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AirPods Max Unboxing Videos: 'More Than Good Enough to Compete With Other High-End Headphones' - MacRumors
Cyberpunk 2077 Has a Consistent Crashing Issue on PS5 During Long Play Sessions - Push Square
Cyberpunk 2077: Increasing FPS and removing blur effects - PC Invasion

AirPods Max Unboxing Videos: 'More Than Good Enough to Compete With Other High-End Headphones' - MacRumors

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 06:27 AM PST

Earlier this week, Apple introduced new wireless over-ear headphones called AirPods Max, and first impressions and unboxing videos have now surfaced from various media outlets and YouTube channels. Priced at $549, the AirPods Max launch December 15.

A first real-life look at AirPods Max via CNET

AirPods Max feature a 40-mm Apple-designed dynamic driver that is said to provide "rich, deep bass, accurate mid-ranges, and crisp, clean high-frequency extension." Each ear cup is equipped with Apple's H1 chip for "computational audio" to deliver the "highest quality listening experience possible," according to Apple.

While more time is needed for in-depth reviews, The Verge's Nilay Patel said AirPods Max sound "more than good enough to compete with other high-end headphones":

Sound-wise, I've had fun listening to the AirPods Max for a few hours — they're crisp and bright, with a pleasingly wider soundstage than my Sony headphones, and no distortion at all, even at max volume. We'll have a full review of these soon, including tests of spatial audio and Apple's claim of Atmos surround sound support, so stay tuned for that. But for now, rest assured the AirPods Max sound more than good enough to compete with other high-end headphones.

Apple says the AirPods Max feature a "breathable knit mesh" spanning the headband that distributes weight to reduce on-head pressure, but this might be more marketing speak than anything, as Patel said he "can't say it feels very much different than my Sony WH-1000XM2s, but it's possible I just have a very large head."

Patel says that it takes two hours to charge AirPods Max to their full, advertised 20-hour battery life using Apple's small 5W charger, with no option for fast charging, even if you use a Lightning to USB-C cable. That said, if you forget to charge the AirPods Max overnight, a five-minute charge provides enough juice for 1.5 hours of listening time.

CNET's David Carnoy believes the AirPods Max "raise the noise-canceling bar," edging out both Sony's WH-1000XM4 and Bose's Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, two of the most popular over-ear headphone models on the market:

On top of that, their noise canceling is arguably the best I've experienced, slightly edging out the noise canceling on both Sony's WH-1000XM4 and Bose's Noise Cancelling Headphones 700. (I haven't yet compared them closely to Bose's QuietComfort Earbuds, which offer the best noise-canceling for true-wireless earphones.) They don't completely silence the world around you, but I was out on the streets of New York, and they did a bang-up job of muffling noise -- I could barely hear the traffic around me. Finally, they work quite well as a headset for making calls and are particularly good at reducing wind noise.

Carnoy also said the AirPods Max have "impressive" build quality, although he noted that the headphones are quite heavy:

For heavy headphones they are comfortable, but not necessarily super comfy. It'd be nice if they were 20% lighter, but the way the headband is designed, with its mesh canopy, it takes a good amount of pressure off the top of your head. They might look and feel a little big for people with smaller heads, but they do seem to fit a good range of head types.

AirPods Max come with a carrying case called the "Smart Case," which puts the headphones in an ultra-low power state to preserve battery charge when not in use, according to Apple. The case has already become the butt of a joke on social media, and many of the first impressions shared so far agree that the case looks rather peculiar.

Smart Case for AirPods Max via CNET

CNBC's Todd Haselton found the AirPods Max to be "super comfortable" with extended use, and he also praised the precise volume control offered by the Digital Crown, a feature adapted from the Apple Watch:

I wore the AirPods Max for several hours Wednesday and they felt super comfortable. There's a breathable mesh band on the top that felt light on my head and didn't get sweaty or hot. I also love the ear cups, which are spacious and fit around my ears instead of sitting on them.

There are a lot of high-end touches, like aluminum cups and a steel frame, instead of plastic parts you might find in competing headsets. I also dig the Digital Crown that Apple brought over from the Apple Watch. It feels solid and turns easily to adjust the volume. A lot of competing high-end headphones use touch controls for volume, which isn't as accurate as a physical control.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Has a Consistent Crashing Issue on PS5 During Long Play Sessions - Push Square

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 06:45 AM PST

As you may or may not know, we've been absolutely hammering Cyberpunk 2077 in order to bring you coverage here on Push Square. We're now around 20 hours into the open world RPG, but we've started running into a real problem: the game crashes, consistently, from what we can tell, during longer sessions.

To be clear, we're playing on PS5 through backwards compatibility. As we noted in our Cyberpunk 2077 PS5, PS4 Pro, and PS4 performance article, the game runs well on Sony's current-gen console, offering a mostly smooth 60 frames-per-second. It's a bit buggy now and then, but so far, nothing's got in the way of us being fully immersed in Night City.

But we're sad to say that these crashes are really starting to wear thin. We'd estimate that for every 1 hour and 30 minutes of uninterrupted play, we're hit with a crash. A software crash, mind you — the kind where the game runs into an error and the application is forced to close. By our count, we've had nine crashes so far.

Based on our experience, these crashes tend to happen whenever the game is loading a new area, or new assets in general. For example, we've had it crash when entering a different district of Night City, and when a key story scenario has transitioned to a new scene.

Fortunately, the game does a lot of autosaving, so we haven't lost much progress. But even so, this is far from ideal. We've looked around online to see whether anyone else is having this problem, and we've found a few forum posts here and there that suggest the same issue. But of course, Cyberpunk 2077 only just launched today (at the time of writing) so we're not expecting this to be a big deal yet — if it is indeed a widespread problem.

In any case, we thought that it would be best to bring this up. We've also sent word to CD Projekt Red. For all we know, this could be a known issue that'll be fixed with an upcoming patch. Let's hope so!

Dare we ask if you've had Cyberpunk 2077 crash on PS5? Pray our save data isn't corrupt in the comments section below.

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Cyberpunk 2077: Increasing FPS and removing blur effects - PC Invasion

Posted: 10 Dec 2020 01:48 AM PST

The world of Cyberpunk 2077 is vast and jaw-dropping to behold. Unfortunately, it's possible that you'd encounter issues along the way. As such, you might want some optimizations that'll help increase FPS and remove any blurry effects. To be clear, I've mentioned various graphical settings and performance results in our Cyberpunk 2077 technical review. These are just additional tweaks in case you're having problems with performance still.

Note: For more information, check out our Cyberpunk 2077 guides and features hub.

Cyberpunk 2077 optimization: How to increase your FPS and remove blur effects

First things first, we've cited in a recent article that Nvidia has recently released a driver with Cyberpunk 2077 optimizations. If you have an Nvidia graphics card, make sure to update your driver to help improve performance.

Go open GeForce Experience and select Cyberpunk 2077. You can then choose the optimized settings to make the most out of the card you have.

Next, head to the graphics options and look at resolution scaling. In our technical review, I lauded the DLSS settings since these really helped maximize framerates while retaining visual fidelity and quality. If you have an RTX card, try to set DLSS to "Auto" or "Performance."

If you don't have an RTX card, you can use Dynamic FidelityFX CAS and pick an ideal FPS that's viable while playing.

There's also a suggestion from Reddit user Cohibaluxe. Basically, you'll want to lower the quality of Cascaded Shadows Resolution. The user mentioned getting a huge boost to their framerates, although I did get an ever so slight bump, too.

As for the blurry effects, you can remove these by disabling motion blur, film grain, and chromatic aberration.

Here's an example with these settings enabled:

The next image has these settings disabled. Take a look at the poster for "The Passion" and the "Masala Studios" sign and you'll notice some key improvements: