Pono Music

[ffghtrs]

I'm actually kind of excited for Pono music via Mr. Young.  Neil has the right idea in mind, i love vinyl the warm sound of tube amps and i love cranking good sounding tunes in my car.  So i'll probably switch over from iTunes to Pono music for downloading...possibly a new player too?  any thoughts?

[iLikeBeer]

Saw this video of an informal poll done on Yahoo today and thought it was kind of interesting.  It was basically a blind test where they had a pono player and an iPhone plugged into a splitter and the person doing the test didn't know which player they were listening to and had to choose which one sounded better and how noticeable the difference was.  They all listened to 3 songs on 2 different kinds of headphones.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html]
[url]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html
[/url]

Almost every single person in the poll chose the iPhone over the Pono and most said the difference was not worth the difference in price or spending the money on rebuilding your music library.  Didn't quite compare to the face melting reaction Neil got from fellow artists from his promo video...

[Santo]

That's an interesting video. I wish they would have talked to the sound engineer more. I have not seen many favorable reviews of the Pono. Here is another interesting read...
http://www.cnet.com/news/sound-bite-despite-ponos-promise-experts-pan-hd-audio/

I've thought Neil Young's Pono claims were a bit dubious. Very few of us will have his the sound system and he never mentions what he was comparing. He only showed testimonials not the test. I get the feeling they were lo-fidelity mp3's vs hd flac.

There is a lot to like about it though. He makes a good point about low production quality of music in the digital age. Its too easy to put out crappy sounding music. I think people are getting back to putting more care into the mastering process. Also, its a quality stand alone music player, that plays multiple formats and has expandable memory. Smartphones makers are just beginning to care about music quality. A good stand alone player outperforms most smartphones. There are others hd flac players out there, but it seems like Pono is getting the most press. Maybe it will stick around. I don't think the price is outrageous for a new product either. I think the first 5 gb ipod was $400. If Pono catches on it will likely come down in price. I bet future incarnations will have wifi and a cache-able streaming service.

[iLikeBeer]

It's not just the price of the pono player.  It's the fact that you need to also replace your entire music collection as well which is way more pricey than the $400 for the player itself...

[Santo]

I may be wrong, but I don't think you have to replace anything. The Pono player should play multiple formats including mp3. I think the best thing that Neil Young did was point out that there was a lot of crappy sounding music out there.

[Mr. White]

I may be wrong, but I don't think you have to replace anything. The Pono player should play multiple formats including mp3. I think the best thing that Neil Young did was point out that there was a lot of crappy sounding music out there.

You are 100% correct, Santo. I've had my Pono Player for a while now, and I've only bought 2 albums and a single so far (Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue for $10, Neil Young - Live Rust for $25, and My Morning Jacket - Ready To Be Called On for maybe $2. That MMJ single is only available on Pono as a single download instead of having to buy the whole album elsewhere). I have more than a couple hundred albums loaded to the internal 64GB memory and my three 64GB micro SD cards and one 32GB card with a bit of room for more (I've taken a break from ripping my CD's to FLAC since my laptop has been acting up...I get it back after having it re-imaged tomorrow).

I can attest that the actual SOUND of music played on that Player is OUTSTANDING! Also, I have even loaded all my purchased MP3 320 albums, and they sound pretty good too. CD's ripped to FLAC do indeed sound better than they do on an average CD player. I listen to it every single day! I love my Limited Edition My Morning Jacket Pono Music Player (# 16 out of only 94 made) not to mention being in an exclusive group of MMJ fans to have Circuital at 96 kHz/24 bits and OKONOKOS at 48/24! Hopefully, these and the rest of their catalog will be made available to everyone real soon.

[MrWhippy]

We should change the name of this thread to "Porno Music." 

Would probably be a much more interesting discussion.

[ffghtrs]

i don't know what porno music is but all i can think of is bow chika wow wow

[MrWhippy]

The 70's were probably the golden age of porno music.

[Santo]

Porno Music's throbbing bass really stands-up at 24/192.

[buymycar]

Saw this video of an informal poll done on Yahoo today and thought it was kind of interesting.  It was basically a blind test where they had a pono player and an iPhone plugged into a splitter and the person doing the test didn't know which player they were listening to and had to choose which one sounded better and how noticeable the difference was.  They all listened to 3 songs on 2 different kinds of headphones.


[url]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html]
[url]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html
[/url]

Almost every single person in the poll chose the iPhone over the Pono and most said the difference was not worth the difference in price or spending the money on rebuilding your music library.  Didn't quite compare to the face melting reaction Neil got from fellow artists from his promo video...

15 people is hardly enough of a sample size to get accurate results. The graphs don't really indicate that "almost every single person in the poll chose the iPhone over the Pono" as that wasn't what was being tested. Junk science at its finest...

[Mr. White]

Positive Reviews Here:

From Digital Audio Review
http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2014/12/ponoplayer-is-a-wonderful-sounding-dap-for-the-money/

From Audiostream
http://www.audiostream.com/content/pono-player

Here's the last half of the Audiostream review about the actual SOUND of the PONO PLAYER and some final thoughts:

"The Sound of Pono
One of the things the Pono Player gets so right, and it's something I noticed right away, is tone. Everything just sounds right, natural, and real. There's also a very nice solidity to the sound image which is, through my main system, laid out in a very broad and deep space. Overall, music sounds just right which led to many hours of pure listening enjoyment.

The Pono Player was also not at all embarrassed by comparisons to much more costly separates. While it does not offer as much sparkle and ultimate resolution as the Auralic Vega, I was not bothered by this difference when listening to the Pono Player. Let's also keep in mind that the Vega was connected to my MacBook Pro as server which in turn was connected to a Synology NAS as storage, a combination of components costing thousands of dollars. Of course my Synology NAS has oodles more storage capacity as compared to the Pono Player, and it, as can the MacBook, perform lots of other duties. But for simply playing music, which is what we're here to talk about, the Pono Player proved itself to be very adept at getting the important stuff right.

The majority of my listening time with the Pono Player through my main system, which includes the Pass INT-30A and the DeVore Fidelity The Nines, was spent listening in balanced mode using a pair of specially terminated Cardas Parsec interconnect cables ($360/1m). While this may seem like a strange pairing given their relative cost, I found balanced mode to sound much smoother, richer, and more natural as compared to running single-ended. According to Cardas, "any Cardas interconnects can be terminated as balanced Pono interconnects but the most popular is Microtwin 1m pair $225, and Parsec 1m pair $360." While I did not try any of the others, all's I can say is the Parsec cable from Cardas paired to Pono delivered some very natural sound and if you intend to connect your Pono Player to a revealing Hi-Fi, an investment in cables makes perfect sense. In my opinion of course. If you get rankled by the notion of cables making a difference, feel free to use whatever you like, and there are certainly inexpensive 1/8" TRSS to male XLR cables out there.

I listened to all manner of music through the Pono Player including some old high res favorites including Jimmy Scott's All The Way, Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run, and more, as well as some new favorites including D'Angelo's Black Messiah and Caribou's Our Love along with some acoustic music, some classical, and some more. The two albums that were included with my player from Patti Smith, Horses and Banga, both in 16/44.1, sounded just lovely as well. The Player really does deliver a goodly amount of the musical message and familiar voices sound refreshingly familiar and nicely present.

Of course the main use for the Pono Player will be as a portable headphone device so I leashed the NAD Viso HP50s to the Player and took the combo for a spin. I was greeted and treated with a nice, big, fat sound. Meaty. That same natural sense, that same easy to listen to and easy to like presentation that I heard through the Hi-Fi made for an enjoyable time. I also had an opportunity, at CES 2015, to compare the Pono Player in balanced and single-ended mode with a pair of Sennheiser HD650s and balanced mode simply crushed single-ended. There was just more of everything you'd want including tone color, weight, scale, and vibrancy. As with running your Pono Player into your hi-fi, if you want to hear it at its best, run balanced.

Compared to my iPhone 5S, the Pono Player delivers music while the iPhone delivers a reasonable facsimile thereof. Missing with the iPhone is the wonderful tone, the resolution or ability to hear into the recording, and that natural sounding presentation. Instead, you get a thinner, flatter, more anemic sound. The result being a less engaging experience, the ultimate sound quality of the output is limited by the iPhone's innards.

I also happen to have the Sony NW-ZX2 Walkman here and this made for a more interesting A/B. The Sony retails for $1200 and it can do some very cool things like connect to your Wi-Fi network and access music from your network including NAS-based libraries. It is also much sturdier in terms of build quality as compared to the Pono Player and its relatively flat form factor is much more pocket friendly. Purely on a sound quality basis, the Sony is more concerned with detail and dynamic snap, the Pono Player sounds richer and more full-bodied in comparison. I can certainly see someone preferring the Sony's more resolute sound but to my ears the Pono Player is more fun, more fulfilling.

I reviewed the Astel & Kern AK240 for Stereophile (see review) and this $2500 chunk of luxurious goodness clearly outweighs the Pono Player in terms of design and build quality. It ought to. While a direct comparison was not possible, I sent the A&K player back months ago, I will say that the Pono Player is not obviously outclassed by the more expensive player sonically. The AK240, like the Sony player, offers the ability to play music from your network-attached storage which may or may not be of importance to you.

Further Thoughts on Pono
Due to the nature of the Pono enterprise, I think its appropriate to share some non-sound related concerns. Since delivering an end-to-end music delivery solution including hardware is such a huge undertaking, I have some concerns over Pono's long term viability. I'm not questioning what they've accomplished so far as I must admit to being impressed by their more-or-less on-time delivery of the Player and the associated app and music store which are certainly livable even in their current stage. My concern is over how much ongoing revenue Pono will generate and will this be enough for continued operation.

In the very worst case, if Pono folded some time in the future, the Pono Player remains a great-sounding player and one that can function just fine without the music store. But for those people buying into and relying on the Pono ecosystem, the ongoing health of the enterprise should be a cause for some concern, again because Pono has bitten off such a big chunk of responsibility that only Apple has successfully pulled off over time.

All that said, I wish Pono well.

Pono'd
Is Pono perfect? What is? From a hardware and sound quality perspective, especially when run in balanced mode with your hi-fi or headphones, the Pono Player is to my ears a huge success that belies its $399 asking price. Ayre has done their part of the job exceedingly well and with the recent announcement that the Player will also support DSD, the cherry is now firmly on top. That said, on the software/app level, the Pono ecosystem needs some work. Thankfully such problems can be taken care of with future updates but we'll just have to wait and see how well Pono deals with these over time. When I began this review, the PonoWorld app was still in Beta which is no longer the case. Most of my time was spent using the production version which is reportedly much better than the Beta version.

Another gripe that's circulating in the hi-fi world, is the current lack of high res music available from the Pono Store and the fact that a lot of their selections are CD-quality, like my two Patti Smith albums that came with my Player. My take on this is give them some time. Rome, and HDtracks, Qobuz, etc., weren't built in a day. Since you can play any high res file on the Pono Player from any source including HDtracks, I don't see what all the fuss is about. Also keep in mind Pono has stated that they are constantly looking for the best available version and if they uncover a higher res version of something that's already in the Pono music store and you already purchased, they will provide a free upgrade for all Kickstarter backers who have a PonoPlayer. The company is also looking into a possible paid upgrade option for non-Kickstarter backers but no word yet on when/if this will happen.

Would I buy, or recommend, the Pono Player knowing what I now know? Yup. If you are looking for a portable high res player that can do double duty in your hi-fi and deliver a very musical signal, especially when run in balanced mode, then absolutely consider the Pono Player. For $399, it strikes me as a steal of a deal. If, on the other hand, you are looking to buy into a complete ecosystem that makes the transition from hardware to software to music download store a seamless and relatively brainless operation, I'd say it's worth growing with Pono as they iron out their issues. Otherwise the only company I know of that has really pulled off this triple-threat treat is Apple but they left out the sound quality piece that Pono delivers."

[Santo]

15 people is hardly enough of a sample size to get accurate results. The graphs don't really indicate that "almost every single person in the poll chose the iPhone over the Pono" as that wasn't what was being tested. Junk science at its finest...

Its not junk science, in fact its not science at all. Its just an informal survey that suggested a trend. I wouldn't disregard the study, nor would I take it as gospel. Science actually shows that the high resolution files don't make a difference and can actually degrade fidelity. http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

But that is talking about the 24/192 format, not the player itself. I think there are good reasons to buy the player. I generally like kickstarter projects and it was brilliant to team with musicians to create limited edition players, but Neil Young is emblematic of my issues with the audiophile crowd that says 1)You need a specific and expensive equipment to truly enjoy music; and 2) If you can't hear the difference than you and your garbage ears can stick with "good enough" while my "golden ears" enjoys the art in its intended form.

Sorry, I don't mean to get long winded or preachy. I just find the debate interesting and I have some strong opinions based on personal experiences.

[buymycar]

15 people is hardly enough of a sample size to get accurate results. The graphs don't really indicate that "almost every single person in the poll chose the iPhone over the Pono" as that wasn't what was being tested. Junk science at its finest...

Its not junk science, in fact its not science at all. Its just an informal survey that suggested a trend. I wouldn't disregard the study, nor would I take it as gospel. Science actually shows that the high resolution files don't make a difference and can actually degrade fidelity. http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

But that is talking about the 24/192 format, not the player itself. I think there are good reasons to buy the player. I generally like kickstarter projects and it was brilliant to team with musicians to create limited edition players, but Neil Young is emblematic of my issues with the audiophile crowd that says 1)You need a specific and expensive equipment to truly enjoy music; and 2) If you can't hear the difference than you and your garbage ears can stick with "good enough" while my "golden ears" enjoys the art in its intended form.

Sorry, I don't mean to get long winded or preachy. I just find the debate interesting and I have some strong opinions based on personal experiences.

No need to apologize. I have no stake in Pono, did not buy one, nor do I have any intention of doing so. If anything, I'm glad Neil brought the debate to the masses, because I think it's good to talk about.

What I've found out in the past year or so is that how a record is mastered is most important, and not what resolution or what format it is in. The Weezer album that came out last year has a much higher dynamic range in Hi-Res than the CD or iTunes versions. Does this mean that the dynamic range can't be captured in CD format? Not necessarily, as there are plenty of albums in CD format on the dynamic range database (http://dr.loudness-war.info/) with high dynamic ranges. The Spoon record that came out last year has no difference in dynamic range between its Hi-Res and CD versions, so there's no real point in spending extra for the Hi-Res.

Instead of resolution, the problem the Pono people should be harping on is the "loudness wars" that have plagued recordings for the past decade or more. The compression introduced during recording to reduce dynamic range has gotten ridiculous.

[Santo]

No need to apologize. I have no stake in Pono, did not buy one, nor do I have any intention of doing so. If anything, I'm glad Neil brought the debate to the masses, because I think it's good to talk about.

What I've found out in the past year or so is that how a record is mastered is most important, and not what resolution or what format it is in. The Weezer album that came out last year has a much higher dynamic range in Hi-Res than the CD or iTunes versions. Does this mean that the dynamic range can't be captured in CD format? Not necessarily, as there are plenty of albums in CD format on the dynamic range database (http://dr.loudness-war.info/) with high dynamic ranges. The Spoon record that came out last year has no difference in dynamic range between its Hi-Res and CD versions, so there's no real point in spending extra for the Hi-Res.

Instead of resolution, the problem the Pono people should be harping on is the "loudness wars" that have plagued recordings for the past decade or more. The compression introduced during recording to reduce dynamic range has gotten ridiculous.

Absolutely agree. Its interesting, I've read (haven't heard it myself), that recent master quality recording of the new Zeppelin albums actually sound worse. The idea is that the speaker technology in the 70s wasn't what it is today. With a modern set-up you can hear all the mistakes made during the mastering process. These mistakes were hidden by 1970s stereo systems. Don't know if its true, just a curious tidbit.

[buymycar]

Interesting analysis of the many digital versions of the record that just won the Best Engineered Album award at the Grammys:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/569-and-winner-%85/

Bob Ludwig's statement:
http://www.analogplanet.com/content/stop-nonsense-bob-ludwig-true-numbers-behind-becks-imorning-phasei-album

[iLikeBeer]

Saw this video of an informal poll done on Yahoo today and thought it was kind of interesting.  It was basically a blind test where they had a pono player and an iPhone plugged into a splitter and the person doing the test didn't know which player they were listening to and had to choose which one sounded better and how noticeable the difference was.  They all listened to 3 songs on 2 different kinds of headphones.


[url=https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html]
[url]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html]
[url]https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html
[/url]

Almost every single person in the poll chose the iPhone over the Pono and most said the difference was not worth the difference in price or spending the money on rebuilding your music library.  Didn't quite compare to the face melting reaction Neil got from fellow artists from his promo video...

15 people is hardly enough of a sample size to get accurate results. The graphs don't really indicate that "almost every single person in the poll chose the iPhone over the Pono" as that wasn't what was being tested. Junk science at its finest...

Never made the claim that this study was large enough for the result to be accurate.  I just thought it was interesting that non-musicians weren't gushing over the pono player like the ones in Neil's non-scientific study were doing. 

I have nothing against the pono.  I just don't ever see myself spending $400 for one...