Is Pono no more?

Nah I take it back, there are some things that don't sound that optimal on Pono but I have since found that many many recordings sound like Gold. In fact, I have an Xduoo X3, an iRiver (bought another one) and two DAC's for the PC and an Ipod 5.5 with the Wolfson DAC inside it, and a Sony mp3 player, and I must say, when the Pono is the right choice, it is the best sound I've heard.

 

Bumping this thread as I dug out my Pono last week as I became so utterly frustrated with my Fiio X5 3rd Gen.

I'd sort of forgotten how good it sounds and may try to keep it resurrected. A couple of questions though if anyone still using one can answer.....

1) Is it compatible with newer SD cards, particularly the 400gb ones.

2) What is the latest firmware it should be running & if I can download it from somewhere

And a slightly trickier one.....

3) I obviously have one of the faulty (ish) ones as trying to put music onto the internal memory is next to impossible (taking hours & hours to transfer). Have I any option or chance to get this fixed still?

 

Yes it is compatible with any capacity MicroSD card because they are all formatted the same.

I’m pretty sure the final firmware was 1.0.6 but I could be wrong

To be honest I doubt it is possible to get it sorted. You could try emailing [email protected] but I’d say as long as it’s still reading cards I just wouldn’t use the internal storage.

I bought a Sony WM1A 5 weeks ago and I’ve now got 100 hours on it (Sony recommend a 200hour burn in) and I love it so far, fantastic sound. Think I will end up selling my Pono

 

Although it still exists, the original Pono web site and forum are not very active for obvious reasons.

There is a new forum started by refugees from the original site.

RESono-Community

You may find some assistance there.

 

A slight deviation, but as a Fiio X5 gen 1 owner (haven't used it in a long time), what's causing you frustration with the X5 Gen 3? I'm just curious...

 

I have e a 400gb microsd card on mine and it works flawlessly. Firmware version I cant answer but it is the last official one they released. I never ever try to load anything on internal memory...that's just an exercise in frustration. Love the pono.

 

Coming back to this late, I did mean to reply at the time.....

The software is just awful, and was from day one. Pressing pause if I say pop into a shop for a moment.....when I hit resume it's lost it's place & is back at whatever track it was currently deciding to open the player on. This would change quite a bit too. It still couldn't handle gapless playback well, with a second or two gap between certain Hi-Res tracks.

And as for the android side of things, I never managed to find one single android hi-res music app that would work without serious issues/problems.

I still have my Pono back out in use since I last posted, and have invested in a 400gb sd card recently as the price dropped to around £80. I still have the problem of trying to load onto internal memory, but have found that (although it is somewhat a pain) doing one track at a time does work most of the time, albeit very slowly.

 

Just load your favorites on the internal and then leave them alone. Problem solved. I haven't touched my internal files since I got my player on Kickstarter.

 

I'm curious if those first issues have been addressed via firmware updates since you last used it. Fiio isn't great with software support, but they do seem to get their devices into a pretty ok end state before they move on to the next version.

 

What I'm doing now is I don't even have anything on the internal drive, and I have several different sd cards, one for new stuff that I update regularly, but others are divided by specifications, I like to take care and know what I'm listening to when I listen to it. So I have 24/192 cards, 24/96 cards, a dsd card, as well as cards that are for particular artists without reference to the sound quality. I don't like the interface of the Pono whatsoever, I'd prefer folder mode, and why oh why they didn't make the + and - buttons into 'next' and 'previous' I'll never know.

Also, it's a shame it's impossible to label micro sd cards.

 

So much this. How is anyone supposed to label a micro SD card? I use different color dots on the cards to label them. Then keep a cheat sheet with the cards to tell me what each color means.

 

My problem with micro SD is that there’s no liner notes, and it’s reall just a bunch of files in there, unlike a CD or an LP. And nope, a CD doesn’t contain files, it’s music read by a laser.

 

A CD does contain files.

In computer science a file is an abstract concept. To be a file you need to be able to write the data out and read it back and have a defined file system that defines how the bits are stored and how to write and read the data. Even better if you can do random access into the file. A CD has all of that. So absolutely, the data on an audio CD is a file.

Here's a wikipedia article on what it means to be a file or file system in computer science: File system - Wikipedia

 

I bought a case for my cards and use the position in the case to know which card is which.
The O button handles "next" and "previous" well enough for me. What other player can you have in a pants pocket and you can change volume or change tracks without removing it (I know some headphone cables allow it on other players)?

 

Just store them in a wallet like https://www.amazon.com/Slots-Holder...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TTC2NGEAK0ZCA6P0R91Y

 

Is Pono no more ? You mean hard-core, or soft-core ?

 

Surely you mean had-coe, or soft-coe?
(There being no r in Pono)

 

Ha ha, good one !

 

Well I'd updated it to the latest possible & still had all these problems. When was it released? I feel it's at least 2 years?

 

Bags and bags o' these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KWZVX40/

They accommodate both an SD and a Micro SD item, so it's obviously larger than a Micro SD, but it's big enough to accommodate basically postage-stamp-sized artwork that you print to a label and affix to the outside. They have rounded corners so it's like having a drawerful of teeny-tiny 8-tracks.

 

I've been using a plastic case like this that can hold 8 memory cards. Except the one I got had 8 tray adapters for the microSD cards. The ones on Amazon only have 2 microSD adapter trays.

https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Design-MicroSD-Memory-Card/dp/B00ET4Y6YY/

None of the microSD card storage things are ideal. Finding a case or holder or wallet that holds and organizes the little cards well and still allows a way to label the little things is not easy.

 

Not sure off the top of my head. It's definitely been over one, but I'm not sure about 2.

Unfortunately, they don't date stamp their firmware updates. The current is 1.2.1 and the instructions for how to update firmware on these devices is dated January 2017. My guess is that the device dropped around that time, so we're closing in on two years, I suppose.

 

I may cry when my Pono works no more....

 

That is what I do as well. I just label the cases, works fine.

 

Yes but when you rip the music from said CD onto your computer...voila: files. The CD is what is carrying the files. You can try to find a loophole around it but in the end it's still the very same files that one would put onto an SD Card..