PONO - Where Music Lives

"Science says it doesn't matter, but who cares about science?"

i wonder if neil young vaccinated his kids...

he seems to trust scientists re. global warming FWIW

...and Electric Cars...and hearing aids apparently (Neil's recommended special models to Stills and Pete Townshend).

lol at Eraserhead gif.

"Science says it doesn't matter, but who cares about science?"
i wonder if neil young vaccinated his kids...

― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, January 30, 2015 2:38 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

given how profoundly disabled his son is and the lenths neil has gone to care for him, i'd guess "yes"

not surprised at all by that study but still, lol

also, kinda scummy of Neil to do all these studies based off "low-resolution MP3s", which haven't been widespread since like, the Napster days

Hey everyone do you guys know Neil Young?

hey everyone do you guys know neil young can i get his email why because he look intersting

heard he was sonned by a wite ponytail in a NAMM beef

given how profoundly disabled his son is and the lenths neil has gone to care for him, i'd guess "yes"

that's my point; he presumably cares about science, except when it has ruled that his stupid theories about recorded sound are bunk.

oh yeah i mean he's like the most inconsistent person ever, that's like the core of neil

like cf releasing literally a 78 rpm sound quality record after making a deal about pono

but pono will reveal every crackle of that 78 in astonishing 4,028-bit audio!

i wonder whether the itunes content was more brickwalled than the pono store stuff. if so, that could have skewed the results.

I bought the remasters of the first five albums when Archives 1 came out...are the PONO versions (allegedly) better than those? because those were a revelation to me, the first album in particular sounded completely different to me

i should probably add that well-recorded and -pressed 78s can sound completely magnificent.

i wonder whether the itunes content was more brickwalled than the pono store stuff. if so, that could have skewed the results.

― A Severus of Snapes (contenderizer), Friday, January 30, 2015 1:11 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If they're derived from the same master, one wouldn't be any more brickwalled than the other. Brickwalling happens at the mastering stage, and can be heard in all formats/file types. There's a thread on the Steve Hoffman forums right now about how some albums at HDTracks, which only sells high-resolution files, are brickwalled.

yeah a letter home actually sounds shittier than most 78s -- the "record booth" of jack white's is about as low as you can go, wouldn't have been state of the art in 1928.

I see a lot of mastering studios pushing "mastered for iTunes" as a service on their sites

those were a revelation to me
yeah they all sounded amazing! it was an example (to me at least) of how great a CD remaster can sound.

the idea of people paying a premium for HD tracks of brickwalled masters is delicious.

"now you can hear all that splendid digital distortion in sparkling HD"

yeah they all sounded amazing! it was an example (to me at least) of how great a CD remaster can sound.

― tylerw, Friday, January 30, 2015 1:23 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was stunned by how great these sounded (and am pissed that Neil apparently has no plans for a CD release of 5-8).

did he confirm that? :(

It was him or his people, but yeah. They likely thought it'd be nagl to release CDs while simultaneously trying to promote Pono's alleged superiority to CDs.

As opposed to when they put out CDs of Archives I while simultaneously trying to promote BluRay's superiority to CDs.

by the time Archives 2 gets the green light it'll be a CD-ROM bc that'll be retro enough by then

man wouldn't it be cool if neil was just like fuck it and handed the archives over to a good reissue label like numero or light in the attic.
it's just crazy that i can buy a beautiful william onyeabor box set and neil young's box set is just a piece of shit (in terms of a physical object).

Archives II has already been announced as being released on ViewMaster.

Re:Cd Rom--To unlock tracks, you have to play an Oregon Trail-style game wherein you navigate a Cadillac through CSNY's '74 tour itinerary.

Was about to suggest Neil tell everyone it'll all come out when he dies, but I bet if he did there'd be some real fidgety guys waiting outside the ranch, wanting their ponos signed.

archives II y'all:

http://wiki.ggc.edu/images/7/76/Colorfloppy.jpg

There's a thread on the Steve Hoffman forums (because of course there is) about the Pogue article; the dominant themes are "Well, of course no one could tell the difference! They used the wrong equipment for the study! Sennheisers pair much better with the Pono!" and "it's not for the masses; MOST people can't tell the difference in sound quality/don't care/are stupider than me."

Pono test guy responds to criticism:
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-ponoplayer-review-criticism-and-follow-up-110040409129.html

wow i would print out this email and frame it

In the meantime, there’s one more piece of feedback I think I should share. It was an email from Neil Young after the review was posted.

“Thanks for the review,” he wrote. “I really learned a lot from it and my communications with you. Good luck … Neil.”

brilliant.

'i really learnt a lot'

way to make the poor sods who have spent $$$$ on your yellow submarine better.

funny, usually it's the participants that get paid when performing a scientific experiment....

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/pono-player-and-promises-fulfilled

"Your test was invalid because people these days have come to prefer the compressed sound of phone audio.”

Yes, that occurred to me, too. Maybe, after years of listening to iPod and phone music, that’s the sound consumers have come to know and like.

Still, the question here is, “Which sound do you prefer?”

This critique comes dangerously close to saying, “Your panelists preferred the wrong thing.” I don’t think anyone is qualified to tell anybody else that their preference is incorrect.

I liked the Pogue article, but I think the fairer claim is, “some prefer accuracy, some don’t.” Neither opinion is wrong.

Take that to the Steve Hoffman forum and watch the chaos ensue.

pono got a very positive and level-headed review in the new stereophile. he mostly sidestepped the controversy except to note the willfulness of the anti crowd. he says that tech paper everybody points to to "prove" pono is b.s. has largely been discredited.

Discredited where? And by who? Because things like the sampling theorem are proven science, so it'd be interesting to hear how they can be discredited.

it's a preamp. of course things sound better through it than without a preamp. the questions re: pono are 1) are there other preamps you can put in between your mp3s/aacs & your headphones that do the job as well for less money (yes) and 2) are the pono large files appreciably different than their less expensive peers through comparable systems (pono or x + preamp) (no)

Discredited where? And by who?

don't really know. you'd have to ask john atkinson at stereophile (his review is here). my sense, though, is that the article is flawed because of misdirection. it says people who don't like redbook digital don't understand the sampling theorem, whereas the actual argument against redbook digital does not attempt to discredit the sampling theorem.

i mean the 2007 article is flawed, not the atkinson review.

basically the argument goes that the 16/44 standard forces filtering techniques that cause a distortion in the time domain. it's a perception thing that messes with your brain and is probably responsible for the "fatigue" that people complain about after listing to digital music for a long continuous period. it's also why results of a/b tests are so inconclusive, because it's not the type of difference you're going "hear" (i.e. not a failure of the sampling theorem's ability to reproduce the correct frequencies).

that stereophile review seems pretty good, confirming basically what i thought - it's a very solid portable digital music player that's priced well considering the components in it, in a kind of dumb Toblerone form factor.

it's a shame in a way because it's become such a football in the online wars about audiophilia and whether or not HD matters etc etc & Neil's own odd asssertion that he was inventing something that already actually existed, but either way it looks like a pretty good devce on the whole.

Bill Walton was on our local sports talk station, and the guy asked him what his one "desert island" album would be, and Bill Walton said "I would bring my beautiful new high resolution PONO player that Neil Young gave me and that would sustain me" <3 <3 <3