There are plenty of suggestions already: DSD, Digital out, Micro USB instead of Mini. Remote control, Make it a dac as well. (Like the X5). Hopefully they will pick up some of these ideas.
Good catch with the miniUSB. All but useless. Most certainly has to be changed. If not, I don't think they can sell it within the EU at all.
All the changes you list are good ones though (and something the FiiO X5 already has except for the remote).
All the changes you list are good ones though (and something the FiiO X5 already has except for the remote).
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The problem I see is that there is practically no hi-rez contents available.
Pretty much everything recorded over the last 20 years will be 24/48 at best.
They'll have the same problem as current hi-rez vendors: Lack of material.
Meanwhile my 7 year old ipod quite happily replays wav.s and AIFFs in cd quality.
I used AIFFs exclusively with it but in the end there was no audible difference in the car, where I use the ipod, to 256 or 320 mp3s.
PS: What would be the point of a remote control on a portable player?
The remote would have to be nearly as big as the thing itself. At home I've already got a 192kHz capable convertor.
Pretty much everything recorded over the last 20 years will be 24/48 at best.
They'll have the same problem as current hi-rez vendors: Lack of material.
Meanwhile my 7 year old ipod quite happily replays wav.s and AIFFs in cd quality.
I used AIFFs exclusively with it but in the end there was no audible difference in the car, where I use the ipod, to 256 or 320 mp3s.
PS: What would be the point of a remote control on a portable player?
The remote would have to be nearly as big as the thing itself. At home I've already got a 192kHz capable convertor.
I suppose for the same reason as having a line-out option. I.e some will have this in their main system some of the time.
That's the problem for hi-res audio in general. The playback chain has to be good enough to justify it, or you'll hear no difference. The iPod (in none of it's incarnations) does not have sufficient audio quality to tell the difference consistently.
Form factor completely wrong! (does not fit any pocket)
Expensive download from a shop that does not exist yet....😡
Expensive download from a shop that does not exist yet....😡
The line out is needed for in-car use, a remote isn't.
People who care enough to cough up $400 for a portable player will already have the necessary gear at home.
And there is still next to no true hi-rez material in existence.
I strongly suspect that after the initial hype around Neil Young dies away in the next few day/weeks so will the Pono itself once it is released.
Worse still unlike ReplayGain and such like Pono does nothing to end the Loudness War which is ruining music these days.
People who care enough to cough up $400 for a portable player will already have the necessary gear at home.
And there is still next to no true hi-rez material in existence.
I strongly suspect that after the initial hype around Neil Young dies away in the next few day/weeks so will the Pono itself once it is released.
Worse still unlike ReplayGain and such like Pono does nothing to end the Loudness War which is ruining music these days.
Whatever...I'm not the one asking for it...someone else is. It seems you know better than the person who ordered one.... what he is going to do with it. Are you perhaps an Apple employee? Or Paul Daniels?
Well I guess if you say so it has to be true.
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And for those that need the capability of having a portable high quality USB DAC, for example for monitoring recordings or DJing?
The reason I bought my ipod was that it used the best portable dac chip that was available at the time. With proper gain staging it sounded a fair bit better than the cd player (Arcam) I had at the time...at home.
In the car it makes no difference if I use mp3 or AIFFs or wavs.
At the time a few full-sized cdplayers used the same dac as it allegedly was better than most affordable home-audio dacs.
Many of the best sounding CD's I heard were AAD. There is so much more to a recording than resolution.
Proven? Scientifically? Where?
Any dbt's I've seen show redbook to be indistinguishable from higher bit depth/sampling rates.
What are you guys talkin' 'bout? ...This Pono music pod is a high res music server DAC; as close as it gets to a Trinity DAC but for only $399. 😎
Try saying Pono 10 times in a row.
Pono
Pono
Pono
Pono
Porno
Porno
Porno
Porno
Porno
Porno
Worst name for a product ever.
Also link to said 'scientific' article? I'll bet the average person can't tell the difference between 16bit 44.1KHz and 12bit 30KHz.
Pono
Pono
Pono
Pono
Porno
Porno
Porno
Porno
Porno
Porno
Worst name for a product ever.
In what application? Reproducing a dog whistle with absolute precision? Playing recordings which are -80dBFS?
Also link to said 'scientific' article? I'll bet the average person can't tell the difference between 16bit 44.1KHz and 12bit 30KHz.
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Perhaps.
Personally I don't care what gizmodo says or doesn't say.
Regardless of bitrate. The pono is aiming to be a good sounding player for 400 usd and on the basis of that fact alone it should be a competitive product. How competitive remains to be seen. After all...it is not as if mobile phone or ipod sound is "terrible". My kids listen to mp3's and are happy...the music is after all more important that the quality. (Even though I think most of the "music" they listen to is awful)
There are several reasons why redbook is not enough for modern purposes but was sufficient when conceived.
First you have to realize that the 16bit 44.1khz standard was conceived as a media playback standard. That means that in order to function correctly there has to has be no post-processing in the playback chain. And very careful control has to be taken in the mastering process by skilled engineers to avoid the potential problems with the standard.
As post-processing of media files has more or less become the norm the need for increased bit depth has arisen. A 16 bit dynamic range is certainly acceptable however with unfortunate post-processing that bit depth can quickly become reduced to 12 bt or even 8 bit. So it's not because 24 bit is audibly better than 16 bit under optimum conditions but it is under worst case scenario conditions. It's an important point, I'll get back to that.
The sampling rate at 44.1khz was always problematic as it only allowed for just over 20khz frequency range and adding output filters there is easily audible phase issues at the highest frequencies. Most people won't notice unless told though, and in that case there's the argument that you're hearing what you're told and not what you actually experience. This is an important point, I'll get back to that.
People generally misunderstand why sampling frequencies needs to be higher, and are higher in recording studies. It is not to extend the frequency range far beyond the audible range. Granted, when I was young I could discern 23khz tones with relative ease but today I can hardly hear a loud peep over 16khz. It's mainly to avoid the phase issues described above but much more importantly to get correct timing. When you only have a 44.1khz sampling rate you have to be careful in timing the samplings over the course of a song to avoid issues with overshoot and miscues in the playback process. It takes a skillful mastering engineer to do that correctly. Doubling the temporal resolution to 96khz makes that process much quicker and easier, and doubling it again to 192khz basically means that any smuck with a laptop can do it adequately. Mastering process costs money, lots and lots of money. Something recording companies will want to avoid, and the general trend today is that you have thousands of home-grown companies that don't have a clue about how to properly master their songs, and either pay for it to be done, or ignores it.
So it's for those reasons is it audible. Not because hi-res audio is inherently better than redbook under optimum condition but because today, optimum conditions more or less don't exist, so you're perpetually in a worst case scenario. At the same time record companies are telling you that you can hear the difference, and if you're told that enough times, you think you can, even if you really can't. And furthermore, hi-res standards makes it possible for independent producers to produce high quality products that match that of major record labels carefully mastered products for a fraction of the cost, and that is the direction the music industry is going.
First you have to realize that the 16bit 44.1khz standard was conceived as a media playback standard. That means that in order to function correctly there has to has be no post-processing in the playback chain. And very careful control has to be taken in the mastering process by skilled engineers to avoid the potential problems with the standard.
As post-processing of media files has more or less become the norm the need for increased bit depth has arisen. A 16 bit dynamic range is certainly acceptable however with unfortunate post-processing that bit depth can quickly become reduced to 12 bt or even 8 bit. So it's not because 24 bit is audibly better than 16 bit under optimum conditions but it is under worst case scenario conditions. It's an important point, I'll get back to that.
The sampling rate at 44.1khz was always problematic as it only allowed for just over 20khz frequency range and adding output filters there is easily audible phase issues at the highest frequencies. Most people won't notice unless told though, and in that case there's the argument that you're hearing what you're told and not what you actually experience. This is an important point, I'll get back to that.
People generally misunderstand why sampling frequencies needs to be higher, and are higher in recording studies. It is not to extend the frequency range far beyond the audible range. Granted, when I was young I could discern 23khz tones with relative ease but today I can hardly hear a loud peep over 16khz. It's mainly to avoid the phase issues described above but much more importantly to get correct timing. When you only have a 44.1khz sampling rate you have to be careful in timing the samplings over the course of a song to avoid issues with overshoot and miscues in the playback process. It takes a skillful mastering engineer to do that correctly. Doubling the temporal resolution to 96khz makes that process much quicker and easier, and doubling it again to 192khz basically means that any smuck with a laptop can do it adequately. Mastering process costs money, lots and lots of money. Something recording companies will want to avoid, and the general trend today is that you have thousands of home-grown companies that don't have a clue about how to properly master their songs, and either pay for it to be done, or ignores it.
So it's for those reasons is it audible. Not because hi-res audio is inherently better than redbook under optimum condition but because today, optimum conditions more or less don't exist, so you're perpetually in a worst case scenario. At the same time record companies are telling you that you can hear the difference, and if you're told that enough times, you think you can, even if you really can't. And furthermore, hi-res standards makes it possible for independent producers to produce high quality products that match that of major record labels carefully mastered products for a fraction of the cost, and that is the direction the music industry is going.
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