PONO - Where Music Lives

yeah that was another on my list, you like it alot?

xxp thanks UMS, those look very interesting

Sorry for the silly question, but what's a DAC for and why is it good and should I invest in one?

NuForce uDAC2 rec warmly seconded

Xxxp Yeah, I think it's great. It's not a revelatory difference in sound quality but it's definitely an improvement. Different enough to encourage me to get a new set of headphones a short while later (AKG K550) and together music sounds better than it ever has on my laptop.

the thing is, you're joking, but if you listen to the mastered final edits of a record from the tape in a mastering studio, you know for a fact that everything else is not as good & that you're hearing what you're trying to make the one and only time it's going to sound as good as it should

― (or if you must, "data") (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, March 11, 2014 12:42 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was joking, sure, and I've been on a few mastering sessions, so I definitely know what you mean. But the language used for things like Pono and other Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil can sometimes come across as accusatory and borderline insulting, like, "You like CDs?! You don't even know what music is, idiot!"

Pono makes no sense at the math level

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

love that quote in the footnotes: "The Sampling Theorem hasn't been invented to explain how digital audio works, it's the other way around. Digital Audio was invented from the theorem, if you don't believe the theorem then you can't believe in digital audio either!"

the thing that sucks about the audiophile industry and that rhetoric is that it's created this impression that it's all this crazy, ridiculous multi-thousand dollar thing that's not attainable for regular folks when the reality is the opposite! we're in a golden age of affordable great sound equipment....

for a few hundred you could get some great self-powered speakers by a quality manufacturer and an entry level DAC that would knock your socks off! heck for, around 1000 or 1200 you could outfit a great turntable, amp, and speakers! it's really never been easier or cheaper than it is right now and the difference might surprise you...

hell, i'm listening to $30 Monoprice headphones right now at work that would destroy expensive ones from the 80s or 90s...it's insane!

for the price of one of those sets of shithole Beats by Dr. Dre headphones you could have the first-gen Dragonfly DAC or nuForce DAC AND these Monoprice headphones and everything would sound so much better

otm

I bought one of those new NAD D3020, which has a built-in DAC as well as digital-friendly connections (the combo being relatively rare for an amp), suiting my setup, and man, it sounds great.

he said NAD

If I had two of them ...

Two NADs and a PONO.

..make a PORNO?

subway she is a pono

upper mississipi sh@kedown killin it itt, preach!!

dog latin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital-to-analog_converter

So he's fixing to deliver the SXSW keynote, supposedly RIGHT NOW--but he's still having a Q&A about guess what http://sxsw.com/live Rebroadcasted: 7pm CDT Wednesday & 7am CDT Thursday

keyPONOte

that's just what it turned out to be--if you take out the "key" and "te."

UMS, I would like a headphone amp (to mediate between my 160gb iPod and my koss or grado phones) that gives me better EQ control than the lame non customizable EQ settings in the iPod firmware. Like, some little thing with 6 or more bands of eq that's not too huge to walk around with. Any advice?

That is something I haven't looked into
But a portable mp3 player with a HQ headphone amp?
Have you considered... Pono?

Made its Kickstarter goal of $800,000 already apparently

http://t.co/9XSAJrLZly

phew!

PonoMusic is supported by all major labels and their growing catalogues of high quality digital music. The music industry is excited about making the amazing music they’ve curated conveniently available to music lovers everywhere in its highest available quality.

The record companies set their own digital music prices, label by label. High-resolution digital albums at Ponomusic.com are expected to cost between $14.99 -$24.99

Uh, yeah, this is a revolution with legs.

Pornomusic more like, right? Right?

"We can't wait to sell you the albums you've already bought on vinyl, on CD, on deluxe CD remaster, and on deluxe 180g vinyl remaster yet again." *cue Rumours

this reminds me of when 30-dollar gold-plated cds were a thing

Finally, some high resolution digital files. I'm surprised they're charging as low as $24.99! Music this good that sounds this good should really be a lot more, like, maybe $100 an album? That way the artist finally gets paid, and the record label can finally recoup and put all that money into signing, developing and promoting new acts.

Someone needs to show Neil an iPhone and how it can play mp3s and tell him almost everyone on the planet has one. Cos apparently he has no idea.

I want a phone that makes calls in perfect digital fidelity.

"Your mom has never sounded better!"

"Your mum rang. She's hideous".

Like when TV went to HD and all the actors had to pancake on the make-up to look presentable, yet garish at the same time. My HD phone will require apps and other devices to make you sound good, what with everyone hearing every dB of your spit moving around in your mouth.

I need a music player that doesn't fit comfortably in my pocket. Can anyone help?

plz contribute to the kickstarter for my PonoProtecto carrying case, suggested retail price $199

man you guys are otm about everything except the device. it looks kinda cool and slightly bulky would be a plus for me in a device at this point. when I'm digging in my backpack for my iPod or phone it goes hiding everywhere. behind books, in pockets, wherever. I wish it stuck out a little more. would buy an iPod shaped like a PONO that played all my files. not buying a bunch of higher-res files for a Pono though wtf seriously I've bought these records enough times

my little pono: HQ is magic

just in case anybody needed a headline for a positive review of this thing

do we know that it won't play conventional MP3s? i'd hope it was compatible with all file types, like AAC, FLAG, ogg etc...hope it's not all like weird SultansOfSwing(Live).pono files

it might play them but i guarantee you it wont like em

so will the desktop app at least be able to rip CDs into whatever new format they're pushing?

lol you still listen to CDs?

and their cold, digital LIES?

It will play at least FLAC, ALAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, and AAC (the default/preferred format being FLAC), and I'm not sure if this made it into the final design, but there was also supposed to be a "degrade" feature so you could instantly hear what your high quality file would have sounded like if it was a lowly MP3.

the high-res FLACs they're going to be selling are better than CD quality so there would be no point in ripping your own

xpost -- Boy talk about some smugass bullshit if so.

Yeah, I have a feeling that feature didn't make it to the final design, but Neil talked about it in his book.

I want to hear the full richness of knopfler screaming "Ha!" @ 3:12 into "In the Gallery" on my InTheGallerlol.pono file

*still swear Tidal sounds better

That Qobuz service is going exclusively hi-res, lowering subscription price: https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/qobuz-kicks-mp3s-to-curb-hi-res-audio-1203398479/

Would be interested to do the trial and see if its catalog is even remotely comparable to the major services (especially for new releases).

I decided to do the Qobuz trial, just for kicks. It does sound good -- significantly better than YT Music (my crappy-sounding default) -- but probably not worth the extra $5/mo. over Tidal or Spotify (at least when played over my cheap bluetooth headphones).

The bass in some of these streams is actually boosted a little too much for my taste...

Ooh - there's a switch in the settings to bump up the quality to "Hi-Res 24-Bit / up to 192 kHz" (for supported recordings). Damn, that really does sound good. (You can toggle between the four settings as you play a track, to compare on the fly.)

hold the phones.. Bluetooth? surely it's using LDAC then? I've never bothered with it, but I think any other sort of Bluetooth compression is going to severely limit this lossless experiment

I mean, I can definitely hear the difference between at least the top tier and the lower ones (unless someone with real tech knowledge insists that's not possible, and I'm falling prey to severe power-of-suggestion).

I mean yeah it’s impossible for Bluetooth to reproduce that, it doesn’t have the bandwidth to even do CD quality audio, let alone 24 bit.

You probably can hear a difference though because I strongly suspect the services that offer 24bit audio EQ those streams differently to help you believe it does sound better.

Hmm... yeah, the bass doesn’t seem as jacked; highs & mids sound more clear. Maybe YouTube Music is just really crappily EQ’d(?)

MY PONONO

Neil Young created Pono ten years ago with a seemingly altruistic goal: making music sound better. But the project developed a rough reputation, whether it deserved it or not. For @stereogum, I went in search of answers: Did Pono get a fair shake?https://t.co/L3OW303VRT

— Nate Rogers (@Nate_Rgrs) January 13, 2025

> Eventually, the final nail in Pono’s triangular, yellow coffin was when their store’s content partner, Omnifone, was purchased by Apple in 2016 and then promptly shut down, taking a crowbar to Young’s already fragile business.

this isn't how i remember it. omnifone did the provisioning of the music but not the website, the actual store. and iirc the storefront went down months before omnifone got bought out (which was a long, protracted thing in itself, two different buyers, one of whom won the bid and then seemingly disappeared...). but i'm not sure how much us proles were told, maybe the website was taken down because of the difficulties (although other systems were running right until the end)

although this text from the pono website suggests otherwise

PONO - Where Music Lives

and i contradict myself here. funny how memory plays tricks.

> We had one [a PONO] at work - we supplied the files for them - and us going out of business is what caused their website to disappear, never to return 8(
> ― koogs, Saturday, 26 October 2019 03:56

after all this i guess you could say i "pivoted to video" 8)