Neil Young readies Pono music service for expansion Part 3

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by stereoptic, Mar 25, 2014.

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  1. Music Geek

    Music Geek Confusion will be my epitaph

    Location:
    Italy
    I am ok with my jack-of-all-trades. I hope the Pono people have a good idea of their potential market and it's bigger than I think.
     
  2. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    Exactly. Your music is going to pass through an analog stage at some point. Namely, your speakers! A headphone jack is about as pure an analog connection as you're going to get!

    This is why I will eventually buy a Pono: This is an audio player built from the ground up by two of the finest names in high end audio: Meridian and Ayer. I don't know why this shouldn't be enough! Hell, I never even got to hear a Meridian CD player!

    I'm flat broke and probably need to sell my HD650s, but I'm going hold onto them. The minute I sell them, someone on the web will do a review raving about the synergy of the PONO and HD650s. :cry:
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2014
  3. Stereosound

    Stereosound Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Just posted by Pono in their Kickstarter comments section:

    Creator the PonoMusic Team6 minutes ago
    @Erast Fandorin:

    Erast we are indeed putting in safeguards against upsampled music in our content ingestion process. We know well about the complaints about other hi-res stores and have learned from their mistakes.

    We may not be able to dictate the labels but we will be able to filter out garbage. Also there are two sides to labels: the business side and the technical side. We know them both and know that the technical side especially are unhappy with some of the decisions made by the business side (such as upsampling) and will be our allies in correcting this trend. They in fact need a movement like ours to give them ammunition to win the internal battle with the business side of labels.
     
  4. Metralla

    Metralla Joined Jan 13, 2002

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    Agreed. FYI - Ayre Acoustics.

    http://www.ayre.com/

    Not only that, but the price is almost certainly a lot better than if Ayre were releasing this unit themselves
     
  5. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    According to Pono's CEO, they had early talks with Meridian, but Ayre designed the player.
     
  6. This is THE key value of Pono, IMHO. The device may or may not deliver, but if high quality MUSIC is readily available, then Pono has been successful. Perhaps connecting the service and availability of this MUSIC to artificially constrained limited edition devices was one way to advance this.

    iTunes and the ipod were not the first or best sources of mp3s, but their combined mediocre (again, IMHO), service succeeded, where my earlier NEX mp3 player and limited sources of music are now defunct.

     
  7. Schoolmaster Bones

    Schoolmaster Bones Poe's Lawyer

    Location:
    ‎The Midwest
    Same here - never had any complaints to start with. On the rare occasion that I dock my Apple device to my main stereo, I am continually surprised at the fidelity it does deliver. It's overkill, to be honest.
     
  8. gloomrider

    gloomrider Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Hollywood, CA, USA
    I wonder what percentage of HD Track's content is upsampled. To read between the lines here, it seems the answer is: a lot!
     
  9. Even while "being deceived" by upsampling, I've been able to find some Lindsay String Quartet recordings at HDtracks, that I couldn't find on CD, for $11.99. Tho it would be nice if they'd admit the upsampling.
     
  10. Music Geek

    Music Geek Confusion will be my epitaph

    Location:
    Italy
    Or at least that's what the Pono guy wants you to think....
     
  11. jeffsab

    jeffsab Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    If anyone wants a Neil Young signature Pono, I just cancelled my pledge. Hurry.
     
  12. crispi

    crispi Vinyl Archaeologist

    Location:
    Berlin
    I don't understand what you mean by "update iTunes". iTunes has been playing every resolution for many years now. Every unibody MacBook I've seen was able to play back 24/96 natively, the latest models can do 24/192. All of these files can be played back by iTunes "bit perfect".
     
  13. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    Except you need to manually change the settings in the MIDI setup dialog to match the bit rate and sample rate of what you are playing. Then when you go back to playing a different sample rate file you have to manually change the setting again.

    On iTunes for Windows you need to do similar changes in the sound settings to match the sample rate and bit rate of the file to be played. Apple could fix that on Windows by allowing WASAPI exclusive mode instead of shared mode. But they don't.

    Apple doesn't seem to care about being able to automatically adjust iTunes to play the correct sample rate for whatever file is being played. And to play at that sample rate without resampling.

    Other audio player software doesn't have that problem. For the past decade I've been using JRiver Media Center in Windows and have been able to play anything from 16/44.1 to 24/192 and have the sound card automatically change to play at the correct sample rate. And it can play it all bit perfect.
     
  14. stereoptic

    stereoptic Anaglyphic GORT Staff Thread Starter

    Location:
    NY
    [SOUND EFFECT] Plane swooshing overhead [\SOUND EFFECT] Nope, missed it. Smilies help us who are oblivious
     
  15. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    Ham Sandwich has already responded along the lines I would have. You must manually adjust your midi settings to change playback resolution in iTunes, unless you have downloaded and installed a plugin--and both those options are beyond what the average end user is willing or able to do. Apple could change this by updating iTunes to play back the full resolution of each file without effort on the user's part. They will need to do that to keep things simple for average users if they ever do sell high-resolution downloads.
     
    crispi likes this.
  16. crispi

    crispi Vinyl Archaeologist

    Location:
    Berlin
    Yes, that is true and it's something I was aware of. I don't think it would be much of a hassle though to implement an on-the-fly switching of resolutions. Even the iPhone does that.
     
  17. wgriel

    wgriel Forum Resident

    Location:
    bc, canada
    It should be pretty easy for Apple if they want to. Bitperfect presently does this.
     
  18. gloomrider

    gloomrider Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Hollywood, CA, USA
    The Apple aspect of this is interesting. Back when, lots of Apple fans said they liked Apple because their stuff "just worked". But the price of "just works" is that you either hide (in the case of music file metadata on an iPod or iOS devices) things or you create an environment where the user doesn't have to know (or care) about things like audio sampling rates. For example, Core Audio is designed to resample on the fly when the file sampling rate does not match the devices'. Most people didn't care until they heard the difference when software like BitPerfect became available.

    I think where the wheels fall off is when people start assuming that no one needs the stuff that Apple has obfuscated. If there was no audible difference between Core Audio resampling and Audirvava (for example) sending bit accurate streams in Integer Mode, Audirvana, Amarra, Audiofile Engineering, etc., would be selling no software. I'm just grateful Apple hasn't completely closed the door and developers are able to access the hardware directly. Not to bag on Windows, but I don't envy those people who have to install custom drivers to get USB Audio Class 2 to work.

    For those who really want an open system to listen to audio, there's always Linux. It has USB Audio Class 2 support also.

    Does anyone know if the Pono file loading interface is just USB storage? Has anyone seen what the UI for the Pono looks like other than (possibly fake) still pictures?
     
  19. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    I never said it would be much hassle. I agree they could easily do it.
     
  20. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    Yeah, I use and enjoy BitPerfect as an iTunes plugin. Subjectively, I do hear a clear difference in sound quality. I wasn't fully expecting to when I paid $10 for the software, but I'm glad I did.
     
  21. crispi

    crispi Vinyl Archaeologist

    Location:
    Berlin
    Gabe, you confused me with the first post I quoted from you, because it sounded like you thought that iTunes doesn't play high-res at all. But I see now that you are in the know! Case closed. :righton:
     
  22. Gabe Walters

    Gabe Walters Forum Resident

    Understood. If you read my first post in context with the post I was responding to, I think it would have made more sense from the start.
     
  23. Don Hills

    Don Hills Forum Resident

    We Donalds are often a little dry in the humour area.
     
    stereoptic likes this.
  24. Steve Martin

    Steve Martin Wild & Crazy Guy

    Location:
    Plano, TX
    Things are already simple for average users. Average users don't care about playing things back at specific resolutions.

    Now, if Apple wants to reach out to the very small community of "audiophiles" they would have to make some changes as you have said, but not for average users.
     
  25. Steve Martin

    Steve Martin Wild & Crazy Guy

    Location:
    Plano, TX
    I believe they said they would not have their custom application available on all platforms at launch but that it would be easy to load songs without it in the mean time (drag and drop) so that would imply it will be a normal USB storage device.
     
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