I don't know what to think of this.
In short: PonoPlayer is a new hi-res portable player capable of 44.1/16, 48/24, 96/24, 192/24. Also all formats includig FLAC, ALAC, mp3, WAV, AIFF, AAC. It also will have something like an itunes shop for hi-res digital original masters in FLAC(!). Those FLACs can be used anywhere after you buy them. All of this is Neil Young's idea. The kickstarter is now finished with $6.2 million. The player is going to retail for $300. It has both headphone and line out. Mini usb for charging and sync. So..bringing hi-res to the masses. And boy did they love it:
http://player.vimeo.com/video/90088183
Here's what they say about the hardware on the official page: http://www.ponomusic.com/#faq
Anyways, there's more info on their page and kickstarter.
This player sounds like a damn good deal if it really delivers what those videos promise. Damn, maybe I won't need my O2/odac and just plug my hd650 and what not straight into the player and be blown away as much as all those people are?! How can they achieve such quality? Please say something about this hardware!
Attachments
Claims differ from the reality here - the DAC relies on noise shaping (internally just 6 bits) and hence uses tons of feedback. If feedback's "unnatural sounding" as claimed here, whyever choose a DAC which bakes it in?
Over on Head-fi they're saying the output impedance is 5ohms and don't consider that to be very low.
Over on Head-fi they're saying the output impedance is 5ohms and don't consider that to be very low.
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How can you tell anything about the quality from just some pictures and hyperbole?
Hi,
the quality of the electronic itself will be way better than required for mobile use and probabely better than most users need at home.
I rather wonder about the handling in praxis, as that is the most important factor with all music servers and even more so with streameing devices.
How does one navigate in the music database?
How can I find my music?
Does it find all music, or will for example files from samplers not be found?
Is there more functionality for search and find than just two buttons up-down???
Do I have to make an appointment with a surgeon to rebuilt the skin on my fingertips which I lost whilst scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, or will one of the pono-buttons surrender first?
Imho a luxury device no one needs who owns a home stereo and a mp3-player or smartphone.
Future garbage and waste of precious ressources.
But certainly a musthave for it-girls and -boys who define their personality by the gadgets they own.
jauu
Calvin
the quality of the electronic itself will be way better than required for mobile use and probabely better than most users need at home.
I rather wonder about the handling in praxis, as that is the most important factor with all music servers and even more so with streameing devices.
How does one navigate in the music database?
How can I find my music?
Does it find all music, or will for example files from samplers not be found?
Is there more functionality for search and find than just two buttons up-down???
Do I have to make an appointment with a surgeon to rebuilt the skin on my fingertips which I lost whilst scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, or will one of the pono-buttons surrender first?
Imho a luxury device no one needs who owns a home stereo and a mp3-player or smartphone.
Future garbage and waste of precious ressources.
But certainly a musthave for it-girls and -boys who define their personality by the gadgets they own.
jauu
Calvin
How do you know that? And how is that different from the other "hifi" players out there?
And remember that the pono thing can't do streaming...
I am afraid you are right. Brilliant marketing.
A bunch of sound engineers/music-production-related people say it is great. I assume such people inevitably know what good sound is.
If their claims aren't genuine it's all clear then.
Hi,
@Julf
To be honest ... which electronic shouldn´t be good enough if the people listen to it with Dr.Dre Beats and other crappy cans?
Featuring a modern DAC Chip and the analog part designed by Charles Hansen I think the result has enough of good genes to sound pleasant.
The linked video is really funny ... mostly a bunch of guys looking like longtime with bad haircuts, some of them known for albums with very low sonic quality, but talking about whole new acoustic experiences
Wasn´t it the Chilli Peppers whose album holds the record for lowest dynamic range?
Seemingly none or just very few have listened to the Pono device as they all describe studio situations, listeing to HR music tapes through studio eqipment (at 4:30 Kid Rock speaks out clearly about the studio quality; at 4:44 Reggie Watts says: "..if that made me feel emotional in that situtation ... think about carrying it in Your pocket ..."
None of them say -probabely couldn´t say- how much of those ´huge´ differences to MP3- or Smartphone quality remains when listened to the Pono device and a set of cans.
jauu
Calvin
@Julf
To be honest ... which electronic shouldn´t be good enough if the people listen to it with Dr.Dre Beats and other crappy cans?
Featuring a modern DAC Chip and the analog part designed by Charles Hansen I think the result has enough of good genes to sound pleasant.
The linked video is really funny ... mostly a bunch of guys looking like longtime
with bad haircuts, some of them known for albums with very low sonic quality, but talking about whole new acoustic experiences Wasn´t it the Chilli Peppers whose album holds the record for lowest dynamic range?
Seemingly none or just very few have listened to the Pono device as they all describe studio situations, listeing to HR music tapes through studio eqipment (at 4:30 Kid Rock speaks out clearly about the studio quality; at 4:44 Reggie Watts says: "..if that made me feel emotional in that situtation ... think about carrying it in Your pocket ..."
None of them say -probabely couldn´t say- how much of those ´huge´ differences to MP3- or Smartphone quality remains when listened to the Pono device and a set of cans.
jauu
Calvin
I think some of the hyped claims about the player are ridiculous. Neil Young actually has had some real crackpot beliefs and dumb ideas, like turning a 5000 lb cadillac into an electric car? In the end, if it turns the music industry toward providing higher quality material, that would be a good thing.
I am however led to believe by certain industry professionals that a certain amount of more recent "high rate" recordings are really just sample rate converted from lower bit/sample rate material. Caveat emptor.
I am however led to believe by certain industry professionals that a certain amount of more recent "high rate" recordings are really just sample rate converted from lower bit/sample rate material. Caveat emptor.
A people with a financial incentive keep saying how great it is.
Notice they don't make any specific claims about being better than anything except badly produced mp3 recordings...
Looking at the sound quality of most of the recordings from the last 20 years, I have my doubts
To be honest ... which electronic shouldn´t be good enough if the people listen to it with Dr.Dre Beats and other crappy cans?
Good point - it just doesn't make the pono any better than any of the competitors.
I do have a small issue with people assuming that just because something is expensive, or an "audiophile" brand, or has audiophile components, or is designed by a well-known person, it has to be good. Anybody can produce a dud.
My recommendation is to wait until you can actually listen to the product (preferably blind).
Indeed.The linked video is really funny ... mostly a bunch of guys looking like longtime
Not to mention that most of those guys have their hearing badly damaged by years and years of standing next to a speaker stack, not to mention the creativity-enhancing drugs...None of them say -probabely couldn´t say- how much of those ´huge´ differences to MP3- or Smartphone quality remains when listened to the Pono device and a set of cans.
There is already a thread on this thing here, BTW.
Anyway. After that first announcement I actually bought an (el cheapo) Philips portable player. I selected it because the specs say: plays MP3, FLAC, WAV and a few others. So I thought I'd download my WAV music to it.
Then I noticed that those WAV files seemed much smaller on the player than on my PC. What the...?
To make it short: this thing comes with a Philips download app (Songbird), that converts everthing to MP3/192kbps before downloading it to the player....
So is that spec 'plays FLAC, WAV, etc' correct, or misleading? I did feel mislead.
Now, back to that Pono. Are we sure we will not be similarly 'mislead'?
jan
Anyway. After that first announcement I actually bought an (el cheapo) Philips portable player. I selected it because the specs say: plays MP3, FLAC, WAV and a few others. So I thought I'd download my WAV music to it.
Then I noticed that those WAV files seemed much smaller on the player than on my PC. What the...?
To make it short: this thing comes with a Philips download app (Songbird), that converts everthing to MP3/192kbps before downloading it to the player....
So is that spec 'plays FLAC, WAV, etc' correct, or misleading? I did feel mislead.
Now, back to that Pono. Are we sure we will not be similarly 'mislead'?
jan
I have actually posted (on other forums) quite a number of spectrograms and other measurements of a bunch of "hi-res" recordings that show them to be up/resamplings from lower resolution, and in some cases zero-padding from 16 to 24 bits. Doesn't seem to affect the subjective assessments of the records as "much better than CD"
You shouldn't have told us! You just spoiled the hi-res experience for every Philips player owner!
Only because you know it is not uncompressed. Were you OK with the sound quality until then?
Naah, the music industry wouldn't do that to us, would they?
I'm surprised at much of this discussion..
Pono Music and the Pono player are exactly what I have been waiting for.
Here's why:
When I travel I still carry my old iPod Classic because I haven't found a more efficient way to take a significant amount of uncompressed audio with me. 120GB isn't really enough, but it works. Used with my Etymotic headphones it's a great listening experience that goes anywhere, is really compact, and sounds great. The isolation is great for air travel. But it won't do hi-rez.
I'm having a great time listening to higher-rez recordings on my home system, and really think it has more or less closed the gap to the texture and emotional impact of vinyl playback.
I would love a portable way to enjoy hi-rez music, and I was considering the Astell&Kern devices, but they start at $700.
So now I have a $300 alternative. What could be wrong with that?
Both have elegantly solved the storage issue with removable 32GB cards, so I can take as much music with me as I like.
Other differences:
Pono is promising (but hasn't delivered) a music management app a la iTunes, which A&K does not have.
Lastly, the fact that Neil Young is pushing this thing is great for all of us who want to see more music available in these formats. His ability to influence major artists appears to be much greater than anyone in the audiophile community. I love HDtracks.com, and buy music there all the time, but Pono could help trigger a much bigger shift to higher-fidelity music distribution. The company is organized as a real hi-tech startup with some seriously experienced folks on board.
What's not to like?
Just my $0.02
Peter
Pono Music and the Pono player are exactly what I have been waiting for.
Here's why:
When I travel I still carry my old iPod Classic because I haven't found a more efficient way to take a significant amount of uncompressed audio with me. 120GB isn't really enough, but it works. Used with my Etymotic headphones it's a great listening experience that goes anywhere, is really compact, and sounds great. The isolation is great for air travel. But it won't do hi-rez.
I'm having a great time listening to higher-rez recordings on my home system, and really think it has more or less closed the gap to the texture and emotional impact of vinyl playback.
I would love a portable way to enjoy hi-rez music, and I was considering the Astell&Kern devices, but they start at $700.
So now I have a $300 alternative. What could be wrong with that?
Both have elegantly solved the storage issue with removable 32GB cards, so I can take as much music with me as I like.
Other differences:
Pono is promising (but hasn't delivered) a music management app a la iTunes, which A&K does not have.
Lastly, the fact that Neil Young is pushing this thing is great for all of us who want to see more music available in these formats. His ability to influence major artists appears to be much greater than anyone in the audiophile community. I love HDtracks.com, and buy music there all the time, but Pono could help trigger a much bigger shift to higher-fidelity music distribution. The company is organized as a real hi-tech startup with some seriously experienced folks on board.
What's not to like?
Just my $0.02
Peter
It would works even better for compressed music.
And have you done blind listening tests to see if you can hear a difference between 44.1/16 and 'hi res' using the headphones?
So are you saying hi-res has the same distortion and colouring as vinyl?
Not really. Even using mp3, the 256 G I have on my car stereo is not enough for my whole music collection. Juggling 8 cards? No thanks!
That sentence is a good summary of pono.
Really? Do you really think Neil Young carries any weight with the record labels? If so, I suggest you read this: Dr AIX: Not Interesting.
Ohh yes, the quality is good enough for me and my in-ear 'phones.
But I still feel mislead - difference between the facts and what I was lead to believe.
jan
Yawn. Debates about proving that you can or can't hear differences are fundamentally uninteresting to me. Let's make it simple; I won't take the troll bait, but just say that even if my enjoyment of hi-rez music is completely delusional then it's worth the extra few $ per album for the fake emotional value.
It's quite possible that the reason I prefer the hi-rez versions of albums is that they were re-mastered with more care and better gear, rather than that they are delivered in 96/24. While 44.1/16 is theoretically sufficient for playback (certainly not recording) there are a lot of things that have to go right in the production chain for that theoretical performance to be delivered. I suspect most CDs are flawed in that respect. So how do I get my hands on a carefully re-mastered 44.1/16 recording, with the appropriate dither that's needed to deliver the theoretical distortion level, and mastered by someone who cares about the sound quality? The value of hi-rez as a delivery mechanism could simply be because it is easier to not screw up the mastering.
If you don't know what I mean about the emotional impact of good vinyl playback then I can't help you. Sorry you haven't ever heard it. Hi-rez digital in my system combines all the good things about vinyl with none of the bad, and the best of digital with none of the artifacts.
For me, playback in the car doesn't generally warrant high-quality content; the typical noise level means you really need massive dynamic range compression to even make all of the music audible. I'm sure you could get your music collection on your 256GB of storage if you dropped to 32kb/s MP3. Have you tried a blind test to prove you can hear the difference?
We will have to agree to disagree about Neil Young's impact. I think record label power is disappearing rapidly; declining digital sales plus internet disintermediation is putting the control back in the hands of the artists. More and more of them are opting for direct distribution. Why do they even need a record company any more? Lorde went to worldwide #1 by starting on SoundCloud. The article you linked actually supports what I'm saying in that it's going to take both artists pushing and a larger hi-rez market pulling for this to change. Neil Young and Pono MAY be the catalyst for that.
To go back to the original point of the thread:
Pono offers me a way to have a portable, hi-rez music experience for about what I paid for an old click-wheel iPod many years ago.
What's wrong with that?
Peter
Neil has been working on this literally for years. I remember reading an article a number of years ago where he and Steve Jobs were working on a variation of something like this. Then Jobs died and it tossed a wrench into the works... To Neil's credit, he's kept pushing and at least we have something.
My view is I will support it because in all likelihood it will smoke the majority of the other options sonically. Will the competition release something better? Of course... But if this helps the mainstream public rediscover what decent hifi sounds like then I'm all for it.
There is another thread here on DIYAudio where Pono has been discussed at length.
My view is I will support it because in all likelihood it will smoke the majority of the other options sonically. Will the competition release something better? Of course... But if this helps the mainstream public rediscover what decent hifi sounds like then I'm all for it.
There is another thread here on DIYAudio where Pono has been discussed at length.
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