PONO - Where Music Lives

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

lol I love the idea of a "degrade" feature. then we could have people saying "I happen to prefer the degraded version" and doing EMP presentations about it

if possible, I'd also like to have ringtones. i don't need pono to be a phone, but if it could function as a Dream Phone, where I can answer "calls" and hear a prerecorded message from Neil Young saying, "He looks cool...in whatever he wears"

http://badnrad.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/do-you-look-cool-in-whatever-you-wear-e2-80-a6-c2-a0-c2-a0too-cool-is-your.jpg

the delightful frolicsome flutter to the cymbal decay you can only get from 64kbs streaming

xpost

They definitely completely buried the lede in the rhetoric. I'm not really sure I get any of the logic in this. Sell high end circuitry at an affordable price to people by making them feel bad? That's a tried and true marketing strategy, right?

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

― cwkiii, Wednesday, March 12, 2014 12:10 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbh neil talks about a lot of stuff

So, this has now blown Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter total out of the water. Thanks Neil.

did she try to find an audio player that made everything sound like a shellac 78 played on a victrola or something?

*fund

http://gizmodo.com/what-is-high-resolution-audio-1252637824/1541582373/+marioaguilar

^ comments section is predictable "I can hear the difference!" "No you can't!" but the author has the last laugh:

Your weeping is not science.

"heck for, around 1000 or 1200 you could outfit a great turntable, amp, and speakers!"
Could you make do with half that?

I think UMS has convinced me I should get a DAC for my MacBook. Is Dragonfly the best balanced DAC in the $100-150 range or is there a better one? Dragonfly doesn't inflate the bass too much, right?

"heck for, around 1000 or 1200 you could outfit a great turntable, amp, and speakers!"
Could you make do with half that?

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, March 12, 2014 1:51 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure!

clearance pro-ject - $299

http://www.musicdirect.com/p-7622-pro-ject-debut-iii-matte-black-turntable.aspx

andrew jones pioneer bookshelf speakers - $129

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Home/Speakers/Home+Theater+Speakers/SP-BS22-LR

(review:http://www.stereophile.com/content/pioneer-sp-bs22-lr-loudspeaker-page-2)

It's impressive when a talented speaker designer such as Andrew Jones takes time off from designing $80,000/pair speakers to come up with a quality speaker costing less than $200/pair. It's even more impressive when he takes the time to revise and refine such an inexpensive design. Jones's SP-BS22-LR is a stunning achievement at $159.99/pair. Its sound is balanced, neutral, and involving, with no significant shortcomings. I'm scratching my head at how Pioneer can produce this level of quality at this price. Every audiophile—even well-heeled investment bankers—should listen to the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR, to hear what's possible for the fiscally challenged music lover.

Marantz PM6004 integrated amp (demo on clearance) - $369

http://www.musicdirect.com/p-120522-marantz-pm6004-integrated-amp-demo.aspx

What Hi FI? review (2011 product of the year):

http://www.whathifi.com/review/marantz-pm6004

Total: $797

killer system!

so close to half...

honestly if you want to save...go on Craigslist and I'm sure you could find an older NAD amp/receiver with a phono in for $200

though I'd probably buy 2 Ponos instead if i were you

Marantz PM6004 integrated amp (demo on clearance) - $369

I have the PM5004 (same as above with fewer watts per channel) and it rules. So unbelievably happy with it.

just want to post this here because i find this stuff interesting and the author, tom fine, who runs a well-regarded preservation audio company and knows just ridiculous amounts of stuff on this topic, is amazing. originally posted to a mailing list, i hope he doesn't mind the repost. it was in a thread about the loudness wars and "toothpasting" (so named because the dynamic range compression makes the waveform look like a squeeze of toothpaste). anyway i think it does a little to demonstrate that there aren't any hard-and-fast rules with audio, that it's completely dependent on context all the way from recording to playback, that bad audio is more a result of gaps or lack of understanding of the context of production/reproduction than of inherently "bad" or "good" digital or analog media.

Compression of dynamic range, especially for rock and pop music, is not necessarily bad. In the case of "Graceland," the new reissue DOES sound better than the thin and tinny original CD, to my ears. I could hear it was more compressed, but I like the nice low end and the more natural-sounding voices. Another example where the latest reissue is probably a bit more compressed than the original LP and CD, but sounds better, is Fleetwood Mac "Rumours." Much more solid bass and the EQ decisions of the latest remastering engineer especially brought out the details of the guitar and smaller percussion instruments, without at all damaging the good-sounding voices.

The problem with toothpasting is that it causes clipping distortion from the digital realm into the analog realm.

I was just talking to one of the best mastering guys yesterday, and we did some careful listening in his excellent-sounding room (you gotta love a setup where you can do careful listening for half a day and not leave with your ears ringing). The problem with many CDs, up into the 90s, is that A-D converters had problems with phase and high treble. You get something akin to digi-swishies with high-treble information. You notice it in the worse cases with things like ride cymbols, triangles and sleigh bells, but it's always there on the "air and space," which gives that "metallic sheen" that people don't like about CDs. I think the problem was made worse by aggressive and ill-used "hiss reduction" DSP on analog tapes. Tape hiss is much more easily ignored than the strange high-frequency stuff that happens when you try too hard to remove it. The other thing we noticed about many early CDs is lack of bass. We couldn't figure that out, it shouldn't be a problem, but it is. We decided that there might have been under-spec'd power supplies in many early A-D converters, so the analog stage going into the converter couldn't handle a lot of bass energy. The best examples of LP cutting still stand up very favorably to CD, and some of the modern LP cutting bests earlier CD reissues of the same material. When you get into higher-resolution digital, you can (if it's done right) get beyond the high-frequency problems of CDs and most converters of any type today seem to handle bass better, my theory being that people convert and record at lower average levels at 24-bit, so the analog input is not strained with loud bass energy. Back when they were cutting CDs directly from tapes, you had to go full-final levels into the converter, which meant the analog input stage needed to be capable of +24dBm dynamics. Tape machine and console designers had spent the 70s and 80s figuring out how to get clean, loud bass energy and I think it took many digital interface designers some time to catch up, with the end compromise being essentially padding down the input and working in 24 bits (which is desireable anyway in the DAW world because you need headroom for digital EQ, dynamics and other signal processing).

-- Tom Fine

I have these hand-me-downs, or something very similar. Do these stack up against modern marantz?
http://vintagemarantz.net/vintage-marantz-2250b-receiver-marantz-6200-turntable-instant-collection/

I've heard that even with great equipment, the vast majority of people cannot tell the difference between a well-encoded MP3 and a lossless wave file. I've done some side-by-sides and while 128kbps's do indeed sound like garbage once you hit like 192 I really don't see much point in going higher. Can anyone here in all honesty tell the difference?

it depends on the recording. 320 "mastered for itunes" can sound great but it can slaughter other things that were/are not meant for mp3.

lol, baaaaaaad look, Neil.

Taking the microphone, a young man asked: “What’s your cut?” — referring, of course, to Apple’s now-famous 30% cut of sales on the iTunes Store.

Hamm, after a flustered moment, responded that, “It surprises most people that everyone who buys music from the record labels pays exactly the same amount.” At this, several audience members shouted, “What?!”

“That’s a delicate question, isn’t it?” asked Young.

Shortly thereafter, Hamm turned to the moderator, slightly flushed at this point, and said “We can end it.”

“You can answer the question if you like,” Snider said.

Hamm shook his head slightly before Snider closed the discussion.

Pono makes no sense at the math level

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

Did anyone read this piece that onlydarkness linked to? Don't think I understood some parts. It links to test samples with 30kHz/26kHz and other tones. The author says:

Assuming your system is actually capable of full 96kHz playback, the above files should be completely silent with no audible noises, tones, whistles, clicks, or other sounds. If you hear anything, your system has a nonlinearity causing audible intermodulation of the ultrasonics.

Is the point here that you're supposed to get silence - meaning this kind of detail is useless - or that most people can hear something, showing that few systems are up to it and will introduce distortion? Because listening on an iMac - which I think is capable of 96kHz playback - I can easily hear things going on and I definitely don't have good ears.

audiophilia sure does take the fun out of music doesn't it?

i doubt my crackly old Charlie Parker albums will sound any better in 192/24 and neither do I think Kid A or Immer or Reign in Blood or SHaking The Habitual or any album made before or after this date will sound better in that quality, because I am a human being with ears and a song is a song and a guitar sounds like a guitar. What I mean is that for a start you'd have to be recording in that level of quality, and even if you manage to do that, what are you going to be picking up? A bit of extra hiss from a mic? Sympathetic reverb from a snare? A background cough? IT's like wishing that my acoustic guitar at home sounded "better". I could buy a more expensive guitar, but would it sound more real? Would it make a lick of difference?

(xpost to budget hifi discussion)

i've been reading about a killer turntable that clocks in at $179.
http://www.analogplanet.com/content/u-turn%E2%80%99s-remarkable-179-orbit-turntable-crosley-killer

I take people's word for it that it's junk science but in the same way organic/pasture-raised food is likely of dubious benefit in certain contexts, I think people who still use it exercise a greater care with most steps until the final product, and likewise something created in that chain of higher resolution audio would probably sound different/better, regardless of whether the extra bits of fidelity were necessary.

I could buy a more expensive guitar, but would it sound more real? Would it make a lick of difference?

yes

a better guitar would sound better, but it won't sound any more like a guitar.

I'm just curious where the market is for $20+ digital albums

When I want to demo my highest of hi-fi set ups, I always reach for Neil Young first. Then Steely Dan. But always Neil first, because those albums are like reference quality fidelity.

almost believed you there

Time Fades Away was recorded directly from the soundboard to 16-track using the Quad-8 CompuMix, the unreliable first digital mixing soundboard—against the wishes of producer David Briggs, who referred to it as the "Compufuck" but was forced to yield to the desires of Young. This resulted in a murky-sounding release.

Murky, maybe, but perfectly murky in PONO.

Note: this vinyl rip is in HD (!), but don't tell Neil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLv2VviaLX4

I'm just curious where the market is for $20+ digital albums

The big fish that are also the market for F2P games?

play Buffalo Springfield for awhile before every listen to heighten your enjoyment of what comes after

relationship problems? call coked-up Stills and chat for 15 minutes. your relationship is now enhanced.

Prince and Neil Young should collaborate on an instantly outmoded music distribution model.

Harvest is a great sounding record