RIP Pono and Pono Music Store

Hi Tim, can you give me an example of a track with a reverb trail that clearly benefits from 24-bits in normal playback volume in a "massive" way?

Over the years with rock like the aforementioned Grateful Dead, Henley, Fleetwood Mac albums recorded in analogue originally, I've never felt those old recordings couldn't be converted transparently into 16-bits with modern dithering. Happy to be proven wrong with some examples...

A few years ago I did a test between 16-bits vs. 24-bits with actual hi-res digital recordings and the statistics for audibility was far from impressive based on responses I received.

 

I agree. It's the reason I normally shop for downloads at 7Digital and Presto for classical apart from offering 24 bit and 320 Mp3 AND often M4A. I only go to iTunes for the MFiT titles the mastering itself is good on and given up on Amazon.

 

Not to be a pill, but can you give me some examples of these "biggest albums in recent history..."?

Just curious.

 

Producer, writer, and former label CEO Dr. Luke, for one. You're likely thinking of the old veterans. I'm thinking of the current people who produce the pop music of today.

 

Nope. I'm just wondering what the recent big albums are that were only recorded at CD/Redbook quality.

 

MQA is DOA.

 

MQA announces new hardware partnerships | DAR__KO

From earlier today

 

MQA is still not available on any DAC I own or have under consideration as an additional DAC.

 

Granted, Ham, I don't believe MQA is at a stage in its commercial development to where it should be a primary (or secondary, for that matter) consideration when making a DAC purchase, but, there is development in that regard, and there is movement. Now, this isn't the proper place to discuss whether we consider that to be forward movement, or backwards, with regard to the bigger picture, but, there is undoubtedly a roll-out with a certain degree of traction taking place.

 

I usually stay out of debates like this. But just for the fun of it, I ran a little test. I have the original Janus master for the album Charlie - Lines. At the beginning of one song is a delicious chime gliss, an excellent test of high frequencies. I recorded it at 44 and 96 kHz and did a spectral analysis. Indeed, there is stuff above 20 kHz showing on the 96 kHz graph. But know what it was? Harmonic distortion. So I'm thinking that maybe... MAYBE, mind you... the harmonic distortion registers in the brain as "pleasing" somehow.

 

Spacial cues perhaps. The brain is a wonderfully complex signal processing engine. Among other things, it detects very subtle differences in EQ resulting from the bones in our head rolling off frequencies and processes those in order to determine where a sound originated. For example, a sound panned hard right will sound noticeably brighter and louder in the right ear, compared with the sound detected by the left ear. The louder part is expected, but the difference in EQ is more subtle. Then there's tricks that can be played on the brain, most notably Haas Effect imaging. Precedence effect - Wikipedia

 

Suddenly I have a hankering for a Toblerone...

 

My PonoPlayer now takes hours to load a single album...tried a couple of different laptops, same result. Anyone else experience a similar issue?

Edit: Loading on to the internal memory.

 

On loading music on the PonoPlayer, my understanding is that the user loads music on the player via drag-and-drop. Is that how you are loading music on your player?

Since you requested someone who had a similar experience, I'll mention the following:

The only time I've a similar problem (not with a single album but with all music) is when loading FLAC files on my player where they have to be autoconverted to a different format as they are loaded on my player. Once I did that with my iPod Classic (using MediaMonkey) and it took over 8 hours to load all of my music on my player. I had the same issue when using Media Go to load music on my Sansa Fuze although it didn't take as long it was still a slower process than when the files don't have to be autoconverted.

I got around the problem by converting (and maintaining them as a separate library) the files before loading them on my player, then it took less than 1 hour to load my player.

 

I was hoping someone could help with the following: Just bought a 200gb SD card. I bought some albums from Live Phish (ALAC files) and copied the new files to the SD card. I also copied a Bruce Springsteen album (same format) to the new SD card that I already had on my mac.

I already have Phish and Springsteen albums on my Pono player.

When inserting the new SD card (first time introducing an external card to my Pono Player) the device only sees the new Springsteen album but not the Phish ones. Anyone knows what could be the problem?

Thanks!

 

To be debuted at an industry Dog & Pono Show. Look for an alternative streaming service rumored to be named ManeStream. Available at the roadapple store. Hopefully it will stirrup some new business.

 

My player had issues with higher Rez Alac files so I converted them to flac. Cd quality Alac were never an issue.

 

Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
Rush - Moving Pictures
Donald Fagen - Nightfly
Christopher Cross - s/t
Peter Gabriel - Security

All f'ing fabulous sounding records and SH.TV favorites.

Also, this thread...
Early pop/rock full digital recordings

 

Yeah, I know about all those, but I was looking for recent history from Grant.

I believe most recent digital recordings are recorded in greater than 16-bit/44.1 CD quality.

 

Probably so considering even a lowly iPad can record 24/96.

 

Is the card formatted correctly? I just picked up a used Pono and have had no issues with 64gb cards so far, but I just ordered a 200 so we'll see how that goes. All my music has been "side-loaded", and I have FLAC, .dsd, ALAC, and WAV files. Perusing the web and the Pono site I see some reports of dodgy Micro SD cards, so to be safe I ordered my new one directly from SanDisk. They're very good on customer service if you have issues with one of their cards.

John K.

 

I wonder if they would get with Pony and come up with a Walkmane that can play hi-rez files.

 

Hi John,

I was able to fix the issue. The music files had the wrong format but was able to fix them. Now I’m enjoying the new 200gb card. No problems so far.

Thanks for your note

 

AudioMatters: Charlie Hansen - Ayre -- RIP

 

Wow. Sorry to hear this news.