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Neil Young’s PonoPlayer sounds no better than an iPhone—no matter what the audiophiles say...
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Laughing...
Here is a link to another article, which found that listeners could not distinguish iphone output from Pono output (or preferred iphone). He doesn't say what resolution was used--probably CD resolution on the Pono (since most Pono store tracks are 44.1khz flac) and 256kbit AAC on iPhone.
What jumped out at me though, was the photo of the A-B test equipment. Both players were going into a cheap Radioshack A-B switch, using what look like the cheapest RC cables (see attached photo). I would expect that switch and cables to constrain the sound (in the name of being more objective, we reduce the possible variation). I doubt that a Pono connected directly to a very nice pair of headphones would be subject to that quality of wiring.
I'm an audiophile proponent and think expensive audio and high resolution make sense. But please with the kind of hubris and unreasonable promises being made with this product who can complain about reviews like this one. Matter of fact it seems reasonable that the masses (and that's who this product is reaching out for) would come to the same kind of conclusion.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Are you sure?
That sure is some seriously pretentious, cross-marketing political/ideological bullsh!t!
Wonder if the PonoPlayer is solar powered and made of all sustainable, recycled, and or
re-purposed, non-toxic materials in a manufacturing plant along similar lines?
They should really be ashamed of themselves for that.
Instead, they are probably very proud of adding that blurb to their BS marketing.
Surprised they didn't produce it in green, though yellow does seem appropriate.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
I've yet to hear a portable player that really impressed me..... The closest maybe the Ray Samuels Audio Predator DAC... But still, nothing to me touches a good home CD player, in regard to digital audio sources.
   Â
Sorry about the delay in the downtime today. I ran into a couple of issues that cost me a half hour or so. There was also a slight syncing issue in the server move and db conversion, so we did lose a few posts. My apologies.So this has completed to move to our new servers. However, there could be some problems with an app here or there. If so you run into any bugs, please note the url of the page and let me know so I can fix it.
I do know that we will run into a few funny characters here and there. This was major part of the db conversion. To be consistent and better handle strange characters, we switched from latin1 to UTF-8 encoding. Since the forum index pages are cached and written in latin1 encoding, some of them may look weird where these characters exist. You might see a smiley face in the middle of a moniker or a diamond or something. If so, let me know the url of the page, I have a utility to fix them.
-Rod
Edits: 02/26/15 02/26/15
...that is a telling statement. His generation expects that a "gadget" must do more than one thing. These are the same people who would never understand a dedicated system (or dedicated room) that exists for nothing more than the enjoyment of music.Same for the home theater/music/computer crowd. It's all in one, or nothing at all.
Sad.....
Oz
Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
- Winston Churchill
Edits: 02/26/15
The author concludes:
"if you plan to play pop songs through $60 headphones, maybe even while riding in a loud subway car … buying a Pono means paying for sounds that you’ll never hear."
that's pretty hard to argue with, isn't it?
...It's what happens when old geezers try to be young hipsters. I expect more of this rhetoric as the economic force of boomers continues to shift away from consumsption and begins to focus on long term medical care.
on so many levels ...
NY has a long history of well-mastered albums, and he been a long time proponent of superior sounding formats. His take on MP3 is dead-on in my experience.
PONO fails, in my view, certainly not based on your demonstrated "age-discrimination" reasoning ... rather ... because any personal device of such ilk which is WAV file compatible, has proved sufficient within the context of such handheld devices.
In other words, PONO is redundant!
Yes, it is difficult being an audiophile today. The largest problem is the loss of quality in recording and mastering. Compression squeezes the life out of most of popular music and renders moot much offered by high resolution audio formats. The best sound available now often accompanies movies - high resolution recordings and playback via BluRay disc.
I like what you said about movies. I often hear an older tune on a BD and wish I could get such a good-sounding recording that's complete and (mainly) not part of a movie soundtrack.
"loss of quality in recording and mastering"
"Compression squeezes the life"
"difficult being an audiophile "
The left hand doesn't know what the right's doing.
Aren't you aware that the listening public - PLUS - people who count themselves among the 'audio aware', love compression. Love it. Want more of it. Why do you think they swallow it whole?
You may reject the masses as uninformed and uneducated about audio. Fine. But, in the audio community, there are tons of people who demand the lowest fidelity possible. The guy posting as FRG7SWL just ran a thread explaining his ultra-low-fi, ultra-electronic-processing, ultra-unnatural-sound preferences in ultra-clear terms.
Aren't the rest of you aware of what the guy sitting right next to you's doing? For that matter, Stereophile Magazine's been on a rip-down-the-audiophile-ideals crusade since the 1990s, jumping into even higher gear by adding The Prophet to their staff, with his craze for crappy old gear.
If you need any further proof of the devolution toward the Low-Fi abyss, just click over to the Vintage Board right here on AA. [Again, right hand unaware of the left]. There you'll find guys wetting themselves over TV/radio consoles [CONSOLES!], phonographs, and even table radios.
And you guys here are complaining about a little digital compression? Ha Ha Ha. Spitting into the ocean. There's a tidal wave of degenerate low-fidelity all around you and morecoming, and you guys are blissfully unaware.
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