PONO Feedback? Anyone have one yet?

I still suspect counterfeit cards. I would contact SanDisk or whatever company made your cards and check to be sure. EVERY vendor has sold counterfeit cards, EVERY ONE.

I would also demand that Pono look at the player. You have been cross-posting on several boards, for several months (and I've read every post!) with no change in your problem. At one time you did get a response from Pono - follow it up and DEMAND they look at your player. Or trash it and wait for a sale at Fry's. I really think you've run the gamut at this point.

 

I thought Pono bad rapping JRiver as they were closing up was a little sketchy.My experience with JRiver has been very good.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

I tested 10 cards on my PC. I ran a check for errors on each card, only one of the ten had any errors. 8 of the ten are cards that had played just fine on my Pono till the beginning of the year. The other two are brand new cards which had not been used yet. I reformatted both of those on the PC. Neither had errors and worked fine on the PC, but neither would load on the Pono. Even without any files on them.

Same with the other 8 cards, none would load on the Pono. I did play audio files on all the cards just fine on the PC. However, I did notice one thing odd. Any files I added to those cards after 2017, most likely using the PMV, those files did not play, some even had duplicate files that would not play. So I deleted those, but the cards still did not play on the PONO. So either the PMV or my iMac did corrupt some files since the start of 2017. However, the SD cards that had no files on them or had no bad files also did not load onto the player.

 

Even my 256 AAC and 320 MP3 files sound good with the Ayre parts, noticeably better than my iPod.

 

I may have missed this, but does the internal flash have space available? Try deleting a few songs from it so the system has space to modify and delete the caching files it uses for your external cards. If you are familiar with computers you could also try deleting the existing cache files to see if that clears things up

 

When you say delete the existing cache files with the computer can you explain the process you mean. That is a question I am seeking to find. I thought you could clear the internal cache by another method, but I can find no way to do so.

 

Apologies if this has been covered before. Has anyone compared the Pono player SQ with Audioquest's new Dragonfly Red?

I have the DF v1.2. Last week I did a brief comparison between my Pono player and my DF 1.2. I played the same lossles files. I used my Hifiman 400i cans.

DF offered a more muscular sound and much bigger soundstage vs Pono, perhaps brighter and a bit harsh too. I could hear the intro guitar strings and hit hat on David Bowie's The Width Of A Circle around my head.

On the other hand, The Pono player offered a more relaxed, smooth presentation. Bass on The Width Of A Circle had more body, natural and dimensional sound.

They are both great but I'd give Pono the hedge for longer listening sessions.

I've read reviews that DF's Red is a major improvement over v1.2. More detailed and smooth.

I don't think I will ever replace my Pono player (love it to death) but when I travel I'd like to get better sq out of stuff that I download on my iphone (spotify). That's where I think DF Red can add value provided that it offers a sq in line with the Pono player.

Thanks

 

Can anyone give an update on Pono? The Pono Music Store has been "under construction" for quite a while, giving the reason that they are looking for another content provider.

 

Nothing official from Pono but mentioned here is about all you get for now: WAFF

 

Talked a bit about the new service in this thread:

Is Pono no more?

I was able to have an exchange with an OraStream employee over on Compuer Audiophile and they've now joined up here.

 

I think the one thing that is holding up the re-opening of the Pono Store is the Pono Promise. They might be having problems getting content providers to agree to "give away for free" hi-res albums if someone bought a lower-res version of the same album. But Neil Young promised us that the Pono Promise is not going away. I've had my fingers crossed for so long they've all melded together into one fat finger on each hand, which makes it very difficult to type.

 

Neil Young (PonoMusic)
It’s time to talk about Pono and the initiative we all started. As you know, together we’ve been fighting a battle to bring high quality music back to the world that’s become used to mediocre, hollowed-out files. The cause seemed to be a win-win for everyone. The artists would allow their fans to hear what they hear in the studios, and the music lovers would hear the music the best it could be. This cause has been something I’ve written and talked about for over 20 years. I cared and I assumed that most of the world would care.



It’s been almost five years since we kicked off the campaign at SXSW to offer a player and download content that could fulfill my dream of bringing to you a music experience unlike any other for the cost. Thanks to our supporters on Kickstarter, the follow-on customers and some very good friends that supported the effort, we delivered on that promise. Our player won best digital portable product of the year from Stereophile Magazine, and we offered some of the best high resolution content to be found anywhere. We sold tens of thousands of players, every unit that we made. Thanks for that!



But, despite that success, I was not satisfied. I had to put up with lots of criticism for the high cost of music delivered in the way all music should be provided, at full resolution and not hollowed out. I had no control over the pricing, but I was the one that felt the criticism, because I was the face of it. And I pretty much agreed with the criticism. Music should not be priced this way.



Last year when Omnifone, our download store partner, was bought and shut down with no notice by Apple, we began work with another company to build the same download store. But the more we worked on it, the more we realized how difficult it would be to recreate what we had and how costly it was to run it: to deliver the Pono promise, meaning you’d never have to buy the same album again if was released at a higher quality; the ability to access just high res music, and not the same performances at lower quality, and the ability to do special sales. Each of these features was expensive to implement.



I also realized that just bringing back the store was not enough. While there was a dedicated audience, I could not in good conscience continue to justify the higher costs. When it comes to high res, the record industry is still broken. The industry was such that even when I wanted to remaster some of the great performances from my artist friends at high res, Pono had to pay thousands of dollars for each recording, with little expectation of getting the money back. Record companies believe they should charge a premium for high res recordings and conversely, I believe all music should cost the same, regardless of the technology used.



As you might imagine, I found it difficult to raise more money for this model: delivering quality music at a premium price to a limited audience that felt they were being taken advantage of with the high costs.



So now, sadly with Pono offline, for more than eight months I’ve been working with our small team to look for alternatives. Finding a way to deliver the quality music without the expense and to bring it to a larger audience has been our goal.



That effort has led to a technology developed by Orastream, a small company in Singapore that we’ve been working with. Together we created Xstream, the next generation of streaming, an adaptive streaming service that changes with available bandwidth. It is absolutely amazing because it is capable of complete high resolution playback. Unlike all other streaming services that are limited to playing at a single low or moderate resolution, Xstream plays at the highest quality your network condition allows at that moment and adapts as the network conditions change. It’s a single high resolution bit-perfect file that essentially compresses as needed to never stop playing. As a result, it always sounds better than the other streaming services and it never stops or buffers like other higher res services. When you play it at home with WiFi it can play all established low and high resolutions, including the highest, and thousands more levels of resolution in between. When you are in your car with poor cellular it might play better than an existing low res service, but at a location where robust wifi is available Xstream supports high resolution listening. Xstream is one file, streaming for all with 15,000 seamlessly changing levels of playback quality.



So, this is what we’ve been working on. But one of my conditions is that it should not have a premium price. I’ve insisted that there be no premium price for this service. Pono tried that with downloads and it’s not a good model for customers. And I’ve told the labels it’s not a good model for them to charge a premium for music the way it was meant to be heard. I firmly believe that music is in trouble because you can’t hear it the way it is created unless you pay a premium. No one gets to hear the real deal, so the magic of music is compromised by limited technology.



Good sounding music is not a premium. All songs should cost the same, regardless of digital resolution. Let the people decide what they want to listen to without charging them more for true quality. That way quality is not an elitist thing. If high resolution costs more, listeners will just choose the cheaper option and never hear the quality. Record companies will ultimately lose more money by not exposing the true beauty of their music to the masses. Remember, all music is created to sound great and the record labels are the one’s deciding to not offer that at the normal price. The magic of music should be presented by the stewards of that music at a normal price. Let listeners decide on the quality they want to purchase without pricing constraints.



I’ve been meeting with and speaking with the labels, potential partners such as the carriers, and other potential investors. For many it’s a difficult sell. There are already streaming services, some doing well and others not. While there’s nothing as good as Xstream, or as flexible and adaptive, it’s still proven a difficult sell for companies to invest in.



So, in my experience, today’s broken music industry continues to make major mistakes, but we are still trying. Bringing back the magic of great sound matters to the music of the world.



Thank you all very much for supporting Pono and quality audio. Thanks to everyone who is or was associated with Pono, especially the customers who supported us. Thanks to Charlie Hansen and Ayre Acoustics for the great PonoPlayer. It has been a labor of love. I want you to know that I’m still trying to make the case for bringing you the best music possible, at a reasonable price, the same message we brought to you five years ago. I don’t know whether we will succeed, but it’s still as important to us as it ever was.



Thankfully, for those of my audience who care and want to hear all the music, every recording I have ever released will soon be available in Xstream high resolution quality at my complete online archive. Check it out. We will be announcing it very soon.



Neil Young

 

For me the biggest disappointment is the death of the hardware side of things. I love my player and it's sad to know that when it eventually dies I'll have to look for alternatives

 

I love the player too. I think the vision of bringing a studio quality listening experience to consumers was a very good one, but the commercial strategy had major defects.

The most significant one was the sole focus on hi res being the mechanism that could deliver that. Because the owners of the masters and hi res files demand premium pricing, Neil impaled his company and its commercial model in this sword. Pono also failed to take credit for the part that the player contributed to getting that studio experience.

A well mastered, non brick walled recording at red book resolution can sound just as good as one at higher resolution. For me, and I expect many other people, difference may only be detected when listening through a very high end system, or the Pono alone provided you have high quality headphones and are in a quiet environment.

Well, it's time for me to update my PC music files, converting a good number of well mastered cd's I have recent acquired. These will then get synced to my Pono!

 

So much for the "Pono Promise" of free upgrades. RIP

 

QFT, and the main lesson I learned from my Pono/high-rez music experiment. At least with my aging ears through my modest audio rig.

The most depressing thing is that CDs are still mastered much louder than it seems necessary.

 

Phil Baker (PonoMusic)
Just wanted to add a couple of comments based on some of the responses. The Xstream service includes the ability to buy hi-res downloads. And service for players continues to be available by contacting me at [email protected]. Thanks.

 

That is nice to hear, but reading between the lines I am sensing that production has stopped on the Pono. I'd love to be proved wrong, so please feel free to do so.

 

Thanks for your post.

Where will service of Pono players be executed? It appears you are based in UK? Does this mean service will be executed there?

It's unfortunately that questions like this have to be asked through an audiophile forum. The PONO website doesn't even have Mr Young's missive posted in this forum. Nor an update on ongoing support. Not a very organized approach.

By the way, I am and have been a huge PONO and PONO Store fan.

In all honestly, you guys at PONO are not handling this in a professional way.

 

@Stereosound, are you Neil Young or do you just post for him from time to time?

Perhaps you might be able to address my questions I sent on this thread to someone in UK who claims that all service issues for the PONO players can be a addressed to him. The cynic in me finds this suspect, especially so where the PONO website makes no mention of the comments apparently made by Mr. Young through your membership and posting here. As I have said, I am and have been a PONO proponent, but IMO, you have a lot more communicating to do.........

 

PS

PONO's poor communication is an insult to the people who invested in the so called PONO vision. Your customers deserve better

 

Reposting only. Join the forums at Ponomusic.com and get a hold of Phil Baker for service issues. Last I knew Pono was based in San Francisco California.

 

Old man, look at my life, I'm not a lot like you are.......

Neil's always been a master of dissapearing when things get tough.......

Just an observation.....go back to playing with your trains

Thanks, what was the original source of the Neil Young quote you recently posted? Was it on the PONO website? Was it a Press Release?

 

Pono's forums.