Is Pono no more?

The Pono post mortems are pretty slanted, IMO. The fact is that this was a Kickstarter project that resulted in people getting portable Ayre players with fully balanced output stages and proper line out options. That’s pretty amazing for Kickstarter. Many Kickstarter projects I’ve been involved with have produced garbage, and one even took all our money and never produced anything! Side note, I don’t do Kickstarter anymore except for small donations to projects I think deserve a little help.

I definitely think the Pono marketing hurt potential sales. Given how many people thought Pono played a proprietary format, and how many people thought it only played 24-bit files, it’s clear that the marketing people botched things badly. Those of us who took the time to research the player understood exactly what it did and did not do, but good marketing either tells you at a glance what the device does or gets you so interested that you seek out more info on your own. The Pono marketing led people to believe the device was far more limited than it really was.

Then there’s the design. A lot of people fret about the design decisions of the Pono, from the shape to the high OI and other elements. Having spent a lot of time with the Pono, since it first came out in fact, I’ve come to the realization that this is not first and foremost meant to be a truly portable device. Yes, it can be used as a portable, but I believe it’s meant to be more of a desktop device or plugged into a system. Let me lay out why:

1. The toblerone design is pretty awful for putting the player in your pocket. What it is amazing for though is for laying the player on a flat surface and being able to operate it and read/touch the screen without having to pick it up or lean all the way over it as you would with an iPod style design. Because of the triangle shape, the screen and buttons are angled toward you in a very easy to use and attractive way when it’s on a desk or other flat surface. It goes from annoying as a portable to inspired on the desktop.

2. The high OI messes with some BA IEMs and can also be detrimental to lower powered full size headphones. It’s great for high impedance dynamics, most of which you’re not going to wear while walking around town or on your commute. It’s great for listening to those cans at your desk.

3. The incredible output power in balanced is wasted on low power IEMs and high efficiency full sized headphones, which is predominantly what people use for portable players. It’s a great boon for those who use power hungry full sized cans, again not something you’d normally want to wear while out and about.

4. The awful battery life, made even worse when running balanced, makes this a poor option for one’s sole portable player. You either have to live with the player dying quickly or you have to carry a battery pack for it, making it quite inconvenient. When at home, you can simply leave it plugged in or you can top it off as necessary. This is also exacerbated by the fact that the Pono doesn’t really sound its best unless it’s left on so the components can get nice and warm.

Personally I think the Pono was a dry run for the Ayre Codex, and people who have heard both (including me) generally agree that the Pono sounds like a junior Codex. They even share the same (dumb) two port balanced output. When you look at it that way, getting a NOS one for $200 is really a steal, if you have the right use case for it. If you just want a portable player, I think the Pono has too many caveats and flaws to really be considered.

 

A couple of thoughts:

I don't think high-def video and audio are really comparable. For whatever physiological reason, improved video quality is a lot more obvious to most people than improved audio quality. Probably partly due to the fact that vision is our primary sense, and partly due to the fact that a lot of people listen to a lot of music as "background", as opposed to actively listening.

Add to that, in America (at least), people have always been willing to sacrifice audio quality for convenience (this is probably related to the relatively subtle difference that improved audio quality makes). This was true in the boom-box/walkman days, it was true in the Ipod/MP3 days, and it's true now, in the streaming days.

That said, the current level of interest in vinyl indicates that people are, hypothetically at least, interested in improving the audio quality of the music they listen to. Unfortunately, the popularity of Crosley and other brands suggests that your average consumer still has no idea whether they're listening to good-quality audio or not (see also: Beats).

In any case, though, if Neil, et al, were really interested in selling a high-quality portable audio player on the mass-market, they could have done it, but it would have required (a) some way to load music onto the device without plugging it in, (b) a more user-friendly form factor, and ideally (c) support for high-quality streaming.

All of this would have been possible, and it sounds like the Pono hardware would have been capable of delivering better-quality sound than most people were used to listening, but also seems like (as others have suggested) they were more focused on selling music from the Pono store than selling the hardware. Pity, then, in retrospect, that they couldn't even keep the Pono store open.

 

Too clumsy for a shirt pocket: creates an unattractive bulge just about everywhere you would carry it on you.

Also (IIRC), no "lock" functionality, so that any unexpected twist and turn in your pocket would hit a pono navigation button.

 

Lock functionally has to be turned on in the settings

 

Okay, thanks. (so, no.... "I didn't just change albums. I'm just happy to see you.")

 

"Is that a Pono in your pocket..."

 

Great summary, Merrick!

 

This might be the moment where I have to let my cynicism slip and suggest that nobody ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American public.

I can definitely see where you're coming from, but I'd suggest that it's an ignorant public rather than a public disinterested in audio quality that's on display here. Near as I can tell, people are sold on the idea that, for example, Beats are quality headphones providing high quality playback (louder = better). Not being given a point of comparison or feeling any particular need to A/B keeps the obvious (to us) deficiencies of these products well tucked away. This is why I think the marketing is at fault.

Also, Pono could have done a brisk business had they managed to partner with a brick and mortar store. The fact that it was online only took out a lot of the potential, "What the hell is this thing? Oh, that's cool!" impulse purchases or just word of mouth to build sales in customers who don't pay attention to Kickstarters or Neil Young.

This is all a lot of conjecture, but I remain convinced the right product with the right pitch would get high quality audio back out there. Problem is, as things stand, the companies with the most visibility are the ones churning out the cheapest, nastiest products available - though often while charging a premium, so it's clear people have no reservations about spending when it comes to music.

Humans are weird. What else can I say?

 

Maybe most people don’t really care about sound quality. And making comments about the perceived stupidity of the average consumer only reinforces the widely-held image of the snobby audiophile. That’s not the best way to win anyone over.

Concerning the Pono itself, the marketing for the thing was ridiculous from the beginning, especially those videos of well-known musicians cruising around in Neil’s electric car gawking about how fantastic the Pono sounded on the car system.

 

I curious what B&M store you go in and buy any portable player. I look at BestBuy.com and all they have in stores is the SanDisk Clip.

 

The problem is that most people simply can't hear the difference between a 320 kb mp3, redbook, and hi-rez. And when I say many...I mean it. As a musician myself I've played this game with many engineers and other musicos. Most people simply can't hear the difference. If they could...portable hi-rez could be huge. I myself have come full circle from believing hi-rez was the thing of the future back into admitting that I myself cannot tell the difference in a blind test when compared to ordinary redbook. I accept that there are sets of amazing ears out there that may be able to tell the difference, but I think they are an extreme rarity. (IMO and all the other caveats that you seem to have to include).

 

Well said. I'm in complete agreement.

 

The decisions made in the design and construction of the Pono player border on criminal.

 

I agree and I think there's a good reason for that; visual improvements are so much easier to see. The jump from VHS to DVD was impossible to not notice. Same thing with the jump to BR (assuming a properly done DVDs/BRs). When I see 4K...well, how bad do my eyes have to be for me to not notice an improvement?!

With audio, it's not the same. There are instances where I can hear a difference with little effort but otherwise, I have to really concentrate a lot of the times. What's the bass sound like, what's the treble like. It's not as immediate as it is with a DVD after watching nothing but VHS tapes.

 

Three years now with my Pono; best $300 I ever spent.

Edit: Had to do some checking, but it's been three years (campaign models shipped Dec 2014)

 

With BluRay and DVD upgrades from VHS I feel like the studios put in the effort so that a decidedly improved product was released more often than not. The Video/Audio upgrade on the disc were an improvement over the VHS released, and the studios also often stuffed a variety of bonus content onto the disc as well. I would also point out that DVDs and BluRays have also come hand in hand with an overall lowering of the price of home video media. Remember when a VHS tape would be priced for rental only and would exceed $100.

With Audio Hi Res I feel like more often than not the labels are *NOT* putting in the effort (or expense) to release a decidedly improved product than the original CD or LP release. Frequently it is arguable that a deficient master is used that is in fact WORSE than the original. There is often no bonus material included, plus the cost of most HiRes releases is roughly double the comparable CD cost. Finding a good HiRes release is something like finding a needle in a haystack, and certainly seems the exception and not the rule.

I really loved my Pono while I had it in heavy rotation, and it helped to re-enforce the jump from lossy to lossless files for my library backup, but in no way did it provide the level of perceivable quality bump for the music that DVD/Blu/4K did for video (for most users).

 

@Runicen may not realize Pono was sold at Frys Electronics. But point taken that a regional US store only was not a good business model.

 

Pono was also sold at Kmart.

 

Neil should have set up a little farmstand near the entrance to his ranch and sold it there. Along with 8 tracks of "Time Fades Away".

 

I bought one of the chrome limited edition Pono players during the Kickstarter campaign, as well as a black one after the campaign. I also recently picked up a few NOS Pono players for $200 each. So I'll be listening to my Pono players for years to come.

Frankly, I get the impression that most of the people around here who are dissing the Pono player never actually listened to one. They don't know what they're missing. Is it the best portable digital player ever made? I wouldn't go that far. But I do think it gives you the biggest bang for the buck. A fully balanced portable DAP with Ayre circuitry with a retail price of $399. Tough to beat that.

My biggest complaint is that the Pono store should have carried accessories for the player - in particular, carrying cases and balanced headphone and line-out cables. My limited edition model case with a nice leather case, but the case was never available separately. And balanced cables were a bit hard to come by. But I did finally managed to find some toblerone shaped glasses cases that work well with the Pono player. And I have a pair of balanced line out cables from Anticable, and a pair of balanced headphone cables from Audioquest. So I'm set.

 

Actually, he did. You weren't aware of that?

 

The Pono is one of the few portables that has the sound quality that allows me to hear the benefits of high-res. Remarkable for a $399 portable. There are more expensive desktop headphone setups that don't do that. Part of what I hear with high-res is a sort of envelope or pillow around the sound. That envelope is there with good high-res. It's not there with even the best CD res. The Pono is able to let me hear and enjoy that envelope and pillow. There is lots of audio gear that sounds good but doesn't do that envelope thing with high-res. The ability to do that envelope thing is a differentiator even in $1000+ headphone setups. I've heard some expensive setups that don't do it. Gear that is able to do that envelope thing is something special. I put a lot of effort in to making sure my big headphone setup does it. I want my portable listening to also give me some of that.

 

Hi, please make a visit over to the old Pono Forum and search for posts by Slimpants. He and some others resolved the slow transfer and the intermittent playback before it goosed the player completely. Basically your are running a couple of command line filesystem lines with flags, takes a bit of time but works. Worst that can happen is you buy another for $200.
Good luck

 

he sold all that stuff last week.

 

"a southern man don't need him around anyhow" -Lynyrd Skynyrd