Unsuspecting Teens Try Pono Music Player

What caught my attention was the headsets they pulled off their ears as they started talking, instead of ear buds they pulled OUT of their ears...

Listen through quality headsets instead of cheap-ish ear buds, and you're going to hear things you didn't hear before--even on MP3.

JcS

 

It certainly beats having to get up like a yoyo every 20 minutes. I have ordered one. Thanks Neil.

 

I haven't used a portable music player since my Walkman in the 1980's! But, my question is this - it seems like the majority of people who use iPods use them for the shuffle feature. Are there many folks who actually play an album through on them?

 

I have never ever used the shuffle feature on my iPod. I only have full albums synced to the iPod. When I listen to the iPod it is full albums only. Never specific tracks. The only times I create playlists is when I'm preparing for a trip and want to cue up a selection of albums to have played. I have never created a playlist of just tracks.

I'm also not normal.

An iPod, or portable player, or even computer as source, doesn't force you to abandon the album and start listening to tracks on shuffle.

 

I wasn't implying that - I just know from my experience with people who have/use them, they don't seem to do that. I understand that point of Pono is the sound quality is apparently drastically better, but with varying mastering levels, how that would equate to listening on "shuffle".

 

ReplayGain can be used to address the problem of tracks on shuffle all having different loudness levels. Enabling ReplayGain adjustment will equalize the volume levels of all tracks. So one track on shuffle isn't super quiet and the next one super loud.

I don't know if the Pono player will have ReplayGain support. I assume it will. It's a normal standard feature for computer playback and portable playback. I just haven't seen any confirmation that Pono has ReplayGain support.

 

Yesterday I took my 13 year old daughter to Hot Topic in our local mall. It caters to the teen & twenties crowd. They had two cartons of vinyl records for sale which I found amusing. Yes, I suppose vinyl is now cool among the young hipster crowd.

Two young men in their twenties were browsing the records & i struck up a conversation with them. I asked them why they were buying vinyl. It was a gift for a friend who is "really into music" and they wanted to get her "something classic". I'm not sure, in hindsight, if "classic" referred to the medium or the choice of music. "But why vinyl" I asked. He made a "weighing" gesture with his hands and said that vinyl is "more real". Again, I'm not sure if he was referring to the sound or the physical medium.

Interesting.

 

The only reason I would buy this, is for the 128gb storage on the road.
I have no interest in hi- res music, because I've heard some of them and its bs marketing IMO.
Does it play FLAC, M4A etc?

 

"Unsuspecting"? "Teens"?

 

Exactly. I watched the headphones as well -- it's half of the equation here. The best hardware in the world is only going to sound so good on legacy iPod earbuds or cheap Coby headphones.

Admittedly I am interesting in this as I would like to eventually upgrade my own DAP's - maybe not this year, but eventually. So if the Pono device itself gets excellent reviews, I'll have to factor that in. I'm not sure I like the shape of it though.

 

are these teens the way the 90210 cast were teens

 

Yes

 

I've been using various iPods and iPhones since 2006, and I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've used shuffle.

 

I wouldn't doubt people on a forum like this actually listen to "albums".

My point is more in regards to the average buyer/listener.

 

Were those "better than vinyl" comments supposed to make the final cut of the video ?
Fremer's emailing Neil as we type ........

 

The average listener is most likely listening to playlists that only contain tracks that they like and making use of the shuffle feature so their playlists aren't always playing in the same order.

The average listener is also happy with the audio quality of MP3 files ripped and transcoded from YouTube videos...

 

They've been selling vinyl long before it was the "hip" thing to do. I've been buying records from them for about 10 years by this point. It's not the most conducive record buying experience but there was a time when it was the only way I could get many new records.

 

I could count on one finger the number of times I've intentionally used shuffle

 

Exactly, so - again - I don't understand how this could be considered anything but a niche machine.

And, if the albums are $14 - $24 according to the Pono site, I'd imagine single tracks (if they're available) would be in the $2-$3 range or higher, right?

 

It's really helpful when you search the internet at work for something about the Pono and Google delivers you search results for Porno. Thanks, Neil. Hopefully no one was monitoring me.

 

Seriously. These people are teens only if you subscribe to the metric you always hear these days that "40 is the new 30." Or in the cases of the people in this video, 30+ is the new 16.

 

How does a person play music on a player and then only afterwards realize it was a touch screen he was using?

Also, why were all these teens gathered at this location and why did they all have headphones (I saw one person with earbuds).

 

But worse, why was he so excited about a touchscreen? It's 2014.

 

Not only that, they're descriptions of the music were less than articulate.

"Whoa, it sounds ****ing good."
"It's like they're here in the room with you."

I guess in terms of how they speak and what they say, they're right on the money with today's teens

(GET OFF MY LAWN! )

 

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There was nothing in that video to make one think of a Crosley anything.