[General Questions and Answers] indigotheory:
Im not quite sure what your concept of "audiophile" is. Its an easy word to say and it gets thrown about too much on forums, and its also easier to call yourself an "audiophile"

For me an "audiophile" is the guy who tries to replicate ultimately a live setting in the home....and spends an extensive amount of time, effort and serious money doing so.

For me, I enjoy music (listening and playing around in bands) and aim to get the best quality of what I have at the time. Which means a phone / mp3 player with a good audio chip, affordable headphones and lossless music files for portable use. I ain't got the cash just yet to splurge on the items on my wishlist to get building my dream home hifi system!

However, and im sure a lot would agree the archetypal "audiophile" is pretty much open to suggestions and pretty much any musical genre etc, and they like what they like. They also would not own a pair of "bose solo" headphones that dont even exist and would no way even give these beats headphones / phones with beats audio consideration for a minute.

My last mention of this beats audio...

A quick rundown of the history and how they came about tells us that the company "Monster" used to make some excellent cables back in the day, until they started cutting costs and people found out and that started putting monster into dispute. Then a few years later Dre gets talking to someone from monster about musical gear and headphones. So monster start making these beats headphones and market them with a kind of mission statement by the man himself Dr Dre (which you did actually mention in a previous post). Now there is adverts on the television with famous celebrities marketing these headphones, like perfume.

The sad fact is ultimately all this famous "beats audio" is a bass heavy eq setting (similar to sonys mega bass on their mp3 walkmans and famous walkman phones) and it is very cleverly marketed. Its integrated in phones (especially Htc) and some desktop and latop computers (mostly Compaq I think). However, you can achieve the same by selecting a bass heavy preset in any music app you have installed on your phone! Or installing one of these mods such as acid audio or a beats app from the play store. There seriously isnt much difference. And lasty if there is an actual hardware specific beats something, I would be extremely skeptical to what it acutally does. If it exists im thinking its another cleverly marketed celebrity endorsed gimmick that carries a massive placebo effect.

And as things are nowadays it the same. Someone famous makes something and everyone else follows suit... first its beats by dre, then its lady gaga headphones, then its street by 50cent and now its rza chambers from the wu tang clan! So where will it all end? This is real world proof that a celebrity can sell the average joe anything including a radically expensive and nice looking pair of headphones if they say enough convincing bull**** to hoink you in to purchase.

Hopefully this clears up the beats debate, so back on topic.... as mentioned before I chipped in and your replies are no way relevant to what I said which is just why I said best of luck and left it at that. I mentioned how good audio can be with the Note 2 coupled with stweaks and you say your put off the samsung phones, someone else added to the ongoing beats debate and then you want a samsung phone instead of the cleverly marketed Htc phones with beats audio etc etc etc.......

It seems like you have a lot of time on your hands which means you can go back and read what people have replied with and this will help you stay more informed based on mine and other peoples real world experiences with their phones and any tweaks, mods and apps they use with their sound.

Hopefully this will guide your decision more and it will either be left as that or you might start asking some better and more relevant questions. Remember I mentioned a lot of headphones made by reputable manufacturers that receive exceptional reviews in the audio communities and they are also a hell of a lot cheaper than the beats headphones and they will offer far more superior sound (I remember posting an early candid comment in this thread about my £20 Hmv super sale special Sony headphones no doubt being better than the £200 odd quid beats offerings), I also went on to tell you based on my own real world experience how to get the best audio quality out of the Note 2 with the wolfson dac along with mentioned numerous audio tweaks such as stweaks, the Noozxoide app and the acid audio mod (which I still aint tried and im in a seperate thread debating that at the minute.

Also me telling you my musical tastes has no relevance whatsoever to you choosing a phone that suits your needs, as mentioned feel free to make a separate thread for that and ill be happy to chip in.

Regards