Neil Young readies Pono music service for expansion Part 4

Neil admitted in his recent biography Special Deluxe that his car had his best audio equipment purposely for these artist trials.

 

How much high-res material does Omnifone actually have? That number or percentage will give you the baseline for how much high-res to expect in the PonoMusic store. The store is still in beta and is busy ingesting what Omnifone has. Once that is done we'll get a better idea of what to expect from the Pono store. Once the Omnifone stuff is ingested they'll be looking to indies for music too. A lot of modern recordings are also only done in 44.1 or 48. No high-res versions available. Can't magically make high-res out of what is not there. If it was recorded and mixed at 48 kHz there's never going to be a high-res version.

 

Well exactly the reason that CD rate downloads are now being considered as OK ... just for the moment you understand. This was always an issue that no one wanted to face head on. I have heard estimates of 2-3% of Omnifone's catalog was hirez but that is just hearsay IMO. The only way you could do this was with remasters off analog recordings or new recordings but that takes time and money. It isn't Neil's fault that most digital recordings aren't high rez although he hyped Pono a bit too much as some magic wand in that regard. What I fear is that many digital recordings will simply be upsampled and remixed as Ludwig did with Beck's album to produce a hirez version out of thin air.

 

When does the Pono Store Beta end?

 

Th recent Tom Petty album was a 48 Khz master. His people are such audio geeks and clearly this wasn't a problem for them. I think that also Le Noise is a 48 Khz mix and I don't think that Lanois is the last producer.

 

The following was posted by Neil Young himself in the so called forum section on the Ponomusic website:
Neil Young (PonoMusic)
My records are all on PONO in 44.1 16. That is not what i expected. I have supplied WB records with many many of my LPs in 192 24 or 176 24. I have no idea why the record company has not released these to you PONO music lovers who deserve the best. We keep asking for them to be released. I will keep you posted when i discover what the issue is at Warner Brothers corporate in NYC. Warner Brothers has a very large catalog of high resolution music which has not yet been released to you. We are working on that and will not rest until your PONO MASTER CLASS music is available to you. Thank you for your continued patience.

December 7, 2014 at 7:17 AM ·

 

Nothing official has been stated about this yet.

 

In this context, his quote is a bit confusing. His new ORS releases on Pono seemed to fix the problem. Anyway, it's not up to an artist label choosing the distribution strategy. Warner could choose to license the Neil work to a completely different seller than Pono.This is right. Furthermore as founder Neil has a personal interest in Pono and could be in conflict of interests with Warner itself.

 

Neil is in his business now with Pono. He should know that it's incorrect (probably also legally) bad mouthing his current label, expecially for different distribution strategies.

 

I understand it to be next month. At least, that's what I read somewhere. Neil expects there to be at least 2.5 million tracks available at the time it goes live. I monitor the site every day. Now, if I had a Pono player already, i'd have access to all that great lossless music!

 

I notice that some highly conspicuous gaps in some artists' catalogs on Pono. Some huge hit albums are missing. Perhaps Pono is persuading them to go back and remaster them for the music site, as their CD versions sound like doggie poo, and some haven't been given a proper mastering since the 80s.

 

Well, he still has to run a business. It's still a smart move to sell redbook because that's what gets most customers in the door, and what will sell the most. The hi-rez options are the bonus. One of Mr. Young's goals are to get people back away from data-compressed file types like mp3 and AAC. And, I don't care what anybody says: 256 AAC, and the "Mastered for iTunes" AAC, just isn't good enough. Period. Many people can hear the difference between those and CD. And, iTunes is a terrible app anyway.

 

My theory is that someone in charge of doing transfers probably thought that reducing those masters to redbook was what was wanted, and didn't know they were to be released as hi-rez. In other words, there was a communication breakdown. That's what happens with huge conglomerates.

 

The hope is for sometime next month the actuality could be later. Time will tell of course. A store timeline update would be nice now that most of the issues of the player have been dealt with.

 

I hope the files for the Pono are actually mastered well. I got hold of the HD Tracks Black Sabbath box and they don't sound that much better than my regular CDs. The recent vinyl releases of the first few albums have a power and a bottom end that the digital files are lacking.

 

Unless it is 24/44.1 or 24/48 material. 24-bit resolution material certainly is high res. 88.2, 96, 176.4, and 196 kHz sample rate is icing on the cake.

 

iTunes is good on iPhones and iPads, and the iTunes Music Store part of iTunes on PC's and Macs is very good, but the rest of iTunes on Mac and PC is pretty poor.

 

From a recent Pono meetup:


Da Qi (Member)
Looks like @Phil Baker (PonoMusic) is going to join us. He is one of the original architects of the Pono so this is an excellent to ask him some of those burning questions about the Pono. Come on out as it would be great to get a bit turn out for this.

Da Qi (Member)
Sitting here with @Dana Gibson (Member) talking Pono. Just had a great lunch and a great chat with @Phil Baker (PonoMusic). Lots of news to come when we get a chance to post. In the meantime we have proof.
IMG_1431
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Da Qi (Member)
Okay, so here is a summary of the meeting in no particular order except how my brain recalls the conversation...

Only three of us turned out which was both good and bad. Good because @Dana Gibson (Member) and I had a great informal chat with @Phil Baker (PonoMusic) over lunch and were able to ask him as many questions as we wanted. Too bad because the rest of you missed the opportunity. I am going to chalk it up to being a Saturday before Christmas and try again in a month or two.

So here are some of the bits from the conversation.

-Confirmed by @Phil Baker (PonoMusic) The last of ~15,000 Kickstarter Ponos will leave the factory in China this Monday. The last couple were waiting for the music files.
-Every single player is burned in for about 2 hours, tested with an SD card with a variety of tones on it and an audio analyzer and listened to by a human being before leaving the factory.
-Phil was there on 30/OCT and has pictures of him with the first player out the door that went to France.
-They have had various manufacturing challenges that required bits and pieces of rework that has cause delays but they are all ready to go now. They have lots of spares so even the LE ones can be fixed and they will re-laser etch them if needed.
-Demo players and a few retail versions will start showing up at various retail outlets soon. These will be yellow players. Main channel for now will be to order online. According to Phil there are strong numbers of orders for the Q1/2015 delivery. Frye's will have them and other stores that Phil didn't mention.
-They had some problems with the black players but that has been worked out and they are going to be available to purchase as well.
-They did a lot of testing with the soft touch pain and are using a product from Germany. Based on their comparisons it is as good as anything else out there. They tested different products with different paints on them including having some staffers walk around with a case in their pocket for a month.
-They are listening and are aware of the problems out there. Neil is also actively listening as well and as Phil put it when something bothers Neil it gets high priority. As Phil put it this is the most important product he has launched and said that Neil considers this to be his most important work to date. The key people here are passionate about this and want to get it right.
-The Pono headphones will be some sort of balanced heaphone at a consumer sort of price level. They are apparently talking to Cardis.
The Pono player has a lot of discrete components in it including two separate amps for the left and right channel. Apparently, there started with some off the shelf amps which Charlie Hansen rejected. He then designed something that some whiz-layout person had to figure out how to fit all on one board.

I am going to complete this post and then post a comment to continue as this is getting long.

Da Qi (Member)
Part two of the summary from the meeting with Phil.

-Neil is very serious about this and they really want to develop the community and have artist participation in the store/community. They have an audio engineer (sorry forgot his name but some big name) who's job it is to dig up high resolution content. Phil confirmed that they do intend to remaster stuff and work directly with artists to develop more high resolution material.
-Gapless is coming although as Phil put it if there are gaps between tracks on an album they will still be there. Neil is adamant about keeping the music pure as the artist intended it.
-Phil chuckled a bit about the discussion of the blue-light and how there is a group of people trying to figure it out. He didn't say much except that it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. He did take some notes at this point in the conversation.
-They have only had 8 players returned at this point which considering they have 13,000 out there is very good. Apparently Apple has a 10% return rate on their iPhones. They have a guy in China at the factory that is in charge of QC and they want to make sure the players are top quality.
-Neil designed the bamboo boxes himself. Originally it was going to be a nice cardboard box but Neil insisted he didn't want to do the same thing as everyone else. The retail players will also have a bamboo box but a smaller one. Of course, a cardboard alternative will be available for countries where importing bamboo is a problem.
-Phil was very interested in the feedback we provided to him and took notes. Sounds like the team is listening and working on things as best they can. He confirmed that the deliveries with UPS have been challenging from their end as well.
-I asked about integration with existing JRMC and Phil basically said it is not a priority right now and also that is JRiver's product.
-They are working very hard on the issue of PMW recognizing players and the SD cards. Apparently they have a person on this problem full-time. It seems to be mostly related to driver issues on the computer side but they are working hard to figure it out as soon as possible.
-The PMW update on Friday to 20.0.44 was about changing some hard coded links in PMW to connect to the store which is why they sent it out the way they did because the store will not work with old versions.
-They are trying to open up the communication with the community and I got the sense from Phil that they are listening to us. They have been very busy so had dropped the ball a bit on communication. I emphasized to Phil that the last couple updates were good and that more transparency will help.

That is about all my brain can remember. I am sure @Dana Gibson(Member) will add to this accordingly with his thoughts.

Oh, and we got Pono t-shirts too!

I will try and do another one of these meetups in the new year and hope more people show up.

Dana Gibson (Member)
Reading the comments from Da Qi and the post under this one at the momemt....to change the battery we will send the Pono Player to a service address and for a reasonable amount (the original amount we suggested Phil said would be too much).
I just got home to San Diego so I'll post more when I get settled down a bit. Phil is a REALLY nice guy and I'm sure he'll join us again for another meetup. It turns out he lives a few miles from me.

Phil Baker (PonoMusic)
It was great to meet with Lorne and Dana. They each did a great job conveying issues and ideas that were on their mind, as well as many things on your mind. We all wish we could act on everything more quickly, but we are still a small company trying to do more in less time than many big companies can do in a much longer time. We wouldn't be here without all of you, and it's something we think of every day.

 

Cool.

I haven't bought a Pono but first things first--I NEED a Pono tee shirt!

 

Interesting.

 

I know of a lot of 48kHz/24 bit material being recorded every single day -- I did it for five years myself -- and I think that plus lossless files would make a huge difference compared to, say, MP3 compressed files. I'm still not convinced going to 96kHz or 192kHz makes a difference, simply because I don't think the mic processor change can get that high most of the time with lots of material. There are mics that can get to 50kHz -- the Sennheiser MKH800 is one of them -- but I don't think these are routinely used in an average mass-market rock session, particularly something done more than 10-15 years ago.

I think a lot of these improvements are purely theoretical and don't actually make a hill of beans difference. Don't get me wrong: I've bought and paid for a couple of hundred SACD and DVD-A releases (and even some Blu-ray Audio releases), but I don't pretend there's a huge difference in sound quality. I absolutely think a better A/D converter can make a sonic difference and I also believe there's a difference between compressed files and lossless, but I think the mastering differences make direct comparisons nearly impossible.

 

I'd like to see their evidence on this. A link or interview would be great.

 

While in Beta, Pono has an excellent (I'd say great) selection of artists and relative catalogues. When in the normal mode, at some point Pono must meet the Antitrust regulations and the music labels' ll open their catalogue to his competitors. For example, you can't find Neil Young HD catalogue elsewhere. There you'll see the real force of Pono in the growing HD market.

 

Good luck with that. So would a lot of other people I bet. Question why they even mentioned it. Why would Pono know the answer themselves about Apple's business.?

 

You could of gotten one if you pledged for it on Kickstarter in time. There have also been different ones made for different Pono functions as well. Nothing yet for sale in the store though.