Can Bose Help Skullcandy Shake Its Bargain-Bin Reputation?

A headphone company Skullcandy has a reputation for poor sound quality. Over the past few years, people have been trying to improve this reputation.

His efforts began with a Everyone agreement in 2025 and the release of The Skullcandy 360 ANC system$130 a pair of wireless headphones which have amazingly good audio and noise cancellation for the money.

Next on the upgrade list are Skullcandy’s popular Crusher headphones. These wireless cans have been around for more than a decade, and are famous for allowing users to rock the bass using a wheel on the ear. Turn the wheel all the way, and the Crushers vibrate and vibrate against your skull, thanks to the special drivers.

The company announced a new pair, the Crusher 1080 ANC, at an event in New York City on Wednesday evening. It’s on sale now.

These headphones mimic the feel of a subwoofer – as if you’re in front of a concert – while often sacrificing mids and highs. But that’s exactly what Skullcandy wants to fix with the new headphones, once again relying heavily on Bose’s audio expertise.

The new Crusher headphones are the next step in the reinvention of the Skullcandy brand.

Courtesy of Skullcandy

Skullcandy likes to say that its first product was born on a ski chairlift in 2003 near its headquarters in Park City, Utah. Since then, the company has been mainly supporting the sports community.

“From snowboarders to snowboarders,” Brian Garofalow, Skullcandy CEO, tells WIRED. Although private equity firm Mill Road Capital now owns the company, Skullcandy is still seen as more of a lifestyle brand than an audio company with audiophile chops.

“We’ve been very successful at building community and nurturing and helping to improve cultures – not very successful at creating new products,” says Garofalow. “So we’ve been fine-tuning our preferences over the last few years.”

Garofalow says it’s been an engineering challenge to combine the company’s Crusher bass-boosting technology with noise cancellation. It is said that the team worked with Bose engineers to reduce the Crusher from the entire playback profile so that the lows would be isolated. Theoretically, this means that when you crank up the bass and vocals, “the mids and highs are still way, way sharper, compared to before, where it used to be muddy,” says Garofalow.

The Bose sound The app also adds three more updates to Skullcandy’s new Crusher headset: Bose noise canceling, which will work well even if you have the bass up to 11; Bose surround sound audio profile; and six microphones of the Bose standard find out.