Is Pono no more?

Yes. There is a link at the Pono forum. I will see if I can find it. If you by chance use Jriver, it will also update from that application.

Edit: I think this downloadage is still good.

PonoMusic | Store

Word of warning. If you do happen to buy a Pono, I would not recommend using the Pono Music Vault for anything other than a firmware update. PMV was an attempt by Pono to offer a homegrown music management program when their business relationship with Jriver soured.

I found it to be a big bag of hurt. I was happy with a Jriver, so although I kicked the tires with PMV, I never tried to use it to manage my music library. Obviously, Pono is no longer a going concern, so once you update a new player, you won’t ever have another update to contend with.

I bought a NOS Pono last year from an eBay seller, updated the software, and put it back in the box for a spare.

 

Thanks a lot. I have been using J River for about 3 years now so you've been a great help.

edit,
That link is showing an error. Do I need to sign in and create an account first?

 

Store is still under construction. Hopefully it opens back up soon...

 

If you are using JRiver, then you should not have to bother with PMV. I will try to find out if PMV can still be downloaded. I may have a copy of the installer, but I am a Mac guy so if you are a Windows user, I am afraid I won't have a version that you could use.

Edit: The official download appears to be gone, but I did find a link that a user posted to the update file. I asked if he was OK with it being shared outside of the Pono forum. When I hear back, I will advise.

 

I am not seeing an emoticon, so I assume your comment is earnest.

Pono ain't coming back. It is dead. Those that used it do miss it, as it had decent prices, but it has been a dead dodo for a couple years now.

 

I should have put an emoji in there, but I do remember that they said the shop would come back... I remain hopeful...

 

I am afraid that train has sailed. ;-)

Neil has said that he has a streaming service that he has been working on, but I don’t have a clue where that sits. I don’t recall that if he has said if it would allow downloads, but I don’t think it did.

As many know, he did launch his archive which is based on the same back end that his streaming service was going to use, in that it would stream at whatever quality your connection would support.

 

The third post in this thread has instructions and a link to the actual update file.

Pono Player Firmware Update

 

Enjoyed my Pono again over the weekend, hearing sounds in my balanced headphones for first time with music I've had for 10-15 years. Used ALAC files, not even high res.

Ayre Rocks!!!

 

It depends on what the information is doing. Certainly some subsonic bass could be shown to harm the experience. On the other hand, I'm not sure anything much beyond 22kHz could be heard, experienced or even be reproduced by most speakers. It might sound like white noise to a dog, but I'm unconvinced too much information on the high-end of the frequencies beyond human hearing would have any effect at all on the presentation of music.

 

By the way, whatever theoretical bonuses or detrimental effects hi-rez music files have on listening, the Pono was a nice player no matter the resolution. It had a good DAC, a thoughtfully designed output stage and a decent headphone amp. It's basic failure was trying to compete in a well-capitalized hardware market where software downloads are not a great source of revenue growth. The Pono hardware itself was better than fine.

 

On that we are agreed. I think the idea of a dedicated good-quality music player is a great one.

 

I fried my iRiver, accidentally plugged a 10v adaptor into it that I only had lying there because my little logitech Pure-Fi Dream died and I'd plugged in my old logitech express thing, the sound of which made me immediately rush out and buy some bookshelf speakers. I plugged them in and unplugged the logitech speaker, and hours after enjoying the hell out of some cassette remasters on the iRiver H340 I went to charge it and plugged in the stupid logitech adaptor. Very sad I loved that device, I've been rediscovering digital audio over the last couple of months, to me "good sound" just meant listening to my record player through my valve pre-amp, if I couldn't be bothered with that I just listened through the computer and accepted that I'd given up on my former love of quality sound, it was only accidentally that I realised digital sound could even sound good when I picked up an old Ipod more for a laugh than anything else.

I now only listen to a few things through that iPod, New Riders of the Purple Sage albums sound great through it, early Meat Puppets albums, Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers, all sound great, but heaps of stuff does not sound good, I'm fascinated by why that is now.

Okay, couple of questions if anyone cares to answer.

I'd love to know where you got that information about the chip being used in Meizu players, I will probably pick up another iRiver, but I'm interested to hear the same DAC in other players and see if it sounds the same, and that's my other question, I know that it's not all about the DAC, but has anyone tried the ESS Sabre outside of the Pono? Does it sound about the same?

Also, I'm finding that I intensely dislike the sound of HD Remastered albums through the Pono, they sound very very impressive and all, but there's something imminently dislikeable about the sound to me, anyone else get that? I'm almost certain I'm going to end up using my Pono purely for vinyl rips, playing vinyl rips to me just sounds exactly like my record player.

 

Pretty sure it was here:

PhilipsUDA1380 < Main < Wiki

 

I found the Dynamic Range on the PONO 'remastered' stuff was nothing to write home about..It was nice how the stupid Blue Light would light up for these files though..

PONO was a nice sounding DAC, had some sort of 'mojo' about it, maybe the resistors or capacitors inside it?? Anyway now I am just a DAP junkie and just buying all these new fandangled Chinese warez.. I got the Echobox recently..

 

I can dig that, I am thinking of getting a couple more myself.

 

Pono was never about fighting the Dynamic Range War. That's a whole different fight. There is nothing Neil or Pono could ever do about the trend of DR compression. That's a fight that individual music listening lovers will have to take up individually with each individual artist who decides to release an album with squashed Dynamic Range. Neil can't fight that fight for us. Neil, and other artists, can lead by example in releasing albums with good DR and demonstrating that the public will still buy those albums and like what they are hearing. Other than that sort of leading by example, there is nothing that Neil or Pono could do about albums being released with brickwalled DR.

If your idea about Pono was for Pono to create a world where higher DR wins and everything gets remastered with higher DR, then no wonder you were disappointing with Pono's vision. That just demonstrates that you never understood Neil's vision in the first place.

 

Why then does the PonoMusic FAQ, still readily available online, declare that "we can all hear and feel what the artists created, the way they heard and felt it" when the artist and record label make "the best possible resolution and mastering possible" (italics mine)? It goes on to say that the PonoMusic store will "go to the source to find the best and bring it to you."

The FAQ doesn't say a lot about what qualifies as "the best", other than to state that in comparison MP3 files lack "the sense of realism, and dynamics, and detail" of better masters.

But that's enough for me to have believed, at the outset, that curation of masters for superior dynamics (among other things) was very much part of the vision.

Maybe Neil didn't write the FAQ?

 

Omnifone, not 7digital, which unlike 7digital did not have its own retail presence.

My impression is that 7digital was expected to be the "new content partner", the enabling of which PonoMusic is still "in the midst of doing" according to its front page. Will that ever get updated before the site finally goes dark? Only time will tell.

 

Pono did not remaster anything. They had some files that were Pono exclusive, such as Neil's albums, but most everything else was the same stuff that all the other venders got, with the exception of the files being edited to light the blue light. There was speculation early on that Pono was going to be the launch customer for MQA, but when that failed to occur, they were left with trying to sell the same files as everyone else.

The whole Pono Provenance thing was almost complete BS, as there was zero differentiation between what Pono was selling from their music store and what all the other vendors were selling. If the label provided a crap master, then that is what Pono and all the other vendors sold. It might have made a difference if they DID remaster the files exclusively for the service, with someone like our forum host doing the work, but Neil to this day pitches the idea that hirez is the answer. If you hang out here, you probably place a lot more importance on a great master in any resolution vs. a crap master in hirez.

And I say all that as a very happy owner of two Pono players. There is some sort of Ayre magic in that player, which I am damn glad to have.

 

Pono is dead. The store won't be coming back...
Pono is Officially Dead

 

That's not entirely true. I remember in the early days Pono and a few of the other vendors actually analyzed the files they received and if they turned out to be files that were upscaled from a lower resolution, they sent them back and told them to try again. At least they were attempting to be able to back what they were selling as the best possible. Of course none of this matters now.

 

This is old news. Pono’s been dead for a couple of months.

Ed

 

I'm 10 days in and I'm starting to intensely dislike the Pono. There is a thick veneer of Pono'ness that seems to slither it's way into every single thing played on it, almost like an expensive perfume lingering over your clothing, it was nice when she visited but now it won't go away. Why does everything sound like it's been re-mastered and remixed by Pono for maximum Pono? Why does the separation of instruments, so delightful and expensive sounding 10 days ago, now make me wonder why Mick Jagger can barely even be heard amongst the instruments that the Pono auto remix obviously decided were more important? Drums occasionally sound like they are an inch from your face and the high hat is all the way on the left and the floor tom is all the way on the right, I've never noticed that before, it's like somehow it's found out the frequencies of hi-hats and floor toms and decided those frequences will be mega boosted at the extreme hard pan right and left, the result being drum kits that sound 10 feet wide.

I dunno man, I like it when I like it, Little Richard never sounded better, old rockabilly records in high res needle drops, super. Everything else so far, if it sounds good it's like it's defying the Pono to sound good.

 

I've never noticed any of that but we're probably listening to different things. When I play my Neil albums on the pono they sound great (as does everything else I play on it)