PONO Feedback? Anyone have one yet?

Barry Stankiewicz (Member)
@Scott.6389 (Member) At last check, PONO was still testing the card. I provided my music transfer process where I would run into the issue. I also provided PONO with log files from when I ran into the issue.

I have heard that PONO was seeing some issue with their testing. However I am unsure if it is the exact same issue.

I have since been able to load up a new 200GB micro sad card, this being card #4, via a side load with no PMW or PONO in the mix. PONO sees that card and all 120GB of musc just fine.

Based on the above, I do suspect that there is an issue with the PMW transfer. Hopefully we will get an update soon. I would prefer to upload/transfer music via PMW.

Ian Kendrick (Moderator)
@Barry Stankiewicz (Member)@Scott.6389 (Member) et al...

Apologies for tardiness of my response.

The position from Pono is that the PonoPlayer supports cards up to 200 GBytes. Sandisk is the preferred supplier.

I will post the How To guide about file types later today, which will clear up a PMW issue, although the issue in question affects all cards, not just 200 GByte cards. I am the cause of the delays on this part of it, other matters have taken priority in the past 4 or 5 days, for which I apologise.

If we have ongoing problems with 200Byte cards, we need to know what method of loading has been used, this does seem like it might be pertinent. And OS/platform too. Barry has already provided me with this and that information is going into the process to establish any further clarification we can.

The issues is that we need to be able to replicate any problems people are having, so far that is proving to be elusive.

 

I thought about it. But I have other stuff that I need to do today and just feel like giving up, at the moment. I may contact them later today, maybe not.

I am not sure if my girlfriend would really like it anyway.

I am sure that she would think it is cool, but I cannot get her interested in the sound quality of music. (I don't bug her about it, I just play music that she likes in good quality and see if she responds positively. Not yet.) She is happy listening to the speaker on her cellphone.

I thought her own Pono might be the thing that causes things to click. She likes music. I think that some people just don't respond to sound quality like I do.

 

Try it with promo code 8361897 (which is the item number) - works on my end. You might still have to pay sales tax for delivery though.

Great deal, nice player!!!!

 

Thanks, DaverJ! That works.

Now Frys says "invalid credit card". I tried entering it three times. I've got to go now. I'll try it later.

 

Dang! My first Fryes order was a bad experience.

I ended up being able to submit my order. Got a page that said the order may or may not have gone through. Call 1-408-350-1484 to check. While I was waiting on the phone for 20 minutes I checked my email to see if I had an invoice. I had a Fraud Alert from my credit card company for the Fryes order. I acknowledged that I placed the order. I checked my pending charges on my credit card. No Fryes order, yet. When I got a customer service person, she checked and I had no order. I placing the online order again and it worked.

I hope my girlfriend likes the Pono player.

 

Good luck! Make sure to put some well mastered music she likes on it at least CD rate or higher of course.

 

Thanks, that's my plan!

She is a big R&B fan. I am going to load it up with well mastered CD rips in FLAC.

Now I am trying to figure out what headphones to get for it.

 

I've almost got this mastered. I have to make sure my finger stays pressed (press, not tap) until after it moves up or down the list a little bit. Even so, I occasionally still mess it up. Pretty much the only time I cuss these days.

 

Do you plan on using balanced mode or not with the headphones?

 

Mmm Pono...

 

I would like to do balanced. I really like (and need) balanced with my Sennheiser HD600/650 on my Pono. On the other hand, I got a taste of the Pono magic on my HiFiMan RE-400 while I waited for balanced cables to arrive. (I know she does not like the feeling of IEMs in her ears.)

I don't know what the balanced headphone options are at prices lower than the Sennheiser HD600 ($280 is what I paid for mine). Since I don't really know how much she will end up using this for headphone listening, I'm not really sure how much to spend. I might just loan her my Sennheiser HD600 and give those to her if she gets into them. They are only a few months old. (I prefer the HD650, for the most part.) I am pretty sure that she would like something smaller, though.

Or, if I could find something for $100 or so that sounded good enough I might do that. I doubt that I can go balanced at that price point.

She may end up just using it in the car for all I know.

Just some of my thoughts, here. I'm pretty much up in the air at this time.

 

Pono News
The New PonoMusic.com Community and Storefront
October 12, 2015


Our Community Is Who We Are

Quite a few years ago, when I knew for sure that we had to do all we could to give the music back to the world, I realized we would need the help and support of others. I thought that would be the usual kind of organization and started down that path.

It didn’t work out that way. The KickStarter campaign really surprised me with the speed and amount of support we got. Then, without any prompting or organizing from the center, the community started to form around it. This was such a great feeling, to realize that other people got it too and we could create something together. Just maybe there was a movement here that resonated with what I and my close musical friends felt and still feel. Since then our community has grown and is sharing knowledge, experience and passion for so many subjects. And all with music - and the love of it - right at the center. Like everyone here, I learn with the community, and now we want to help things along the path it is creating for itself. We have invested a lot in our new community platform that we are announcing today. Our aim is to help us all share what we love about music and everything associated with it. We are opening up spaces to allow us all to explore how music works, how it affects us and how it is a big part of what it means to be human. We have places to explore music provenance, the worlds of audio and computing and much more.

Radio Pono will have interviews with key people from in and around Pono. It will be a place where you can hear people explaining what music means to them and why; how they feel about the world and why they are part of our community, part of us, and what we are trying to achieve. That will start with me, I want to share my thoughts with everyone, so you can hear things in my own words, in my own voice. Radio Pono is not a traditional radio station, it will not be broadcasting music as such – check out the details under Radio Pono in the new community.

This is our community, it is for all of us. I really believe in the power of what we can do together. As proof of this, our PonoPlayer beat all comers to win the first Rocky Mountain Audio award for best mobile digital player. It seemed right that Charlie Hansen was at the show, so close to his home town. We always knew our player was special – its creation was a team effort with the best people working to deliver the best player because they believe in what Pono is about, and funded by a community that share a vision.

Pono is community, is about doing things right and is giving the music back to the world. The unique relationships we have forged with the record companies allow us to have the best hi res music store in the world, backed by our unique PonoPromise. With our new community platform this all takes a step forward.

Thank you to everyone – our core Pono team, our collaborating organizations and individuals, and everyone in our community.

We know you are Pono customers, but it feels like more than that, we are all part of a global movement focused on music and all that it means. I really look forward to meeting you in our community and building our movement. Together.

-Neil

* * *

In With The New
Improving our Community platform for you has been a high priority for PonoMusic and we’ve been working on this over the last few months. This has been a collaborative process and we have sought and listened to feedback from the community, our moderators and Neil himself. We have directly interviewed community members to get their feedback and have incorporated a brighter, cleaner user interface Neil helped design.

We have migrated the content from the existing community and you should be able to find most of your comments and threads. A new and powerful search feature will help you find specific information. We have produced a sitemap so that you can navigate the Community quickly. Once you start to explore the new structure, it should be intuitive and easy to use. To continue gathering your feedback we have dedicated aspecific place for you to provide feedback and suggestions.

TOP LEVEL NAVIGATION
The top level navigation is now more dynamic and appears consistent across both the store and the community. Mouseover the categories to surface the dropdown sub-menus.


FEATURED TOPICS
There is a new landing page when you visit the community. This is the Featured page. This page was engineered to help new members easily engage in the discussions and to help seasoned members easily find their old favorites.

One of our most popular threads is “What are you listening to right now?”. That has been renamed “Now Playing” and lives on the top of the featured page.


Another community favorite was the group “The Kitchen Floor”. Which now appropriately appears on the bottom of the Featured page.


TOPICS, NOT GROUPS
With the new community comes some changes. We have renamed the term “Groups” and categorized them into a hierarchy of “Topics” and “Sub-Topics”. In addition, we’ve made it easier to move in between Topics and Sub-Topics.

The Topics page contains twelve Topics tiles. Click on a Topic tile to surface the Sub-Topics menu. Clicking on a Sub-Topic navigates to that page.

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Now any video link you post will embed the video in the post, which means you never leave the discussion.


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The search function within the community now has a search-ahead function. Begin typing your search request and the results will begin to surface as you type. Click on any of the results to navigate to that discussion.



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Heh... your Frys experience echos mine. I initially also got that fraud alert and had to replace the order.

It was pretty frustrating, but in the end the Pono and the discount was worth the hassle. Hope you and/or your girlfriend is enjoying it.

 

I'm deciding how to set my system up for digital audio. I currently use my PS3 as a CD player and I'm happy with that.

My problem is High Res digital, which mainly consists of my 24/96 needle drops (I intend to eventually move up to 24/192) , however, I'd like to start buying well mastered Hi Res Digital.

At the moment I have my PC, running JRiver 19, connected by hard wire (ethernet) to my PS3 (in another room) and then a toslink cable runs from my PS3 to my Receiver. My Receiver only has Toslink or Coaxial digital inputs.

Unfortunately the PS3 downconverts the incoming signal from my PC to 16 bit. That's fine for my 16/44 flacs, but useless for 24 bit Hi Res files. Also, PS3 doesn't do gapless playback, which is a huge pain.

I also have an Ipod Classic which I use in my car (via USB input), for that I convert 16/44 Flacs to 16/44 Alac & my hi res files to 24/48 Alac. I'm content with that in my car as it sounds really good, however listening to the Ipod via headphones is nowhere near an audiophile experience to say the least.

So I'm thinking should I get a DAC for my home system and raise the finances? Or should I sell my Ipod Classic (to raise some of the funds) and get a Pono and kill two birds with one stone (home system & car)? I know the Pono will blow away my Ipod in the car, despite the fact that the Ipod is sufficient for car audio via USB. I know that the Ipod will not compare to the Pono for Headphone listening. My question is how will the Pono perform on my main rig in comparison to a PC - DAC set up? Which DACs and at what price range would better the performance of a Pono in my main rig? Given that I cannot spend more on a DAC than I would on the Pono. Or will the Pono outperform any DAC in a similar price range?

A few other questions:

Can you charge the Pono via USB? I assume it does gapless playback? In the future could it be upgraded by software updates to also be a DAC?

Appreciate your thoughts.

 

Hey Marcob... I can't answer all your questions because I don't really know much about DACs and a good PC to DAC setup. But I also wanted to do digital audio on my music setup to compliment the turntable, and the Pono has worked out well for me because it's simple to use on the stereo, portable if I want it, and it sounds good.

I can answer that yes, it charges via USB and does do gapless.

 

I am speculating here.

I don't know if that is possible or not. But if it is, I don't think that Ayre would want the Pono functioning as a DAC and competing with their other (more expensive) DACs.

I would love to be wrong about this.

 

Not everybody will want a DAC with such limited connectivity. Not when they have more sources needing hooking up to systems. Different market, different needs.

 

True.

Just speaking for myself, I would be very happy if I could use it simply as a USB DAC from my laptop to RCA inputs on my preamp.

But I don't see that capability happening.

 

That is an interesting question and it may be tough to fully answer not knowing how much you still want to use your PC, streaming needs, any other sources down the road. The short answer is it can be a real nice-kill-two-birds stone. In an office setup I now listen via Pono rca into the NAD D 3020 DAC/Amp instead of using computer usb into the NAD and it has been an improvement. I use Pono for portable headphones instead of an iphone into a portable dac/amp and it has also been an improvement. One thing you mentioned was your car takes usb in; will you be able to use line in, and I suppose you will not have an interface with your car; the Pono is tricky although not impossible to navigate, but I sure would not want to do that in a moving car as it flummoxes me enough sitting at home. So the longer answer is there are some DACs in that price range that certainly would be an improvement from your current set up and on some levels may take serious effort to compare and differentiate with Pono if one had a less revealing rig; so I think how you want to use it may be more important. I can’t help with direct DAC experience but people rave about the Schiit Bitfrost for example at the Pono price, so options are out there.

 

I spent a good chunk of this weekend in PonoWorld 2.0 fixing tags, album art, etc.. I'm learning to love it... AND hate it.

I like most everything it does and the way it does it, but as mentioned - it's so freaking slow transferring to the Pono. I believe the more files that's on the Pono, the slower it goes. I'm not sure why it has to take 20 minutes to transfer one hi-rez album...?

Anyone know, and is the paid version of JRiver any better?

 

I'm somewhat perplexed also. I keep my Pono empty except for one small playlist (about 15 songs) that I update and transfer to it periodically. I know I've gotten transfer speeds around 4.8MB/s but recently closer to 1MB/s. Don't know if something changed with the later version or what, but that transfer speed is the main reason I don't load more on it.

 

Transfer speed is slow. But I haven't had it get down to 1MB/s yet.
One thing I've done is exclude the PonoPlayer's drive letters from AV scans.

I'm using Windows Defender.
Open Windows Defender
Go to Settings tab
Go to "Excluded files and locations"
Add the drive letters that the PonoPlayer connects as to the list of excluded locations

That will stop Windows Defender from trying to scan files on the PonoPlayer, which could cause slower transfers.

Another option to try (I haven't done this yet, and not sure if I will) is to add PonoMusic World 20.exe to the list of excluded processes. There are some obvious risks in doing that. But that will stop Windows Defender from scanning any read and writes that PonoMusic World does as it writes to the PonoPlayer.

 

FWIW: transfer speeds are slow on both PC and Mac.

Another issue I'm having is album art on certain albums not showing on the Pono. The albums have art in the PonoWorld library, and the art shows on the individual songs when looking at the Pono "drives" (internal and SD) within PonoWorld, but as soon as I eject the Pono and look at the Pono screen - certain albums show no artwork.

Also, I have one album that shows on the Pono as "Unknown Artist", yet I have both the tags for Artist and Album Artist as correct in PonoWorld.

Any ideas what is happening here?

 

For me it's almost impossible to copy files to the Pono-harddrive, it takes ages and sometimes drop outs.

No problem with external sd-cards.

Sometimes it also takes 10-20min. to scan my library after new music was added (although I eject the player with the Pono software).

The sound is excellent, but the rest is a disaster.

I'm afraid the future of Pono will be problematic.