Sonic the Hedgehog turned out to be one of the biggest movies of 2020, despite serious CG character issues that caused a three-month delay. Now, Paramount has dropped the first trailer for the sequel that gives us our first look at a new character, Knuckles, voiced by none other than Idris Elba.
The trailer shows Sonic (Ben Schwartz) and his new sidekick Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessy). He’s once again taking on Dr. Robotnik, aka, Eggman (Jim Carrey) who’s seeking a classic Sonic McGuffin, the Chaos Emeralds. However, Robotnik has an Echidna up his sleeve in the form of Knuckles, who shows off his brute strength and weirdly elegant speaking voice. (Elba promised that his Knuckles wouldn’t sound sexy, but he is more posh than ever.)
The first Sonic film became one of the most successful video game adaptations ever, so there’s a lot riding on the sequel. Luckily, the slick trailer indicates that we won’t be seeing any of the CGI issues that plagued the first film. The sequel is set to be released on April 8, 2022.
When it comes to noise cancelling headphones, there are several effective options that will get the job done. It’s putting together great audio quality with powerful noise blocking abilities and other handy features that cause many companies to stumble. The likes of Bose and Sony have damn near perfected the craft while the rest of the pack attempts to usurp them. Yamaha is the latest to throw rocks at the throne by adding a collection of 3D sound options of its latest headphones with active noise cancellation (ANC). The YH-L700A has unique qualities, but $499.95 is a high price for Yamaha’s latest blend of design and features.
Yamaha created a unique aesthetic for the YH-L700A. Opting for square earcups over the typical oval shape. They’re immediately striking – for better or worse. But, the combination of leather, fabric, matte black plastic and silver accents create a refined look. The company also decided to attach the headband at the front of the earcups rather than at the center. This doesn’t make a massive difference in terms of comfort, but it does mean the headband sits further forward on the top of your head. Earcups swivel flat and fold in for easy storage, which makes the YH-L700A a decent option for travel.
There are no touch controls here,Yamaha chose to go with physical buttons instead. On the back edge of the right earcup are power and 3D Sound Field buttons, with the former doubling as the Bluetooth pairing control and the latter allowing you to cycle through presets. On the outside of the right earcup, a small leather-covered panel holds buttons for volume, track controls, play/pause and activating a voice assistant. Those last two options are in the middle (single and double press, respectively) while the two outside arrow buttons adjust volume with a single press or skip tracks with a press and hold. Unfortunately these are difficult to find; they’re not embossed deep enough to feel them easily. Over on the left, there’s a single button on the back edge for noise cancelling mode. A single press cycles between ANC, ambient sound and off.
The main attraction on the YH-L700A is Yamaha’s 3D Sound Field feature, complete with head tracking. Basically, the company has developed a collection of seven audio presets for music and movies or shows: cinema, drama, music video, concert hall, outdoor live, audio room and background music. Each one “transforms stereo sound into three-dimensional listening,” according to Yamaha, adjusting the parameters for each virtual environment in an effort to make things sound more immersive. Another aspect of this setup is dynamic head tracking, which gives the illusion of the audio coming from a stationary point in space when you move. It’s a bit weird for music, in my opinion, but it does add something to more cinematic viewing sessions.
It’s obvious that 3D Sound Field significantly tweaks the audio on every preset. However, all of the filters are very heavy handed, drastically changing the EQ and other parameters to the point that none of them work well across genres. Outdoor live, for example, accurately creates the feeling of being at a festival, with the heavy bass and subdued vocals you’d experience in real life. It’s okay for things like metal and rock, but for softer more acoustic styles it’s not great. If you listen to a wide range of music you’ll need to change presets when you venture to a new genre. Oddly enough, the cinema preset is the best all-around setting for tunes. Almost all of the music presets are loaded with reverb, which works for something like the concert hall preset, but it becomes exhausting elsewhere. All of the options recreate their stated venue, it’s just that none of them are really pleasant to listen to for an entire album’s worth of tunes.
When it comes to movies and television, the cinema and drama options are quite nice. There’s no content that highlights this prowess better than Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive. With a mix of spoken interviews, auto racing and dramatic overtures, there’s a lot for headphones and speakers to handle. The YH-L700A does well with the dimensional sound that’s typically best served by a Dolby Atmos setup in your living room. Everything sounds spacious, and the directional roar of the cars comes through nicely.
Without 3D Sound Field, the YH-L700A is an average sounding set of noise cancelling headphones. There’s good clarity and detail, but the mid-range can be overbearing when you’re listening to a full band. There’s decent, punchy bass but a shot of treble would go a long way here to round out the sound and cut through the chaos of songs like Underoath’s “Damn Excuses.” At times, the lack of highs creates an unpleasant muddy mess. Even with more acoustic genres like bluegrass, upright bass dominates with the other strings taking a backseat. That’s the case throughout much of Sturgill Simpson’s The Ballad of Dood & Juanita. It’s obvious Yamaha was intent on making its 3D audio feature sound good, it’s too bad the “regular” listening experience is mediocre at best.
The YH-L700A packs active noise cancellation, complete with an ambient sound mode that allows you to tune into your surroundings as needed. Like Apple and others, Yamaha outfitted its ANC setup with tech that can adjust the audio to changes in wear. The so-called Listening Optimizer takes measurements every 20 seconds to pick up any variances in seal and air leakage. The headphones can then adjust the sound to account for any issues. While I don’t have any way to measure how effective this is, I can tell you that overall, the ANC gets the job done. It’s not as powerful as the likes of Bose or Sony, but most of the time it’s good enough.
Lastly, there’s a Listening Care feature that attempts to maintain decent sound quality even when you listen at lower volumes. Typically, and to the detriment of our collective hearing health, headphones sound the best at medium high to high volumes. With the YHL700A, Yamaha says Listening Care analyzes sound to keep a full range at low volume. It accounts for changes in background noise during the process, to offer the best possible audio no matter how loud. And while it’s not as consistent as the company would have you believe, rock tunes maintain a decent frequency range well below 50 percent volume. You do lose some detail, as expected, but it’s still perfectly listenable at those levels.
Billy Steele/Engadget
The marquee features can be enabled or disabled from Yamaha’s headphones app. There are options for 3D Sound Field, head tracking, Listening Care, Listening Optimizer and noise cancellation. You can also select your preferred 3D preset from your phone as well as adjust (or disable) the auto power-off timer. The software displays your battery percentage too, so you’re not left wondering what the “battery level high” voice prompt means when you power up the headphones.
Battery life is a major sticking point with these headphones. During my initial tests, I managed just ten and half hours with both ANC and 3D sound enabled and head tracking off. That’s 30 minutes shy of the company’s 11-hour projection. Sure, that’s a lot of tech at work simultaneously, but most flagship noise-cancelling headphones are pushing 30 or more hours of use on a charge. Yamaha says this is possible if you disable the Sound Field tech, extending the expected battery life to 34 hours. The range with the YH-L700A at full strength should be at least 15 hours to justify the asking price. The company released a firmware update ostensibly to improve battery life during the course of my review, but the results didn’t change with ANC and 3D sound both active.
In terms of the movie- and 3D-focused competition, a few options come to mind. Apple’s AirPods Max feature dynamic head tracking and support spatial audio through Dolby Atmos and Atmos Music. It doesn’t have a selection of presets to help you fine-tune things ready at the press of a button, but there is an adaptive EQ that maintains sound quality as conditions and external noises change. AirPods Max also offers the most natural sounding transparency mode out of any headphones I’ve tested. However, they’re still $479, although we’ve seen them as low as $429 recently.
Billy Steele/Engadget
Sony’s WH-1000XM4 is another excellent alternative. The company’s flagship model is packed with handy features like pausing when you speak, quick attention mode and the ability to automatically adjust noise cancelling settings based on activity or location. The 1000XM4 equally impresses in the sound and ANC departments, including support for 360 Reality Audio via supported streaming services, making them our top overall choice for headphones right now. They don’t pack in dynamic head tracking, but they will save you significant money at the current going rate of $248 (full price: $350).
Yamaha has crafted an interesting proposition with its YH-L700A headphones. The company attempted to equally cater to both cinephiles and music nerds with features that work for both movies and television alongside options for casual listening. Battery life with the most attractive tools enabled is disappointing for a set of $500 headphones and the presets would benefit from some restraint. A fully customizable EQ and a slight bump in the battery department would go a long way to justifying the high price here, but for now, Yamaha has a solid set of headphones in need of some fine tuning.
Bill Gates, the cofounder of Microsoft who left the company’s board in 2020, wrote an end-of-the-year note on Thursday filled with reflections on the pandemic and the year 2021. But Gates also included some predictions for the future, and they could give some indication of where tech companies are looking for the next…
The judge side-stepped the broader legality of the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, and the ruling has no bearing on the higher-stakes case before the Supreme Court.
A UK appeals court has reversed a previous ruling that Wikileaks founder shouldn’t be extradited to the US due to mental health concerns, the Associated Press has reported. The decision opens the door for Assange to be extradited to the US, where he’d face charges of espionage over Wikileaks’ publication of government documents.
Lower court Judge Vanessa Baraitser originally ruled that the US criminal justice system presented a risk to Assange’s physical wellbeing. “The overall impression is of a depressed and sometimes despairing man, who is genuinely fearful about his future,” the judge ruled in January. “For all of these reasons I find that Mr. Assange’s risk of committing suicide, if an extradition order were to be made, to be substantial.”
In its appeal, however, the US government argued that Assange had no history of “serious and enduring mental illness” that would suggest any risk of self-harm. US lawyers also told British judges that if they extradited Assange, he could serve his US prison sentence in his home country of Australia.
The High Court in London decided that those assurances were enough to guarantee Assange would be treated humanely. The final decision for his extradition is now in the hands of the UK home secretary, though Assange has the option of appealing. Assange’s camp has argued that his work constitutes journalism and so his extradition would be a violation of press freedom.
The US government indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges along with one charge of computer misuse over Wikileaks’ publication of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The maximum penalty is 175 years in prison, though US lawyers said “the longest sentence ever imposed for this offense is 63 months.” Assange was denied bail for risk of flight and is being held at London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison.
Julian Assange can be extradited to the U.S. based on a new UK court ruling early Friday, according to multiple reports from news outlets in London. A lower court ruled back in January that Assange couldn’t be extradited to the U.S. because he’d likely face torture in the American prison system and was in danger of …
The Epic Games vs. Apple trials brought to light how Microsoft tried to conjure up solutions on how to make Xbox games available from the App Store. Apple revised its guidelines last year so that companies like Microsoft and Google can make their games available on iOS. That said, they can only do so by releasing each game as an app that users can download. Microsoft previously said that forcing users to download hundreds of game apps is “a bad experience,” but it would’ve reportedly done so if Apple had agreed to its proposal.
According to private emails seen byThe Verge, the Xbox head of business development Lori Wright laid out a proposal for Apple, which would allow Microsoft to put individual game apps on the iOS store without taking up all of a user’s storage space. Wright asked Apple to allow Microsoft to put its streaming tech inside the Gaming Pass app alone. That would give the company a way to make the game apps themselves around 30 MB in size instead of the 150 MB that they would be if its streaming tech was incorporated into each of them.
Instead of using the device’s processing power, the games would stream out of remote servers powered by Xbox One and Xbox Series X processors. Wright also apparently offered to make Xbox-exclusives available for iOS users in an effort to convince Apple. “This would be an incredibly exciting opportunity for iOS users to get access to these exclusive AAA titles in addition to the Game Pass games,” she wrote in an email.
Microsoft told The Verge that Apple rejected its solution and wanted the company to incorporate its streaming tech into every game application. As for Apple, it told the publication that Microsoft’s proposal didn’t adhere to its App Store Review Guidelines, “specifically the requirement to use in-app purchase to unlock additional features or functionality within an app.” Microsoft denied that in-app purchases factored into Apple’s rejection.
In the end, Microsoft eventually shifted its development focus and gave iOS users access to xCloud via Safari. Xbox Cloud Gaming CVP Kareem Choudhry told The Verge, however, that the company “will continue to look for viable resolutions that [will] allow [its games] into the App Store.”
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