PONO - Where Music Lives

Everybody's jerking off to the ever-elusive ponography.

i got to listen to one a couple of weeks ago. sound quality was great on the lossless files and i liked that it had a line-out and 128GB as standard. but i could hear all the flaws in my shitty compressed files, in a way that i don't notice on my £40 sandisk clip zip.

cool, would you consider getting one?

but i could hear all the flaws in my shitty compressed files

are you talking 128s or even decent quality like 320?

oggs on default quality 8) (i'm one of those greedy people who'd rather have 5000 files than 2000 whilst walking around)

(roughly equiv to 128kbps mp3s. that said, i later listened to the original flac that i bought from bandcamp and THAT also sounded shitty. not sure whether somewhere in the recording / upload chain it hadn't been converted down and then up again)

as for whether i'd get one, $300399 buys an awful lot of cds. plus i'd be scared of losing it somewhere, even if it is bright yellow and hard to miss (whereas £40 of mp3 player i'm not so bothered about).

yeah I can't really tell the difference between 320 and 192 most of the time but I can pick out 128 in seconds

I'm waiting for a Pono with a built-in speaker so that I can make everything around me sound better. I suggest they design it to look like this:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B7tFVbj40gc/ULwgE5rzTlI/AAAAAAAAGEA/glRohpR68MI/s640/DSC01147.JPG*

*Neil Young not included.

what happened to Neil's right hand

Lost in the music.

what is up with this stupid gadget is it out yet, is it vaporware, did yr dad buy one

per his howard stern appearance:

The first batch of Pono players are sold out. "We're going to try and make more in January," he said. "We're starting to build and scale up, but the demand for them was awesome…We're making this for people that want it. We're not making it for people that don't want it, but they may not know then want it until they hear it. It's a gentle revolution. We're not trying to bowl over the world. We don't think success is anything you can tangibly see. It's a smile."

oh god neil young has prosopagnosia

TOP PONO ARTISTS
1. Neil Young
2. Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
3. Pearl Jam
4. Foo Fighters
5. Patti Smith
6. James Taylor
7. Kenny Rogers
8. Elton John
9. Norah Jones
10. Beck

I think that should be enough information for you to tell whether this device is for you.

ha, nice work glenn

Neil should pitch Pono on Shark Tank.

he'd do well because he would not be able to see the horror and disappointment on the judges faces

"We're going to try and make more in January,"

That's good CEOing, Neil, I hope you get around to it.

Will reserve judgement until I can hear "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)."

I still can't figure out how/why this would work. I was poking around the store and there's tons of albums that I'm sure haven't had the master tapes touched in years

Like what would these be sourced from?

https://ponomusic.force.com/ccrz__CCPage?pageKey=product&oId=of%3A7ab373c879474d4abf3e49cd35c3876e&type=Album&artistId=undefined

https://ponomusic.force.com/ccrz__CCPage?pageKey=product&oId=of%3Aea230df5f6244f71bd38387d380ab3ac&type=Album&artistId=undefined

https://ponomusic.force.com/ccrz__CCPage?pageKey=product&oId=of%3Ae91955fa357b44aca239600e75e9f9c4&type=Album&artistId=undefined

i just poked around the store for the first time and couldn't help noticing that the album cover displayed with neil young's decade is the cd version, complete with the message "a 3-record set on 2 compact discs":

https://ponomusic.force.com/ccrz__CCPage?pageKey=product&oId=of%3Aaad0a2306828429aa46d9c2aaa138fb9&type=Album&artistId=undefined

pono should have pristine analog vinyl album art, no?

Hahahaha Whiney how did you miss the hype over Light in the Attic's Alien Ant Farm reissues

Whiney are you ok
Are you ok

are you okay, Whiney

"We're going to try and make more in January,"

Waiting for the release of Pono: Volume II.

As he poked around the Pono
It was switched from line to phono
He came into the web site
He left beside himself, somethin ain't right

Does anyone know anything about this site? I'm slightly intrigued but probably at those prices I'd just buy physical albums

http://www.hdtracks.com/

i think that's the go-to site for audiophile 24 bit downloads, that was one of the things ppl were saying about the PONO store is that it was basically just trying to be HD Tracks which was already pretty robust

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!
― gimme the lute (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, March 11, 2014 12:15 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would love a series of no-nonsense recommendations for relatively inexpensive but excellent audio components that i could buy one at a time toward the end of having a relatively inexpensive but excellent audio system to play LPs, CDs, MP3s, FLACs... and listen to the radio.

if you go on the internet there's simply so much info, and I have little sense of what sources to trust. it seems for every piece of gear there's one person saying this is a godsend and another saying it's a piece of junk.

i'm suspicious of HD tracks, can anyone tell the difference between your standard FLACs and 24-bit FLACs? i mean, you'd have to have a pretty incredible sound system to even begin to notice the difference, no? i'm not yet completely convinced I can usually hear the difference between a good V0/320 MP3 rip and a FLAC rip. at least not on my stereo system (much less on my laptop).

anyway...

i'd love good recommendations for...

- a good DAC for my mac laptop
- a excellent turntable for under $500

now, my receiver/stereo has phono input, do i still need/want a standalone phono preamp?

sorry i know this is the PONO thread but people seem to be talking all things audio.

HD tracks are mastered directly from analog masters, right?

aren't most or at least many digital masters much less than 24bit in the first place? meaning you wouldn't gain anything to hear them in 24bit. that's certainly true of the first few generations of digital masters (which include things like 1980s fleetwood mac albums IIRC).

and alien ant farm is exactly what i mean (set aside the issue that an alien ant farm song will never sound good even if it was from god's speakers to your ears)... it was probably recorded using some late 90s digital format that isn't anywhere near up to the sonic capacity of a 24bit file.

FWIW i can usually tell the difference between e.g. 128 MP3s and 320 MPs... but beyond that it gets harder. of course it's hard to compare unless you are literally comparing e.g. a 320 MP3 and a FLAC rip from the same exact CD. if you're listening to two different masters then the differences are probably from other than the different formats.

Can someone explain to me whether/why HDTracks would be preferable to just getting a CD and ripping it to your computer at the highest rate? Does "directly from the analog masters" mean better than CD?

I think they offer better than 44.1 KHz/16 bit (CD quality) audio as an option, which would require going back to the original master tapes and making a new transfer at a higher quality.

Also lots of people don't want to own actual things these days and would rather pay through the nose for bits.

HDTracks files in higher resolutions (usually 24bit/96KHz) are invariably sourced from the SACDs, although a few dedicated masters are cropping up. 24 bits means that there is less background noise than a CD, and sampling at 96KHz rather than 44.1KHz means that a wider range of frequencies are are captured. However (a) the lower noise floor is of no practical use since you're very unlikely to listen to music loud enough to hear it, and (b) CDs capture the entire range of frequencies human ears can detect, so reproducing frequencies outside of that is fairly pointless. It would like a TV that displays IR and UV - terrific technical exercise, but utterly pointless in the real world.

Audiophiles will tell you that the harmonics of the non-audible frequencies interact with the audible frequencies and so to get an accurate reproduction of the music "in the control room", you need these extra frequencies. Saying that, no-one has ever been able to tell the difference between CDs and high resolution audio in an blind ABX test, and the well-regarded audiokarma.org forum prohibits discussion of the benefits of high-definition audio because there's no evidence that the difference is detectable, even if you're listening REALLY hard.

Annoyingly, SACDs (and so HDTracks files) often DO sound better than their CD counterparts, but that's becsause more care goes into the mastering process since the kind of people who buy SACDs are more likely to care about SQ. Even "from the analogue masters" isn't a guarentee of quality because if the mastering process has been screwed up, it may still sound terrible (although not many do by all accounts).

xp so far as recomendations for gear:

- DAC: The Audioquest Dragonfly DAC is the size of a USB stick, looks great, sounds amazing, on Amazon for $145. If you want something you can use to amp your mp3 player as well, I'd recommend the Fiio E17 for around the same price. It's bulkier and not as attractive but its got a battery and you can plug it straight into your ipod/iphone.

- Turntable: Project make good entry-level turntables. I've got the Project Debut Carbon ($400) which I'm really happy with. I wouldn't recommend getting a turntables much cheaper than this since cheaper turntables often press the stylus harder onto the vinyl causing your records to sound audibly worse over time., while a turntable with lighter tracking will mitigate this effect.

EBay is your friend for most of this stuff. Audiophiles tend to take good care of their gear and upgrade fairly frequently and so bargains can be had without too much effort.

thanks so much for the recommendations. they will come in handy. eventually i will upgrade my receiver/preamp and speakers as well. any recommendations for those?

Annoyingly, SACDs (and so HDTracks files) often DO sound better than their CD counterparts, but that's becsause more care goes into the mastering process since the kind of people who buy SACDs are more likely to care about SQ. Even "from the analogue masters" isn't a guarentee of quality because if the mastering process has been screwed up, it may still sound terrible (although not many do by all accounts).

― DISMISSED AS CHANCE (NotEnough), Thursday, October 16, 2014 2:53 AM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right ... if a label is bothering with a SACD then there's a greater likelihood that they're taking care to find the best elements and to remaster them thoughtfully. as is often the case, the putatively inherent differences between formats comes down instead to differences in the mastering process.

oh also...

now, my receiver/stereo has phono input (and therefore i assume it has a built-in phono premap)... do i still need/want a standalone phono preamp?

HDTracks files in higher resolutions (usually 24bit/96KHz) are invariably sourced from the SACDs, although a few dedicated masters are cropping up

oh i should add that HDtracks are available for albums that never received a SACD or DVD-Audio release (or any release in one of the seemingly myriad HD audio formats)... e.g. a few Prince albums. so those are likely dedicated masters.

Oh yes, the debut turntable has no inbuilt preamp so you will need one of those. Your amp probably doesn't have one built in despite having an input labeled Phono, tho its worth checking the manual just in case. Above the level of super cheap ones, preamps make very little difference in SQ so don't spend a fortune, you should be able to get an adequate one for way less than $100.

i'm using a technics turntable right now with my receiver/amp w/o a standalone preamp and it works just fine... i guess i was just wondering if buying a nicer preamp would improve the sound any.

If you've got a technics 1200 then iim not sure it would be worth upgrading to a project tbh. Those things are built like a tank and sound really good. If its old and had lots of use then it might be worth getting a new cartridge, but I'm not sure you'll notice much of a difference on a turntable upgrade unless you want to drop >$1000.

It's all really disappointing because I would gladly pay for some fancy player and fancy master-sourced files as, like, the luxury experience for certain beloved records. Instead, they're trying to sell LOTS OF THE MUSICS through their mysterious box, which just reeks of snake oil.

if i wanted to rebuild my music listening entirely from scratch and have options like using streaming services like spotify, having speakers around the house and iphone-controllable sonos-style, and also be good for watching movies (but i could probably go w/o surround, tbh)... uh... what should i do

probably make sure everything supports airplay, buy a bunch of speakers ...???? profit!

airplay always didn't work for me :(

i'm trying to decide between sonos + a good amp i can hook up a turntable to and... i dunno... a cheap mac mini? and stuff?

If Spotify had a service along the lines of streaming HDTracks quality music I would probably pay triple what I currently pay. Spotify does offer higher bitrate streaming, but the files themselves seem to have mixed quality control.

https://ponomusic.force.com/ccrz__CCPage?pageKey=product&oId=of%3A7ab373c879474d4abf3e49cd35c3876e&type=Album&artistId=undefined

lol'd so hard when this link opened, ty whiney

- DAC: The Audioquest Dragonfly DAC is the size of a USB stick, looks great, sounds amazing, on Amazon for $145. If you want something you can use to amp your mp3 player as well, I'd recommend the Fiio E17 for around the same price. It's bulkier and not as attractive but its got a battery and you can plug it straight into your ipod/iphone.

- Turntable: Project make good entry-level turntables. I've got the Project Debut Carbon ($400) which I'm really happy with. I wouldn't recommend getting a turntables much cheaper than this since cheaper turntables often press the stylus harder onto the vinyl causing your records to sound audibly worse over time., while a turntable with lighter tracking will mitigate this effect.

^^was gonna suggest the Dragonfly

pair them with these and you'd have great sound for really cheap: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FE9XGVM/ref=asc_df_B00FE9XGVM3364545?smid=A14FMGGKFTICNN&tag=mysimon-pc03-20&linkCode=df0&creative=395129&creativeASIN=B00FE9XGVM

project turntables are very good....i have a Rega which I love and is very comparable:

http://www.amazon.com/REGA-RP1WHT-Rega-Turntable-White/dp/B004B3GO9I/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1413470035&sr=1-2&keywords=rega+rp1

I'm upgrading my Rega and I am sooooo stoked

What upgrades you getting? I always assume that the difference turntable upgrades make are marginal...