerfull output. I own a Fujitsu T4220 Tablet PC, the old but gold generation, with a very high power sound card and SRS driver. I plugged in the Beats, crank it up to 20% and the audio quality was superior. Clear and deep bass, crystal sound and everything you want to have the best audio experience. Crank it up to 100% and yes, the sound was distorted, but you can feel liquid coming out of your ears after about 10-20 seconds of listening, and about after 20 second you will loose your balance.

Same output I tested with professional Sony studio headphones, and yes, I could crank it up to 100% without any distorsions, but the bass wasn't so deep anymore.

Every headphones is designed for a purpose, Beats by Dr. Dre is designed to listen to music like rap, r&b, dnb, dubstep and other generes with lots of bass, and other headphones are made to listen to rock, classical and music like this which require high definition of higher frequency lines.

So you love rock music? Why hate the Beats, you know what they can do, so don't buy them, buy Sony or any other brand that makes headphones for definition, and not bass.