I found a MDR-G72 street style headphones in my box of computer stuff. Looks like a BestBuy price label. Weird. I don’t buy Sony stuff, nor do I shop at BB. Hooked it up to my system and gave it a whirl. At first, I was appalled at the shittiness of the sound. Then I listen some more. I guess it is acceptable for a cheap (~40 bucks) set of portable phones. That and I am spoiled on my fullsized Sennheisers. They don’t produce a very deep sound stage: the sound is right next to your ear as opposed to immerse you in sound. Of course, you look a ton less dorky with these on than the fullsized cans I won’t even go into imaging and detail. I’ll just say it is lacking. I am still eyeing that CX500 for my portable music needs. I just need to get off my ass to buy one. Until I do, these are almost tolerable

Update:
I left the Sony playing trance all night loudly to break it in. Of course this is very subjective and people will say this is bullshit, but there is seem to be a change in the sound for the better. Ya it still doesn’t knock my socks off but it is there. The depth seem to increased compared to when it is out of the box. It sounds less muffled. The bass is still a bit overpowering, but the mid range and highs comes through a little better now. Theorhetically, break-in is supposed to loosen up the diaphram, so don’t ask me why highs comes through better. I double checked my ears on 2 other fullsize big dollar cans to make sure my ears didn’t go bad overnight. The break-in doesn’t make the Sony a good sounding a pair of phones, but it has made it more tolerable. This reminds me to pick up the Beyerdynamics DT880. I wanted it for a year… Just when I stop thinking about it… I could pick up something for my portable when I go get this No I don’t think there is too much of a difference in quality after you go over 200 bucks on headphones. It is mostly taste on what you like your phones to sound like. I do LOVE the DT880’s sound though.

I just got a HD4870 reference card after swearing off ATi for awhile. Ok seriously, I thought they would have fixed their shitty drivers by now. A big fat NOPE at that.

First off, come on it has been 2 weeks since the card been on the shelf and where is the official driver? Oh there are BETA and HOTFIX drivers Then how about drivers that takes up 60megs of memory? Ok CCC disabled and got my memory back. Oh, now I don’t have access to settings and monitoring. This is the most annoying part: everytime I close a fullscreen 3d game or go from fullscreen to windowed, it blinks the display like it is changing the resolution. Seriously annoying. nVidia doesn’t do this. I mean resolution wasn’t changed, 1920×1200 to 1920×1200 and it takes a 1-2 seconds to do whatever it is doing. Um… ya Come on, that is seriously annoying. It is always the little thing that grinds on your nerve. Yes the card is fast and a good card for the money, you just have to put up with alot of shittiness, as compared to just a bunch of crappiness from nVidia. Meh. Color me underwhelmed from all the annoyances that comes with every ATi. Free with every purchase, y0! Man, I miss the old ATi control panel. Wish they would bring them back. Who gives 2 shits about live preview of the settings?

I guess I’ll give it a score: 79%. Almost, but not quite there. Buy it if you don’t mind the crappy drivers from ATi. It is just good for the money. A Dodge neon was good for the money; it just isn’t very good in grander view of things. GTX280 and 9800GX2 are still much faster. At least I know nVidia don’t have this annoying blinking problem and the driver are less bloated (still bloated of course). *GTX280 is quite mediocre too, perhaps even more so than the HD. I am an equal opportunity hater.

PS: The review is negatively biased on purpose. If you want to read the good things, just go flip through any other HD48xx review. I mean, people are giving too much credit to this card. Sure it may be an unbelievably good card compared to what ATi was churning out for the last few generations, but it doesn’t make it a grand slam. Someone need to balance out all the ATi dick sucking.