When I visited Chennai recently (more on that later), @the100rabh and @daaku showed me an mp3 player that they said they bought for just Rs.180! This little Chinese bastard of an iPod Shuffle and Chinese preeminence comes with a pair of earphones and a microUSB cable (for charging purposes) too. Plug in your micro memory card and you’re good to go. You can even use your own 3.5mm headphones.

The sound quality really isn’t that bad if you’re only going to listen to Hindi music, Pop and Hip-Hop genres. Just don’t expect your Metal songs to sound good because this iPod can crank up the treble to insane levels.

Available at Saravana Selvarathnam Textiles, T.Nagar, Chennai. In Red, Black, Silver, and Purple(!!) colours.

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Coming to the topic, I have never rooted for the under dog in Formula One before, that is, until Adrian Sutil came along. The Force India driver is one of the few drivers I like in the politics rocked sport.

A professional racing driver who wants to be a stuntman sometime in the future, Adrian Sutil is a big fan of Metallica and Indian food. Quote, “I love Indian food especially chicken tikka and chicken jalfrezi. I absolutely love gulab jamuns and yes, naan is yummy”. And even though he hasn’t actually won a race yet, the mere fact that he took the VJM02, a much inferior car compared to the McLaren and Brawn cars that dominated 2009, and raced it to 4th position in the Italian Grand Prix; or the second place in the German Grand Prix (that was eventually lost to Raikonnen thanks to a crash the Finn caused), definitely proves that he has potential.

The simple, yet outspoken guy that he is, I haven’t ever read an interview of Sutil like this one that the Times of India published yesterday. I thought it required a mention on my blog, given that Sutil has spoken so candidly about his life and his thoughts about almost everything. Give it a read. If you’re short of time, you might want to skip to the second page.

Come 2010, I’m sure things will turn around better for the German. An exciting season ahead with all the new teams, regulations, and of course, the return of the F1 Legend – Michael Schumacher. I can’t wait for it to start.

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The leak was identified to a store in France, where the album was released nearly two weeks ahead of the scheduled release. [link]

Check out a photo posted by one of those fans lucky enough to have gotten their hands on the new album.

Death Magnetic CD Image

Death Magnetic track listing:

1. That Was Just Your Life
2. The End Of The Line
3. Broken, Beat & Scarred
4. The Day That Never Comes
5. All Nightmare Long
6. Cyanide
7. The Unforgiven III
8. The Judas Kiss
9. Suicide & Redemption
10. My Apocalypse

Cyanide has been available on Metallica.com for listening from some time now, but of course, the leaked album is already available on BitTorrent, and I must add, ALL of the songs are good!

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Def Leppard Concert in Bangalore

WooHoo!!

Thanks to Bangalore Metblogs.

So who’s attending? Sathya and Subbu are. Are you? Say so here.

UPDATE: The concert has been cancelled. Diwakar has pointed to the official Def Leppard  news item.

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You may also know that deciding on which headphone to buy is really difficult, especially since no store lets you try them out. You gotta go on user-reviews.

The SONY MDR-XD200 won hands down after I went through a bunch of headphones. This baby has bang for every frikkin buck you pay.

Specs

• Closed-Type Headphones with Long Stroke Diaphragm for Dynamic Movie Sound
• Capable of Producing Movie Quality Sound with Dynamic Sound Range
• Sound Mode Switch for Movie and Music Enjoyment
• Comfort Fit with Urethane Leather Ear Pads
• Ear-Conscious Design for Wearing Comfort
• Large 40mm Driver Unit with 360kJ/m³ High Power Neodymium Magnet for Outstanding Sound Quality
• Response Bandwidth: 10 – 22000 Hz
• Sensitivity: 102 dB
• Impedance: 70 Ohm

Performance

The sound quality is really good. The sound does not distort at high volume. The bass and treble are evenly matched. Sony’s set them just right for optimum headphone listening. There’s a slider that lets you change modes while watching movies or listening to music. The difference, sadly, is not much unless you try it out on original 5.1 DVD movies or high bit-rate music. All it does is make the sound seem more wide. The headphone also does a decent job at cutting out environment noise.

Comfort

Trust me on this one – excellent. The ear-cups are carved in such a way that your entire ear is covered perfectly by the spongy part. The band over the head is pretty comfortable and does not hurt a bit even on long hours of use. And since this baby is pretty light weight (8 Oz), you hardly feel any pain in your neck.

The best part is the wire. It’s 11.5 feet long. That’s right, Eleven-and-a-Half feet! To give an example, I had @Sknahs wear the headphones and sit at one corner of the hall. I then carried the music player half way down the stairs with the headphones connected!

The sad part here is that a volume-controller is missing. So if you’re watching a movie sitting on the other side of the room, you’ll need to come down to your media player to decrease the volume every time a horrible song comes on.

Final Verdict

Excellent pair of headphones. Very good bass and treble support, and plays very well on just about every music player we tried (Nokia’s n70, Sony’s own w580i, and the PC). But what will make you buy this, is its price — Rs.1,490 including taxes!

Now no more being told to decrease the volume, or being shot in the ass while playing Counter-Strike because you couldn’t hear your opponent come right behind you. Yay!

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