PONO Feedback? Anyone have one yet?

Thanks, darkmass, that is exactly the kind of detail I needed. I was aware of the Android folder as a repository for art files, but didn't really know how it worked.

 

Anyone have a problem with Pono heating up when used for more than an hour?

I imagine it is the battery.

My quick fix is just to turn it off for a while to let it cool down.

 

It's the amp circuitry getting warm. Like good sounding amp circuitry tends to do.
The battery should be fine. Let it play. No need to let it cool down.

 

Thanks Ham!

I've been using the Pono just about every day.

Great gizmo.

 

Me too - while typing this in fact.

Battery life is pathetic, but gizmo SQ is great!

 

One reason why the battery life is pathetic is because the audio circuitry wastes energy generating heat. It's a trade-off for sound quality over battery life.

 

I'll take sound quality over battery life any day.

 

Noobie question here. If I drop and drag, am I ok with a folder structure that is Artist>Album, where there may be multiple albums for an artist. I guess what I am asking is Pono will ignore the folders and pick up the flac tags right, so I assume I would be ok with any extra root folders whatever they may be for ease of tracking things on the desktop.

Also I think I remember reading someone somewhere say they dump their .md5 and .ffp files or in other cases .cue or .log files to speed things up on Pono. I never seem to use those but don't know if I will be in trouble dumping them. Thanks

 

Ok folders working fine as I expected as well as not needing the non flac files. My tip is if you don't want pono software to import your music stop the countdown at bottom left when it appears. I was not expecting that but caught it in time.

 

Thanks Darkmass! I've researched this a few times: where my feet tended to go cold was when people mentioned I'd have to "Jailbreak" it, or install a Linux OS onto the console. If I have to get that far with it, I think I'd be just as happy using the vintage PS3 (ie. the first generation which came with smaller drives and specific serial numbers, with the SACD logo on the case amidst the logos of the other playable formats) for straightforward stereo SACD playback.

I managed to avoid this altogether... Methinks I just cancelled the function during its' countdown upon first loadup. Now, if I could avoid the "timing out" of each version of PonoMusicWorld: I have limited WiFi access and I'm the kind of guy who thinks one should only need to download a program once. As for managing files, I just treat my Pono and SD card as external drives most of the time... Copy, Paste, Enjoy.

BTW, Darkmass, doubly thanks for the tips on how to sneak-add JPEGs to albums (and to get rid of incorrect associations via the Android folder)!

 

Actually, though there is still some complexity, the ripping process has grown a bit smoother over time. I myself am glad I pursued it. My Pono gives a happy home to some of my backed up (.dsf format) DSD files.

Ted_b is a member here, but he seems to show up many more times at this location. Ted is the person who has worked hardest to pull pieces together. In the signature block of that linked post, there's a link to a (slightly out of date) pdf guide. You might like looking through that. That site has a PM mechanism, and I've seen evidence that Ted takes PMs. He also seems to watch posts in that thread.

You might do okay. Who knows?

I only treat my Pono and SD card as external drives. I just have to have full control over things.

And you're certainly welcome, and doubly welcome. If I know stuff, I pass it on where it's useful.

Here's something no one has asked about, most likely no one cares about, but for a long time it tied my OCD into knots. I incautiously used the tags present in some .dsf files "as is" without completely checking them, and my Pono showed the album artist names in ALL CAPS because that was the way it was present in the tags. I want proper upper and lower case to match everything else I'm doing! I couldn't fix the case no matter what. Updating the tag text didn't work. Deleting and reinstalling full albums didn't work. Deleting Android didn't work. If I followed the name with a dash or something that worked, but as soon as I got rid of the dash, everything went back to all caps. Not only that, but adding fresh albums by the same artist--with upper and lower case the way I wanted it--well, the Pono displayed their names in all caps as well! Give me a break.

I saw a post pointing out that a Pono cached data for three SD cards to allow for reasonably quick card-swapping and reboot, and that information turned the trick. I made sure that all problem albums were on an SD card, moving them off the internal Pono drive where necessary (I'm not sure moving them off the main drive was necessary, but I didn't want to take any chances). As it turns out, at this point in time I have a few Pono SD cards that I outgrew (my current card is a 128G card), so I booted the Pono with three of those cards in turn...then the fourth boot was with the card I wanted my corrections to work on. The card took a while to boot since now nothing on it was cached...but I finally had the text the way I wanted it.

 

I didn't know the PonoPlayer's caching was that determined to not purge potentially changed data. I would have figured it would remove a file from the cache if you renamed the file or directory or deleted it from the card. But apparently not. That's a rather aggressive cache. The cache can't behave like that forever because it would run out of room. Eventually it would need to delete things after you've cycled through lots and lots of files, even if you have just one microSD card that you cycle files through. It must have a way of triggering some form of garbage collection on the cache that eventually kicks in.

 

I would hope so. In the back of my mind I also wonder about eventual interactions with caches for SD cards that exceed the Pono stated maximum of 128G. It's assumed that Pono's statement is only based on existing SD card technology at the time of the Pono player's design and that 128G isn't a true limit. Especially since some have stated that 200G SD cards are working with the player. But designs and implementations usually have their limitations.

When I first realized my text situation could only be a caching problem, I went looking through the Pono World application for a feature that would clear caches on a connected Pono. Nothing like that was provided, and I kinda understand why, but sometimes it would be nice if we weren't so aggressively protected from ourselves.

 

I used darkmass's approach (deleting Android folder) w some good results. However, after several tries, there are still several albums that stubbornly cling to either 'no art' or an incorrect image, which i cannot find anywhere on either of my cards or on the device. It really does seem there is a hidden cache or file that retains those incorrect images and defies attempts to delete.

I even tried deleting the two files in the LOST directory.

Ideas, anyone?

 

Oh man, that's a tough one. I don't think I've seen that, but let me mention something just to make sure it isn't a possibility. You've probably checked, but your problem is worth solving if possible.

. . .Well, now that I've done some writing I guess there are a few diagnostic things to try if you are interested.

If a single Pono resident directory contains files from different albums, as designated by tags, each such album gets its own "album" touch point and album icon under the "Albums" category. I seem to recall they can even be lumped together as a Pono "album" even though they reside in different directories. Activating one of these pseudo albums should show the songs that Pono considers to be part of the set. Selecting one of the songs should allow the Pono path to be seen once you double-tap when the song is playing.

I bet you've done this already, but do you see the commonality you expect for an album that has an incorrect image? If things within a folder are lined up the way you expect them, with no outside "album" references, it might be worth picking up a fresh SD card, booting it in your Pono while the card is still empty, then afterwards installing just that album/folder under the Music folder on the fresh card. If you do that, is the incorrect art displayed on the new card?

I've just looked up "TagEdit" and it seems to be PC specific, but you're on a Mac, right? While I'm on a PC, I'm trying to gain some insight into the tag editor you are using. Unfortunately, Macs seem to be a bit more limited than PCs in this regard. But what editor are you using?

What happens if you take a folder with incorrect art, and change the album name tag for each file in the folder to something different (but common for each of the files)? Before doing that, what happens if you take only a single file in the folder and change the album tag text to some junk album name?

You've no doubt read my post on clearing the Pono player cache for text correction. How many microSD cards do you have?

If you do get the correct album art if you've moved just a single album to a fresh SD card, you might consider using that fresh card to slowly rebuild a card that shows incorrect and missing art. That might fool the hidden cache.

 

I've now spent some time looking into how a Pono player works with album artwork for a single directory, to see if light can be shed on some of the reported artwork display problems.

As I've mentioned, I'm on a PC. Specifically, I'm using 64-bit Windows 7 Professional. I used a spare 64G microSD card that I freshly formatted for this purpose. And all modifications to the card were made by dragging and dropping via the SD card reader in my laptop along with a SD/microSD adapter. All tag editing was carried out directly on the microSD card with the (free) AudioShell tag editor, available here:
http://www.softpointer.com/AudioShell.htm - Unfortunately, it's a PC only application, though I would hope there's a Mac tag editor out there somewhere that has equivalent capabilities. Of primary importance is the ability to add, replace, or completely delete artwork in any individual tag. The AudioShell tag editor can do all of that.

My first step was to put the formatted card in my Pono and then boot the player. The player built the standard empty folders along with an Android folder that seemed to have the right number of entries to correspond to the 56 album folders present on my internal Pono player drive. Why that is necessary for the card resident Android I can't say, especially since the internal Pono drive gets its own Android directory. Perhaps the card Android reflecting the internal drive contents aids in card swapping. At any rate, when I deleted Android during this investigation I only deleted the SD card Android.

Once the SD card was built by the Pono, I created a Music folder on the card at the top level, then under Music I put a copy of an album folder I had previously downloaded from HDtracks. I picked this folder because it already had album artwork in each file's tag.

I won't go through everything I carried out, but here's the summary...

If the file with tag "Track 1" contains tag artwork, that is the artwork the player uses for the touchpoint in Pono's "Album" view. If there is no artwork within the Track 1 tag, but there is jpeg artwork present in the same album folder, the Pono player will use the jpeg artwork for the touchpoint. If there is no artwork in the Track 1 tag and no artwork file in the folder (I only looked at jpeg; however, other artwork file formats--png, gif, ...--may work as well), the touchpoint for the album will display a grey circle with a large grey dot in the center and a large grey musical note symbol on the right side of the circle. When any selection within the album is playing, the selection gets a larger version of the same art displayed for the touchpoint. If any artwork is different within other file tags for the same album in the same folder, it is still only the artwork determined by Track 1 that is displayed.

Now a slight caveat to the preceding paragraph. If a file within an album folder has a different Album name in its tag, the Pono player will make a new touchpoint for that "Album" and the touchpoint artwork for that "Album" will follow similar rules given by the above paragraph. If there is artwork in the tag for that file, that artwork will be used for the "Album" touchpoint. If there is no artwork in the tag, but there is jpeg artwork within the folder that the file resides in, the jpeg artwork will be used for the "Album" touchpoint that corresponds to the file. If there is no artwork in the tag and no jpeg (or other working artwork format) artwork in the folder, the "Album" touchpoint will get the grey "circle/dot/musical note" symbol mentioned above.

Each time I made a change, I first booted without deleting the Android folder. The changes I made were never recognized. I next booted after deleting only the SD card Android folder. In each case, if Android had been deleted all changes appeared on the Pono player as they were supposed to.

It's probably worth mentioning that when the Pono is rebooted following an Android deletion, the touchpoint artwork will display in wrong positions as you scroll through the touchpoints, but with a little scrolling back and forth the artwork will fall into proper places. Sometimes, on that first boot no artwork will display for a touchpoint and only a solid grey area will be shown for that touchpoint. And scrolling won't fix that. When that happens, power down the player and then reboot. The area that was grey will now display the proper artwork. At least it always did for me.

 

Does anyone get a kind of a minimal white noise in balanced mode when the display/menu is on? I will write about it a bit more when I can, but in the interest of feedback I am getting that in balanced mode, with a soft click followed by dead silence when the menu-- now set at 10 seconds-- cuts out. I assume there is no way to play the pono without activating the menu? I was not picking up this effect when single ended or line out.

 

I hear no noise when in balanced mode. Are you sure the player is set to "balanced" in the setup menu?

 

It is in balanced mode. I am not in front of it at the moment, but I had the lineout set to fixed volume at the time; I did not think I needed to change it so I left it that way. I am going to uncheck that and see if it has an effect. It plays absolutely perfect otherwise. Cardas said they did not run into this during their testing and cannot think of anything in the cable that would cause it but would test it and stand behind it if I wanted to do so. I have not heard from Pono yet but I just sent something so understandable. Thanks

 

I have two Ponos at this point. In balanced mode I listen to them with my Sennheiser HD650's and a Moon Audio, purpose made, Silver Dragon HD650/Pono-balanced cable. I always keep my line output setting at fixed. However, on each, my Pono display is set to never shut off.

Just now I booted each Pono in turn with the Senns balance connected, and made sure the "balanced" setting was selected. I didn't select any music for play, but maxed-out the volume setting. Dead silence on each Pono.

 

Thanks, so just so I am doing this right, I think to turn balanced on you have to have both jacks plugged in first correct. So I plugged in, right channel to line out and left to headphone out. Then I turned on balanced balanced mode, again everything played great other than when the display was on.

Are you saying you then reboot it in that balanced mode everything connected during the reboot? I can try that as well, thanks

 

I've only tried balanced mode with headphones. I haven't tried balanced line-out yet (I don't yet have an amp with balanced inputs).

I haven't noticed noise with the balanced headphones. Possibly the noise is only happening with balanced line-out and not with the balanced headphone output. Or possibly my headphones aren't sensitive enough or efficient enough to make the noise audible. Maybe someone with balanced IEMs might notice noise it if it's there?

 

If you unplug the phones you need to reset the player to balanced when you use it again. It will stay in balanced as long as the balanced phones are plugged in.

Lineout will have no effect when the player is set to balanced as it is no longer a lineout.

If you are hearing noise with the player properly set to balanced, you have a defective unit. CALL Pono - they respond much better to phone calls than emails. The number is in the user booklet supplied with the unit.

 

Perhaps through habits learned in the course of Navy electronics training, I tend to make connections (if at all possible) with everything powered down. Each Pono was completely off when I plugged in my balanced headphone cords, then the Pono was booted. Since I had made no single ended connections after the last session of balanced headphone use, the Pono came up balanced...but I still checked the setting. People can do things however it makes sense to them, I just tend to have my ways.

Oh, you are correct that right balanced channel goes to the Pono line out socket and the left balanced channel goes to the Pono standard headphone socket. I keep a flacced Pierre Verany "Compact Test" CD on my Ponos and have previously verified that the connections you use keeps the channel polarity correct. If a Pono has been in single ended use, I think the balanced connections should be made prior to selecting the balanced setting...just checked, and if the balanced setting is unchecked the Pono will not allow selecting the balanced option if there is no balanced connection in place.

 

Thanks I will try the power up with cords plugged as well.