14 out of 15 listeners can't tell the difference between PONO & iTunes Store downloads on an iPhone

While the Pono player isn't for me, I appreciate what he is doing. He isn't going for something slick, cool and portable that appeals to the masses. This is specifically for those who want better results out of their music.

 

It's more likely that Neil is comfortable and familiar with high bitrate recording in the studio, where due to the nature of multi-track recording, the additional headroom comes in handy. But once to the consumer, 16/44.1 is perfectly fine.

 

Some of us like a little headroom at home or on the go, too!

 

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For you.

 

What it boils down to

 

Agreed that I have too much invested in vinyl and CD to rebuy hundreds of albums again in a new format.

 

Yes. It's just like level matching speakers. You use an SPL meter.

To use an SPL meter with headphones you'll need to create a baffle that fits over the ear cup and has a hole in the center for the SPL meter to poke its microphone through. A piece of cardboard works. But you can get more fancy. The important part is to be able to seal the headphone as if it is being worn. The more professional way to measure a headphone would be to use an artificial head setup similar to this: http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/headphone-measurment-proceedures-introduction-and-equipment

 

That thing is great!

 

And apparently about 95% of the rest of us.

 

Well, there is no reason to re-buy anything. Just buy new (to you) stuff.

 

By this point my tastes are pretty well established.

 

Clearly, any kind of ear buds are a waste of time with PONO.

I'm gonna get a pair of these (left channel only, shown).

They're gonna be a bitch to get down into the subway, but no hurdle is too high for improved on-the-go listening!

 

A product that has minimal appeal outside the audiophile market will always be a difficult sell. The production is slow, low volume and availability is limited - this cannot be good for sales.
Regardless of quality, I will be amazed if it is still going 2 years from now.
I just don't think there is a large enough market for it.

 

You make a valid point. 14 out of 15 randomly selected Americans would probably pick Boone's Farm in a wine taste test.

My main resistance to Pono is the investment of time it would take to re-up a big chunk of my music collection as FLAC or some other lossless format. My iPod is filled with 320-bit mp3's and I have to say, I don't believe I could tell the difference between WAV/FLAC and those mp3's under most conditions... maybe any and all conditions. Re-buying hi-rez files is a deal-breaker for me; that's not going to happen. I know more and more stuff is being released in hi-rez formats, but very little of it is to my taste.

Honestly, if I realized how much time and effort I was going to have to put into iPod loading and maintenance for me and my wife, I doubt I would have embarked on it in the first place. It's a lot of work.

 

I would not be suprised if the player is no longer in production, but there are high res download sites that have been going for more than a few years.

Unless Apple enters the market the PONO store could still be around for a while.

 

Certainly may well be the case although I think the player and the store are meant to exist together.
They must have an idea of the minimum number of players that they need to sell to consider the program a success.
I hope it is successful and lasts a while.

 

It would be nice to get some objective data about Pono performance: noise floor, thd, imd, jitter performance, output power...this kind of data is usually more useful than spacious, open and all that audiophile jargon that comes assorted to almost every boutique dap.

Here's some objective data for the iPhone:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6-plus.htm

http://headphoniaks.com/blog/calidad-sonido-smartphones-iphone-6-htc-one-m8-fiio-x1/

Pretty darn impressive.

I have listened to some boutique daps (iBasso DX100, Fiio X3) and my iPhone 6 with a pair of Westone UM3x sounds almost as good and UI and battery life mops the floor with that of the dedicated players. Hope that Pono fares better in those aspects.

But then again i think that hd audio is useful for processing purposes. For listening red book cd is as good as the mix and the mastering (which is the key of it all).

Just my 0'02

 

And the bashing continues now at Stereogum ...

I posted my friendly opinion with my objective details about HRA and Pono at Stereogum and Pitchfork and was immediately blocked + all my posts of the last years were deleted. Strange, isn't it ...

Maybe Jay-Z or Dr. Dre has to buy Pono to get postive response from the Crosley hipsters?

 

Some feedback from the author of the article [Linked in the first post of this thread]

 

Here's a video of David Pogue demonstrating the test.

This is hilarious. Scroll to the end of the video where he puts on the headphones and takes the test himself.
He puts the headphones on BACKWARDS.
BACKWARDS

I really don't think he has any experience at all with headphones and audio.
And he's trying to tell us what is good audio?

What a fool. He should be embarrassed for posting that. Yet at the end he is smugly proud.

 

So people can't hear a difference but still prefer the iPhone? Why, if they can't hear a difference? I don't understand.

And has it been confirmed that both files came from the exact same mastering? If not, the test tells you nothing, except that louder sounds better to most.

 

Here's the thing. For those of you satisfied with CD, I am happy for you. Most audiophiles are always looking for that thing that makes something sound just a little bit better, even if it only makes it 1% better. For many it's better cables, for others it's going from speakers that cost $2000/pair to ones that cost $5000/pair and for even some others it is going from CD or (IMO) vinyl to hi res digital (I believe that vinyl in many ways is better than CDs BTW). Every little thing that helps with the sound quality is something audiophiles want. If that isn't what you do than you aren't an audiophile and that's fine. I consider myself an audiophile so every little jump in the sound quality is very important to me and although I still am not convinced about wires yet (maybe my system isn't revealing enough) I am convinced of the benefits of hi res no matter how small of an improvement they make.

 

You don't have to if you are happy/satisfied with the sound of them. If you aren't that is why you upgrade. The other thing you can do is if you feel records sound better than CD you can always needldrop your records into hi res so you have them where ever you go. That is what I do. This is where something like the Pono can be beneficial to you.

 

You can certainly speak for yourself but nobody can tell me what I can or cannot hear or what is important to me.

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

H. L. Mencken