NEW YORK — When iPods hit the scene 10 years ago, the small, white ear buds that came with the devices became the symbol for listening to music on the go.

Bose has been known for its larger headphones, and celebrities have taken note and aided in the resurgence of the ear amplifiers. In 2008, Monster launched Beats by Dre with Dr. Dre, and it is the most recognizable of celebrity-branded headphones. Monster later released headphones with Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Diddy, Daft Punk, Nick Cannon and LeBron James.

This year, 50 Cent, Quincy Jones and Ludacris released their own line.

Dre, the Grammy-winning rap legend who has produced hits for Eminem, 2Pac, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige, says he is offended when people use generic headphones.

“It’s almost like a knife in the heart,” he said while promoting the headphones last year. “We’re in the studio, at least me, for years at a time trying to work on music, tweaking it, trying to get the sound right, and for people to walk around and listen to the music on those cheap white headphones is ridiculous.”

But some people may have a reason for not buying Beats by Dre. The cheapest set costs $100, and the most expensive pair is $500. 50 Cent’s Sync by 50 ranges from $130 to $400, and the lowest price for Soul by Ludacris is $70; the highest is $300. (Partial sales from 50 Cent and Cannon’s headphones go to charity.)

“You go out and spend three, four hundred dollars on an iPod, and then you go put your earphones in and your iPod sounds like crap,” said Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope, A&M and Geffen Records and co-launcher of Beats by Dre, as he was standing with Dre. “This is about releasing the sound that’s in the iPod.”

Monster’s CEO Noel Lee took it a step further: “Most people have never heard what their iPod sounds like.”

Research shows most MP3 listeners own multiple headphones, according to Karim Noblecilla, director of product marketing for Sony’s Personal Audio Accessories division.

“That’s how we’re seeing the market,” she said. “People have two, three, even four sets for different purposes.”

Oversized headphones were a big trend in the 1970s and 1980s — a time when hip-hop was emerging as a genre and people walked around with boomboxes, blasting a sound that Lee believes the iPod generation has missed out on.

“If you’re (in the) baby boomer generation, you grew up with speakers . . . (but) during the transition from an audio world to a video world, we kind of lost the audio in favor of the video development,” he said. “The iPod generation . . . they never got to hear really deep bass.”

But 50 Cent believes his competitors aren’t making headphones for all styles of music.

“I understand that they’re trying to make it more attractive to a hip-hop demographic with the bass and stuff like that, but you listen to other music that isn’t from that genre (and) it’s way off-balance,” he said in a recent interview.

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