Jonny Greenwood performs the Radiohead-penned tune "Spooks," off the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's film Inherent Vice, with members of Supergrass and voiceover by Joanna Newsom.
Radiohead is one of those bands where each member is a treasure chest of talent. Go Greenwood!
The film is not a paean to ear-splitting noise, greasy hair and hell-raising lyrics, you may be relieved to hear. Rather, it is an ode to the extraordinary human ability to persevere in the face of failure.
What a documentary! May it inspire watchers for years and years to come. Don't know why it took me so long to watch this!
Overrated?
I recently bought 2 Xiaomi Pistons (v2) on the recommendations of a friend and from the reviews on flipkart and sites like head-fi. The reviews that I read all stressed that this was the ultimate budget earphones with quality equal to earphones 4-5 times its price. Is it really that good? I'm here to give you an honest review of the product. To make things simpler, there will be no ratings out of 10 etc. Read ahead…
The earphones came in a beautiful compact plastic case wrapped around a rubber casing(as pictured).
Build Quality
The earphone units themselves are made of aluminum. They are super light weight and look sturdy. You wont be able to damage them easily (for eg. By sitting on them). The units also contain a Beryllium diaphragm, which is only used in extremely expensive audio equipment. Other than that, they look very beautiful. They even won the IFA design award so nothing more to say there.
There are 2 cable portions.
One portion from the 3.5mm jack to the microphone unit is braided synthetic cloth and the portion of the cable from mic unit to earphone unit is rubber. The synthetic cloth portion looks sturdy and can take a good pulling. The rubber portion is thin and it worries me. Although, its mentioned that both parts contain/use Kevlar, I would be careful while using it. It also says that the cables are tangle free. Not really. They do get tangled but less than others.
The mic unit, also of aluminum, has three buttons in total, with two on one side. The middle lone button is used for receiving call , play/pause while the 2 other buttons are meant for volume control. All three buttons work fine on my Note 2. The only problem is the mic unit itself is too low. I have to use my hand to pick up the mic, everytime I need to talk.
Overall the earphones are quite beautiful and are sturdy at the same time.
Audio Quality
This is the area where people say that quality of the earphones is worth much more than its price.
I tested both the sets of earphones that I had purchased and oddly, sound quality of one was slightly better than the other. I used every possible equalizer setting to normalize the difference between the earphones but I still felt that one was better than the other.
Superb Clarity of highs and mids. Treble was a bit too sharp sometimes, especially in the 2nd earphone. Very Weak to Weak Bass.
Suggestions: 1.Buy/Use better eartips. Ones provided are flimsy and leak sound. 2. USE EQUALIZER to boost bass and lower the treble. Built-in equaliser in apps like PlayerPro or Poweramp will definitely help. Without it, songs will sound very trebly and tinny sometimes.
Verdict
Xiaomi has taken the smartphone market by storm. I expect it to do the same in the earphone/headphone markets very soon. One issue I had with this product was inconsistency in audio quality between 2 units I had purchased. Although the difference was minor, it was noticeable. This is probably only an isolated incident but I hope that other buyers don’t face this.
In conclusion, I have to say for Rs.1000/ $19, this is fantastic product – superior build quality and great audio quality (for its price). But they're not as good as earphones 4-5 times its price as claimed by some; Probably earphones twice its price. When it comes to audio, it’s really the sound that matters, not the features that are advertised.
For bass heads, I recommend going for Tekfusion Twinwoofers. If you want a different style of earphones, which are truly tangle-free and sound good too, check out Cowon EM1.
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