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Topic: Pono Kickstarter |
b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Jim Cooley
From:
The 'Ville, Texas, USA
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Posted 12 Mar 2014 1:16 pm |
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That's really interesting. A lot of folks don't understand that digitally recorded music, regardless of format or equipment quality, is compressed, even if only a little. Digital technology doesn't yet reproduce true analog quality sound. I venture to guess that many younger people have never heard music in analog format.
I wonder how many others will click on the topic because they thought you left the "R" out of the middle of the first word? |
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Mike Schwartzman
From:
Maryland, USA
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Posted 12 Mar 2014 2:16 pm
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Thanks b0b...I remember reading about "Pono" in that Neil Young autobiography (I don't remember the actual book title) a year or 2 ago.
I'm pretty interested in this technology. I don't know, but I was wondering if any music that this device plays must be a high resolution recording (from the studio)to begin with in order to enjoy it's benefits?
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Emmons Push Pull, BMI, Session 400, Home of the Slimcaster Tele. |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 12 Mar 2014 2:20 pm Ultra-high res recordings
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192 kHz samples are 9x the highest frequency human ears can discern. Each sample has a volume range of 24 bits (0 to 16,777,215).
I think that the difference between that and "true analog" is something that can only be discerned by scientific instruments, not by human senses. The stair-step resolution of 192kHz/24-bit audio is far enough beyond anything we can hear. Our cybernetic descendants might consider it lo-fi, though. 
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-𝕓𝕆𝕓- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
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Jonathan Lam
From:
Brooklyn, NY
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Posted 12 Mar 2014 2:51 pm
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http://gizmodo.com/what-is-high-resolution-audio-1252637824/1541582373/+marioaguilar
"Neil Young is a lover of music, and so he has embarked on a well-intentioned quest to improve the quality of digital music. His Pono player is based on a good understanding of the problems with digital music—but its prescription for a solution only half-way makes sense.
As I discussed in a post last fall , crappy music files are surely a scourge, but the solution is to advocate for a return to CD-quality audio, not for the absurdly high-rate audio proposed by Young and others. CD quality sound is based on science, and going higher-resolution scientifically doesn't make a difference.
This isn't the fault of the player per se, but the whole idea behind the player is to provide a home for "Pono" files with soaring resolutions. There are other considerations that make hardware good, and we're not debating that Pono may or may not have these. But like the high-resolution audio jargon we first heard about last fall, there's something fundamentally misleading about the underlying ideas behind some of Pono's audio quality claims.
Just read through the Kickstarter and look for science. Or let me save you the trouble: There isn't any. The benefits listed under the "audiophile" section of the FAQ are all about hardware—not about the sampling rate and bit depth.
We've asked for more information from the folks at Pono. When they provide us with scientific evidence which proves that 192kHz/24-bit audio is better than the 44.1 kHz/16-bit CD-quality standard, we'll let you know."
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Http://www.jonnylam.com
http://www.honeyfingersmusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/honeyfingersmusic |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 12 Mar 2014 4:12 pm
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I know that, aside from the surface noise, even 50-year-old vinyl sounds better than most of the CDs in my collection. Not sure why, but I do hear a difference.
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-𝕓𝕆𝕓- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 12 Mar 2014 4:15 pm
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| Mike Schwartzman wrote: |
| I was wondering if any music that this device plays must be a high resolution recording (from the studio)to begin with in order to enjoy it's benefits? |
I would expect so, but most digital workstations already support higher than CD resolutions, even at the consumer level.
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-𝕓𝕆𝕓- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 13 Mar 2014 4:09 pm
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| b0b wrote: |
| I know that, aside from the surface noise, even 50-year-old vinyl sounds better than most of the CDs in my collection. Not sure why, but I do hear a difference. |
It's called "dynamics", and the real bugaboo is the high amounts of compression used today to get more loudness, far more than on CD's made over 20 years ago. (Yes, old CD's sound better than new ones, but still not as good as LP's.)
http://www.npr.org/2009/12/31/122114058/the-loudness-wars-why-music-sounds-worse |
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Ulrich Sinn
From:
California, USA
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 14 Mar 2014 8:56 am
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It's actually more like raising venture capital by selling advance orders for the product. I sent Kickstarter money to refurbish our local theater, and got bargain movie tickets in return. Pono's Kickstarter campaign has a wide range of options, all of them worth the money invested.
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-𝕓𝕆𝕓- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
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Geoff Barnes
From:
Sydney, Australia
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Posted 14 Mar 2014 11:23 am
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A few years back I read an interesting interview with Rupert Neve on digital audio. Basically he felt that 44/16 was missing vital info.
That whilst he could sit in a comfortable chair and listen to an entire album on vinyl... listening to the same album on a CD would eventually make him feel agitated.
Basically he felt that there weren't enough "steps" yet to create a sine wave...
I ran a quick search on Google to see if I could find the rave... didn't find it, but this is relevant;
"The more serious impact of low grade sound reproduction is that, without a real Point of Reference,the internal data bank you build up when you go to concerts, listen to real instruments and voices, is missing and you just don’t know how to distinguish between good and bad! At least two generations have grown up without a perspective because their only access to music, either as entertainment or as an art form is via the ubiquitous Compact Disc.
As long as 30 years ago, famous ‘golden-eared’ friends demonstrated that they could perceive the effect of frequency response anomalies as high as and even beyond 50kHz. Research has shown that when we hear reproduced sound that either lacks musical frequencies we expect to ï¬nd there or that introduces artifacts that ought not to be there, the brain radiates electrical activity of the sort associated with frustration and even anger. This electrical activity can be measured. Many questions arise as to whether such sound can do us lasting damage or can result in unexpected patterns of behaviour."
http://www.resolutionmag.com/pdfs/MAKER/rupertneve.pdf
http://www.jhamptone.com/tag/hearing-above-20khz/
And another article on the pono;
http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/features/opinion/392844/why-we-shouldnt-get-on-board-neil-youngs-pono-music-revolution.htm
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Too much equipment....I think I need help.
Last edited by Geoff Barnes on 15 Mar 2014 6:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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John Gould
From:
Houston, TX Now in Cleveland TX
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Posted 14 Mar 2014 7:24 pm
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Looks like a hype job to me. It's a FLAC player which they have been around for a while. Young has done a great job of promotion and fund raising. I just wondering if the 192/24 FLAC files they are selling are made directly from the multi track or just up scaled from a previous mix. Lots of information still not released on what it is and does.
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A couple of guitars
Fender GTX 100 Fender Mustang III Fender Blues Jr. Boss Katana MKII 50
Justice Pro Lite and Sho Bud Pro II |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 14 Mar 2014 8:11 pm
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As I see it, the Pono is a 128 GB music player with half of that hot-swappable. Basically, it holds twice as much as an iPod Touch at the same price point ($399), and without the built-in obsolescence of iOS software.
I have an old iPod Touch that can't be upgraded to the current version of iOS, and I'm sure it won't be long before Apple drops support for it in iTunes. A 128 GB music player with swappable 64 GB SD cards will hold my entire library at full CD resolution. The high-res feature is just the icing on the cake.
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-𝕓𝕆𝕓- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 18 Mar 2014 11:37 am
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The two biggest problems I've had with younger guitar students: they don't have the "instant-on" memory capacity/concentration to hear why certain notes follow another; and they can't really discern much about tone. The second problem is far worse, IMO. They "why" of progressions is a learned thing, but with the quality of sound these guys are growing up with, yikes. There are people who actually think those Takamines on the Grand Ol Oprey sound GOOD? Somebody recently posted a link to some Julian Tharpe sets online, great! But the sound, yikes. Bob Weir has also been involved in this, but I think he's pushing a competing system... here he discusses why listening to music with too little information actually hurts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfjjzZvYnkE
And, how it's going to be hard to get a large group of people to pay for good sound, when crap sound is free. It can go kinda... elitist, real easy. I don't actually know that there's been any research on what kids raised on the 1/4-content Mp3 norm actually hear, in their minds. What Neve says about then simply not having the building blocks... yikes 2. |
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Alvin Blaine
From:
Picture Rocks, Arizona, USA
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Posted 18 Mar 2014 8:28 pm
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| b0b wrote: |
As I see it, the Pono is a 128 GB music player with half of that hot-swappable. Basically, it holds twice as much as an iPod Touch at the same price point ($399), and without the built-in obsolescence of iOS software.
I have an old iPod Touch that can't be upgraded to the current version of iOS, and I'm sure it won't be long before Apple drops support for it in iTunes. A 128 GB music player with swappable 64 GB SD cards will hold my entire library at full CD resolution. The high-res feature is just the icing on the cake. |
Same here with an older iPod Touch. I already bought a Ponomusic player, on the second day of Kickstarter. Wish I would have done the first day because they offered a few hundred of them for $200.
One thing some may have missed is that the Pono player isn't a Swiss Army knife life the iPod touch. It's just for playing back high resolution music files, and the most important part is that the Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) chip in this unit is supposed to offer much much more detail and resolution than any other portable digital music player on the market.
That's always been the big draw back on playing MP3 files on my phone or iPod. I have a nice digital playback unit in my truck and if I use the DAC in that unit, instead of the built in one on the iPod, even some MP3 files sound 20 times better.
I just hope this player works close to what they are claiming, because I'm tired of buying portable music players. I think in just the past 4 years I've bought 5 different ones and haven't been happy with the way they work. If I get one that sounds better than an iPod, it's a pain in the a** to program or to even get to work.
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http://www.facebook.com/cowboytwang |
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John Macy
From:
Rockport TX/Denver CO
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Posted 20 Mar 2014 8:56 pm
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Ok, so I ask my 15 year old son who Neil Young is ( and I produce his bandmate Richie Furay's records) and get a blank stare...when I ask about audio quality and about what he is hearing on his headphones, even blanker....what is PONO? ?? Welcome to the future,,,,
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John Macy
Rockport, TX
Engineer/Producer/Steel Guitar |
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John Macy
From:
Rockport TX/Denver CO
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