PONO Hands-on Review

I would love to listen to one of these, if only it didn't cost $400.

 

I'm pretty ambivalent to hi-res. I've heard good, I've heard bad.

I've got it in place for the few pieces wherein I hear some difference.

I'd consider a Pono if I could do a money-back test to see if it was better, on whatever level, than what I've got in the server. It's not the only game in town, until I hear it for myself anyway.

I just popped in to say I couldn't be bothered to walk across the room to spit on Gizmodo.

 

I just learned the best way to describe these threads:


po·no·pho·bi·a
(pō'nō-fō'bē-ă),
Morbid fear of overwork or of becoming fatigued.
[pono- + G. phobos, fear]
Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary

 

For all the arguments, I just let my ears decide. I listened to 'Rumours' in 24/96 last night on the PONO and it sounded unbelievably good, even on my budget Denon system. I have the CD's, the original vinyl, the 45rpm vinyl and the DVD-A. Better by a mile on the PONO. Of course, I understand that this is a fantastic sounding album to begin with but it completely floored me. And I'm not the type to 'wish' my investment to sound better, it just does. Full stop. Same goes with the new Hi-Res Zeppelin material. And don't get me started on how some of the Hi-Res Rush albums sound..........

 

What's the Rush catalogue on offer? Moving Pictures? 2112? Both were released on Hi res issues in the last couple of years. Different versions?

 

You can purchase the 'Sectors' box sets from HD Tracks (I bought Sector 2). Prior to that, I made some 24/96 DVD Audio rips of the Moving Pictures and 2112 deluxe sets and they were so good that I decided to get the rest. I assume it's the same mastering though. However, if you buy all 3 Sectors as Hi-Res downloads, you get the entire back catalogue.

 

Those Rush remasters are loud as hell, bright and compressed to death. The brightness is the worst attribute.

 

This was my fear. I bought the Moving Pictures Blu-ray Audio disc a couple of years back and the original WG Atomic disc licked it. Very close to the vinyl copy (or at least, my vinyl copy!).

 

Moving pictures isn't bad to me. Power windows is more problematic.

 

Power Windows was a hard listen for me. The start of their downhill slide for a few years (IMO). Never really listen to their post-Grance Under Pressure phase much. Hold Your Fire is an exception, as is Vapor Trails, but the rest is very patchy musically. Again, IMO.

 

I really like PW. It's the too bright guitars on the remaster that bothers me. I thought some of their best songwriting was in the 80's to early 90's. I'm well aware many fans feel otherwise.

 

I know. Recent and not so recent college grads in engineering, both software and hardware, likely also have similar attitudes. And they're the people designing our software and consumer electronics. Especially for mobile oriented applications. Mobile apps with audio features are probably written by people with that sort of attitude towards what we consider high quality audio. People who think it is perfectly OK and acceptable to do things like downcovert high-res to a low res sample rate so that they can add a software EQ. People who believe that lossless is unnecessary and a waste, and that high-res is even more of a waste.

Which is a reason why the PonoPlayer needed to be made. It has no EQ. It has no bass boost. It avoids doing things that could harm the music. Try finding a portable player that has no EQ and/or bass boost.

 

Here's my own approach to hirez, not that anyone asked

If given the choice, I'll take a hirez file as opposed to a redbook file (HDtracks, Pono, whatever). Why not? I think it's cool that we can listen to music that is "oversampled" (for human hearing) and that helps alleviate all those problems that plagued digital in the old days, such as ringing with sharp digital filters and other real, measurable artifacts that adversely affected sound (even though modern redbook/DACs no longer suffer these things).

So I'll listen to a hiez file if given the choice (so long as it isn't upsampled from a lower sampling rate), but I won't claim that it sounds any different than a downsampled version.

I never make anything but V0 MP3s for my android phone. I'll create them myself using the LAME software. I have a nice set of earbuds, but think of what the noise floor is when you're trudging to work on a hard, sometimes snow-covered sidewalk. I'll never bother with anything but lossy for when I'm on the go.

Chasing higher and higher sampling rates / bit depths past 24/96 (my own personal "sanity" cutoff) for listening is chasing a dream, one that will remain elusive, because the format is irrelevant once you get beyond the reaches of what humans can hear, which is well known.

But I love the hirez "movement" as it were. I think vendors will be less prone to release highly squashed hirez files (of course there are already examples) because even the staunchest defender of hirez will admit, a squashed hirez file sounds like crap, just like a squashed redbook/properly encoded MP3 file. Basically, I'm totally on board with all remastering campaigns, and hirez ones are especially of interest. It doesn't mean I'll buy what they remaster but there is always hope that a remaster will sound better than previously released versions. So the quest to release more hirez files may result in better mastering, which is, for me, really the only goal worth aiming for.

 

Yeah, I've seen that link before. I've never had access to the actual paper. I would like to read it. http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-156124.html The rebuttal is that the conversion from 88 to 44 was flawed. That is more likely technically but frankly without reading the paper myself it is moot.

Anything else? Frankly I have only seen two detail studies that I can read on this subject, they both found no difference but they are 7 and 10 years old an neither tested 24 bit.

 

+1
That is actually quite sane thinking even though it results in a strange conclusion. I wish they would release an uncompressed version along with the regular one. I'd be more interested in that than 24 bit.

 

Hello everyone - longtime reader, first time poster. I was a Kickstarter backer, and got my black Pono player in December, so I've had time to live with it for a while and thought I'd post a review.

Quick version: the touch screen sucks, but it sounds fantastic...and hopefully it'll be a game changer in helping make decent quality music widely available again.

More info:

The player sounds phenomenal through every set of headphones I've tried it with: Sennheiser 555s (with the foam mod to make it into a "poor man's 595"), Sennheiser PX100s, Sennheiser Momentums (over-ear variety), and a set of Grado SR80Es. Very warm, with a great soundstage. The music breathes. Feels nice! I can listen for hours without getting eartired.

I waffled over (and ultimately rejected) the idea of sending the thing back because the touch screen is so bad, though...it's tiny and has poor resolution, and the touch interface is frustrating - try to swipe something, and more often than not it mistakes it as a tap instead. Very aggravating.

Most of the music on my Pono player is from my existing library of high-res audio - my own vinyl rips or SACD analog transfers, or stuff I've gotten from HDTracks. All of which play fine. The jRiver software has been a horrible piece of ****, though, so I've been copying music directly to the device.

The Pono music store sucks so far in its initial release. It sells music in FLAC format that can be played anywhere, which is awesome, but there's no real way to browse (other than two rows of 'featured' releases at the front page), so you have to know what you're looking for. And in spite of pre-release hype, there are way too many releases that are only available at 16/44.1 resolution. It's still early, though, and hopefully the high res catalog will keep growing.

So far, from the Pono store I've bought a couple of Neil Young albums in "full Pono" 24/192 - the long-awaited Time Fades Away (available again for the first time since its original 1973 vinyl release) and a magnificent sounding Live Rust. Also grabbed a 24/192 mono version of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue album to compare with my other copies (200g vinyl reissue and SACD), and a 16/44.1 copy of Al Stewart's Year Of The Cat (again, to compare with the other versions I have). I find it interesting that the little blue LED on top of the player only lights up when you play "fully Pono'd" 24/192 content from the Pono store...

I think that for what it does, the player, rough edges and all, is actually a pretty decent deal at the current asking price of $40o. You get a great sounding piece of Ayre Acoustics-designed audio hardware that pretty much does what Neil and co. said it would do...but it's a lot bigger than just the player. Support Pono and you're helping to demonstrate to the record labels that there's still actually a sizable contingent of consumers out there that still give a **** about sound and are willing to buy good product. I think having someone like Neil - who has a lot better access not only to record companies but also other artists who could help - campaigning to spread support for high res audio has tremendous weight, and it makes me hopeful: could we possibly see 24/192 Beatles on the Pono store in the foreseeable future? Why not?

My $0.02. Thanks for reading.

 

^^^^ Agree wholeheartedly with all of the above, thanks for posting. I'm extremely pleased with my black Pono too.

I've been primarily using over-ear Sennheiser Momentums but it sounds pretty spectacular even through my cheaper in-ear headphones.

I also agree about the touch screen but I can put up with that, given the quality of sound I am experiencing.

 

Will this do?..

Code:

foo_abx 2.0 report
foobar2000 v1.3.7
2015-01-27 21:40:20

File A: 13 - Bozza- Children’s Overture (from La Voie Triomphale) (2488).flac
SHA1: 19315719e5ca526122ab992abacfa9e33d2d8da1
File B: 13 - Bozza- Children’s Overture (from La Voie Triomphale) [16-bit, S-TPDF] (2488).flac
SHA1: 41e04c7c50aec3cf434ffdc321376d477ad2ab43

Output:
ASIO : ASIO4ALL v2
Crossfading: NO

21:40:20 : Test started.
21:41:39 : 01/01
21:41:53 : 02/02
21:42:05 : 03/03
21:42:14 : 04/04
21:42:24 : 05/05
21:42:38 : 06/06
21:42:47 : 07/07
21:42:57 : 08/08
21:43:06 : 09/09
21:43:17 : 10/10
21:43:17 : Test finished.

----------
Total: 10/10
Probability that you were guessing: 0.1%

-- signature --
daee1263cc3610b048c08d65e9de1ab640714669

 

You passed that?
Wow.

What DAC and equipment did you use?

 

Let's just say, I did achieve a 100% success in an ABX test, yes... Even though the said test was fully level-matched, totally blind & the only difference between the tracks compared was precision (16-bit with SoX 14.4.1's sloped TPDF dither sample vs 24-bit source, with track word length of 24 bits for both samples), I still would not call it honest. I pretty much listened to ~15 second fadeout at the end of the track & was simply hearing the effects of dithered 16-bit quantization of a 24-bit source at substantially higher than usual volume setting on my headphone amp. Have I used any other part of the track (with real musical content & no fadeout / silence), I am positive the result would be nowhere near success (i.e. 9+ correctly identified out of 10)... But I would love the other members, who claim to easily detect differences between 24 & 16 bit resolutions, to take honest ABX tests themselves and report successful results (if any)...

P.S.
The gear used is what I have in my study, BTW (listed in my profile).

 

^^^ Actually, there was no chance of me guessing since I clearly heard the elevated noise (due to dithered quantization) coming from a downrezzed to 16-bit close-to-silence excerpt (with higher than usual amplifier volume setting). This, however, is totally expected & doesn't change the fact that differences between 24- & 16-bit incarnations of the same material are much harder (if at all possible) to reliably discern under normal listening conditions with true musical content used.

 

Check this out guys:

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-o...ful-109496883039.html?soc_src=mags&soc_trk=tw

 

I thought it was fear of buying outdated products

 

OMFG...theres only 2 others threads that start with the same link.