If you're a metalhead, chances are you like your music loud – but what if you want to rock out without damaging your precious ears?
Enter Heavys, a team of "metalheads, engineers, and sound freaks" that claims to have created the world's first heavy metal headphones , which will protect your eardrums while letting you listen to your favorite tracks as the artist intended. The team includes veteran engineer Axel Grell, who designed some of Sennheiser's best-loved headphones.
Currently in development via a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign , the Heavys headphones come with no less than eight drivers designed to mimic a full-sized home speaker: where headphones usually contain one driver inside each earcup, the Heavys headphones have four, with two tweeters and two subwoofers on each side.
This allows each driver to focus on a specific frequency range, without the need for one driver to accommodate highs, lows, and mids all at once. According to Heavys, this reduces distortion and lets you hear every detail of your music clearly.
While some of the best headphones we've tested make use of just two drivers, and sound fantastic while doing so, we can see how the use of separate drivers for each frequency range could be useful for metal in particular, which often involves complex, heavily layered compositions and intricate instrumentation.
The Heavys over-ear headphones are also designed to make it feel as though the sound is coming from right in front of you, rather than being blasted into each ear canal. Tweeters are placed immediately in front of the ear, with sound waves coming from different directions to simulate a natural front-oriented sound field – as if you're watching your favorite band from the crowd.
Whether this appeals to you depends largely on what you want from your music. If you're looking for a natural audio experience, a front-oriented soundstage will probably work very well.
However, the rise of spatial audio technologies has meant more of us have been able to experience three-dimensional sound from a pair of headphones, which makes it feel as though you're in the center of a band, with each instrumental coming at you from a different angle – and that can make for a more immersive listening experience that some will prefer to traditional stereo sound.
The Heavys also come with all the mod-cons you'd expect, including active noise cancellation, wireless and wired connectivity, and a whopping 50-hour battery life.
Hearing matters
Heavys also claims that its headphones will allow you to listen at louder volumes without damaging your hearing.
Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a big problem; the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that up to a billion young people are at risk of NIHL, with nearly 50% of teenagers and young adults in particular being exposed to unsafe levels of sound from personal audio devices.
Heavys' patented pyschoacoustic technology broadcasts specific frequencies at different volumes that will apparently make you feel as though your music is louder without causing high pressure levels in your ears.
According to research from the Keck School of Medicine of USC , hearing loss occurs as a result of two things: the death of sensory hair cells that detect sound and convert it to neural signals, and a build-up of fluid pressure in the inner ear, which causes neurons to die.
As John Oghalai, MD, chair and professor of the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery explains, “the death of sensory hair cells leads to hearing loss, but even if some sensory hair cells remain and still work, if they’re not connected to a neuron, then the brain won’t hear the sound”.
If the Heavys headphones really can mitigate these problems without making you feel as though your music is unduly quiet, they could be great for metalheads who want to turn it up to 11.
Combining this technology with the Heavys headphones' unusual driver array, long battery life, active noise cancellation, and wireless connectivity makes for a very attractive proposition indeed. Especially as the headphones are priced at $149 (about £110 / AU$200) as part of a limited early-bird promotion.
However, we'd always recommend exercising caution when it comes to investing in crowdfunding campaigns. There's no guarantee that the product will actually come to market, even if it reaches its fundraising goal – so think carefully before parting with your hard-earned cash.
Fortnite skins January 2022: All the skins coming to Fortnite and how to get them
Fortnite has just entered Chapter 3 Season 1 and as it's December so we're also headed into Winterfest 2021 -that means we'll be seeing not only a new map and mechanics but plenty of new Fortnite skins for us to wear into battle.
Chapter 3 will finally give us the chance to play as The Foundation - a mysterious member of the group called The Seven voiced by Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson - and we can also swing into action as Spider-Man. We can also get into the festive spirit with brand new Winterfest skins like the Polar Peely - as well as returning classics from previous Winterfests.
As there are a bunch of new cosmetics to explore we’ve rounded up every Fortnite skin we expect to land in the battle royale in December 2021, with not only skins confirmed by Epic Games but leaks and rumors for upcoming collaborations. We'll tell you how to unlock them all so you can look fashionable while racking up the eliminations.
Hawkeye and Kate Bishop
Hawkeye and his partner Kate Bishop - the stars of the recent Hawkeye show on Disney Plus - have shot into Fortnite Battle Royale with their own skins being added to the game.
You can grab them from the Item Shop for 1,500 V-Bucks each, or in a bundle for both with some added cosmetics – including an awesome new glider – for 2,400 V-Bucks.
Chapter 3 Season 1 Battle Pass Skins
The Chapter 3 Season 1 Battle Pass is here and includes some pretty rad skins.
We've got a cyberpunk-inspired samurai with Ronin, a buff llama called Lt. John Llama, and the Island-raised battler Haven to name just a few you'll see in the trailer above.
Players who make it through the Battle Pass can also unlock Spider-Man - the iconic web-slinger from Marvel's comics. For this season players are also able to find his web-shooters as an in-game item so they can swing around the battlefield.
You can unlock the Battle pass by paying 950 V-Bucks or by signing up to Fortnite Crew for $11.99 / £9.99 / AU$15.99/ per month.
The Foundation – Leader of the Seven
The Foundation, a character that first appeared in the epic Fortnite Season 5 event, is finally becoming a Fortnite skin. He's the (not-so) Secret Skin of Chapter 3 Season 1 - and players who own the Battle Pass will be able to unlock them when the challenges go live in just a few weeks.
With the Foundation's mask-off variant players will be able to run around as Dwayne Johson himself - so if you're a fan of the Rock we'd recommend snatching up the Battle Pass while you can.
Green Goblin
Green Goblin was discovered in Fortnite's game files by leakers suggesting he'll get a Fortnite skin soon.
Given that Spider-Man (his arch-enemy) has recently joined the battle royale and given that Hawkeye and Kate Bishop were both added (and look just like they do in the image above) we're fairly confident this leak could be legit – but as always we'll have to wait for official info to know for sure.
Peacemaker
Twitter user, and leaker @ShiinaBR has suggested that Peacemaker could follow on from Bloodsport as yet another The Suicide Squad tie-in. The same person who leaked Bloodsport suggested John Cena's character could appear too, meaning we might see the character show up soon.
We don't have anything more concrete to go off, like in-game files, so take this with a pinch of salt but we could see Peacemaker arrive soon now that his new show has dropped on HBO Max .
Samus Aran – Nintendo's bounty hunter
In Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 5 many fans were calling for Nintendo to be represented by an in-game skin after both Xbox and PlayStation got their mascots in the Battle Royale. The obvious choice was bounty hunter Samus from the Metroid series – but she never showed up.
Leaked documents shared on Twitter from the Epic Games vs Apple court battle indicate that Samus is/was planned to appear in the game (alongside multiple other characters like Naruto and Ariana Grande). The above panel from issue three of the Batman Zero Point series adds to the speculation that the character could still be coming after fans spotted a silhouette that looks a lot like Samus.
Take this rumor with an unhealthy amount of salt, but it could mean that Samus might soon arrive as a Fortnite skin.
Leaked survey skins
Here's a leak to take with an extra pinch of salt: multiple Fortnite leakers on Twitter have shared images from a recent Epic survey showing off several new skin designs. In it the company detailed potential Fortnite skins and included images of ones we might eventually see added to the game.
You can see all of the in the tweet above but some of our favorites are Cartoon Bushranger, a Vampire Drift, and Guff dressed as a Christmas tree. We have no clue if any of these skins will ever be added to the game, but be on the lookout in future seasons.
I just made one of the strangest – and best – upgrades to my PC
The curse of being a PC gamer who loves building and upgrading your computer is that you’re obsessively keeping an eye on the latest components and thinking about how to cram them in your rig.
It doesn’t matter if your gaming PC is incredibly powerful already, booting Windows 11 in seconds and playing any modern game with ease. There’s always going to be something that’ll come out that’s better than what you’ve currently got, which can make your PC that little bit faster .
While we’d all love to constantly upgrade our machines like an ever-evolving RGB-lit Frankenstein’s monster, as we all know, the real world sucks, and there are certain realities that can kill this dream: money and hardware.
While upgrading your PC is certainly cheaper than buying or building an entirely new one, it can still be an expensive endeavor, especially when swapping out certain components. Your budget, then, can limit your upgrading ambitions.
Then there’s the hardware. After a while some of your essential components will become outdated, and unable to support the latest technology, which limits what you can upgrade. This means making upgrades to core components, such as the motherboard and CPU, that can be far more expensive and time consuming.
Aging mobo blues
This is the position I’ve found myself in. My main gaming rig remains an absolute beast and I have absolutely no issue with its performance. But… I am also a sucker for new hardware. I have several SSDs installed, two speedy M.2 PCIe 3.0 drives, one for Windows 11 and intensive apps, and the other for game installs.
I also have a larger SATA III SSD for storing files, lighter apps and generally anything that doesn’t need super-speedy file transfer speeds, due to SATA III being a lot slower than PCIe 3.0.
This setup has worked pretty well for a while, with Windows 11 loading in a few seconds, and games generally starting up quickly as well.
However, as is always the way with PC gaming, there’s a few annoying quirks, and also room for improvement.
For some reason, both Steam and the Xbox Game Pass on PC no longer let me install games on the M.2 SSD. It’s a particularly frustrating state of affairs, and I’ve tried a few things to fix it. It seems like the only option would be to format the drive, but the problem there is that other apps, such as Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store, have no issue with it. Formatting it would mean having to redownload a lot of games.
Another issue is that at 1TB, it’s starting to fill up. My options, then, are to install games on the slower drive (no thanks) or start filling up my boot drive with games (eew).
Or… I could install a new drive.
Obviously, that’s the route I decided to take. However, this is where the hardware limitations I spoke about earlier come into play.
I’d been eying up the speeds of the new breed of PCIe4 M.2 SSDs that promising incredibly high speeds of 7,000MB/s. These drives are transforming the way many people play – and design – games. The PS5 has been built around having a speedy SSD of that quality, and an increasing number of games are now being designed with those kinds of speeds in mind.
However, my rig has the Intel Core i9-9900K , a fine 9th generation processor, but it is limited to PCIe 3.0. A quick benchmark of my current gaming M.2 drive gives me speeds of 3,402MB/s read and 3,319MB/s write. Sure, that’s not bad, and it’s much faster than any SATA III drive would be (they top out at around 600MB/s – see why I wouldn’t want to install a game on that?), but it could be faster .
Of course, with my current hardware setup, PCIe 4.0 drives are out of the question, unless I upgrade both my CPU and motherboard. That’s not just an expensive upgrade, but an absolute pain as well. At that point it’s almost worth just buying a new PC.
So, was I out of luck? Actually, no. Western Digital have a rather unique product that could help solve my issues…
The power of RAID
Enter the WD_Black AN1500 SSD add-in card. Looking a bit like a slim graphics card with no video outputs, the AN1500 pops into an empty PCIe slot, and promises speeds close to that of a PCIe 4.0 SSD.
How does it do this? Well, within the metal chassis of the AN1500 are two WD SN730 NVMe SSDs set up in RAID 0 with an enterprise-grade controller. Unlike some types of RAID configurations where several drives are used together as backups, RAID 0 is all about speed.
Essentially, the AN1500 uses RAID 0 and two SSDs to split data into blocks (also known as ‘stripes’). These stripes can then be simultaneously written and read to the SSDs, drastically speeding up the performance of the drive.
This is how the AN1500 offers much faster drive speeds, but there are drawbacks, primarily with price. The AN1500 comes with two SSDs, but it's treated as a single drive in Windows.
That obviously adds to the price compared to a single large SSD, and the AN1500 is definitely an expensive addition. However, it’s still cheaper than replacing the CPU and motherboard of a PC.
The WD_Black AN1500 SSD has been out for a while now, but I’ve been intrigued by it for a while. Using RAID 0 for performance isn’t new, but the WD_Black AN1500 SSD is preconfigured for ease of use. As with other WD_Black devices, it’s got a cool-looking metal chassis, and it packs RGB as well. What’s not to love?
Installing it is also very easy. I love M.2 drives, but they are often located in difficult places to reach on the motherboard – sometimes even on the rear side. This can make installing them tricky if the motherboard is already in the PC case.
PCIe slots are much easier to reach, though due the GPU I have installed, the Nvidia RTX 3090 , being SO HUGE, there was still a bit of fiddling about. The WD_Black AN1500 SSD has a PCIe 3.0 x8 interface, so you need to make sure you don’t put it into a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, which some motherboards have. If you do, the SSD will still work, but performance is impacted.
With the slick design and RGB lighting, it looks great installed alongside the GPU, and when I powered up my PC I ran a quick benchmark to see how it performed. The results were impressive, with read speeds of 6,154MB/s - twice that of my other SSD, and a write speed of 4,441MB/s.
I also wanted to try out a game on it, so I moved Far Cry 6 over. On the older SSD, it took 1:03.97 (one minute, three seconds) to load the game and get to the main screen (skipping the opening cinematic).
On the new drive, it took just 58 seconds to load. Not a huge difference, and loading into the actual save game took around the same time, 10 seconds. But in a large open-world game, the WD_Black AN1500’s faster speeds allowed for faster texture streaming, which led to less pop-in of surfaces and textures when traversing the world.
It’s still early days with the drive, but already I’m impressed. I’m looking forward to trying out more games on it, and so far it feels like it’s given my PC a new lease of life.