Bracing myself for the predictable "why did you buy a Pono player, sucka" comments, but I'm hoping there is an experienced active Pono user still out there. I am hoping to ask a few questions: Bought a bunch of music from the Pono store. Many titles not available on HDTracks. Hard drive corrupted, couldn't be saved. These albums are still alive and kicking on my Pono player but not backed up anywhere else. Is there a way with JRiver or whatever to transfer songs from my Pono to my new Mac, back up to DropBox, etc? The goal is to move songs on an off my Pono to fit more stuff. I can't really figure out how to delete anything off the Pono either since I am not synching with any known back up. Will someone who knows please help me: Backup Hi-res albums on my Pono player? Delete music off Pono when I have no way to sync it? Replace deleted songs with new hi-res songs/albums? I'll buy you a beer... Thanks!
If you connect your Pono to your MAC, it will appear as an external drive. You can then use Finder to copy all files to where ever you like
I'm still using my Pono Player. I usually add/delete tracks to an SD card and then insert it into the Pono Player. You should have no problem mounting the Pono on your Mac and then dragging the files from the player to your desktop. Then make sure you back them up somewhere.
This is where many of the Pono fans migrated after the official Pono web site shut down. All of the tech info was transferred over. RESono-Community
just pulled out both my ponos (clear and Tom Petty) after a long time Both still work, but when i plug them into my mac it now only charges, it no longer goes into Music Transfer mode, so i can't put music on and off it. Anyone have any suggestions or a similar problem?
They say JRiver 25 (make sure choose either MAC or PC depending on what you have) will work and you have a tool that will allow you to drag it and do what you want with your music. You just have to buy hi-res files from ProStudioMasters or HDTracks, etc versus the Pono Store.
@wilberforce55 The Pono Player is an Ayre product. The CODEX is in fact based on a Pono circuit. I would think that if you contact Ayre, they could steer you in the right direction for repairs.
Just a stab in the dark, based on my experiences with other players, but check the connecting cable you are using is OK. I have a couple of cables that don't carry data, just power - and, in fact, I could have sworn one of them used to. Hope you solve your issue.
Current versions of JRiver Media Center can still connect to the PonoPlayer and transfer files just like the PonoMusic version of JRiver Media Center did. The difference is that you have to manually configure JRiver Media Center to tell it things like what file formats the PonoPlayer supports and other details. The PonoMusic version of JRiver had all of that pre-configured. With JRiver Media Center you have to do that configuration manually. I've got two PonoPlayers. Still work. But file transfers to one of them has gotten slow. It's faster to take the memory card out of the Pono and sync files to it using a card reader plugged into the computer. Which is fine. JRiver Media Center can be configured to do that and treat the memory card as if it was a portable device and sync files to it just like you did with the PonoPlayer plugged into the computer. Since file transfers to the PonoPlayer are slow I keep a standard library of favorite files in the internal memory and leave them be. I don't change what's saved to the internal memory. Instead I sync new files to memory cards. I've got a couple of memory cards that I swap around to change what music I have on the Pono. One card is rock, one is classical, one is a mix of stuff. The hardest part is that the memory cards are so small that you can't label them. It becomes a challenge to keep track of which card is classical, which is rock, and which is the other stuff. The Pono is still a neat DAP and still sounds special. There aren't many DAPs that sound like that. Heck, there aren't many full size kilo-buck headphone rigs that sound like what the Pono does for $300 (plus the cost of balanced headphones and cables).
Hi wilberforce55, What albums did you get on the TomPetty Pono ? I am trying to track down a copy of Wild Flowers HD
+1. I brought my Pono with balanced cables and Sennheiser Massdrop HD-6XX on two vacations this summer, and the sound is superb. Better and much less fatigue than megabuck headphone rigs I have heard.
It's very easy to buy a $2K+ headphone system that sounds impressive at first but ultimately ends up sounding fatiguing. Unless you set out from the start with a goal of building a system for the HD6xx that is relaxed and spacious and non-fatiguing you are very unlikely to end up with a system that does those things. The very neat thing about the Pono is that it has done that system synergy matching for you in something that is portable.
Thanks, H S. If you'll get me a list of file formats, I can probably make that work better. I'm jimh at jriver. My impression is that a lot of Pono Players are still in service. When their site was going down, I grabbed a few posts and put them on our Pono board here: Pono FAQ Firmware is also there. It's too bad the community scattered. Pono sold about 20,000 players in the Kickstarter program and probably that many more again afterward. They had a lot of loyal users.
Are there any programmers out there that are still working on Pono Firmware? I have the latest official version, but I'd like more features - like search!
Still going on walks with my Pono and Audio Technica m50x. Love it! For that purpose i would love a second version of the player where i can 'lock the keys', as to not accidentally push buttons when it's in my pocket, but i don't think Ayre is interested in making any more portable music players...? I haven't heard the 'balanced mode' yet. Since i really like the neutral sound of the M50x, i'll probably go for a modified version of that headphone somewhere in the future
I don't keep any tracks on my Pono's internal memory; that was an exercise in frustration. I always take the microSD card out, put it in my laptop, and do file transfers with JRiver. It's a piece of cake. I never plug the Pono into the computer and use the file transfer mode. Still using the black Pono after all these years with no problems and great sound. The first time I used headphones in balanced mode on the Pono was a revelation.
I liked my Pono s lot until it suddenly died right after they shut down. I need to find a battery to try. I fear that it is something worse as it doesn’t power up on USB either. haven’t really chased it as my TEAC HA-P90 is much more flexible and sounds as good, though it has terrible navigation.
My Pono is one of the best pieces of electronics I have ever purchased. I use mine at home occasionally via a line in to my 2CH rig, and I never fly without it. I used it this past week on an east coast trip. I even bought a spare shortly after Neil decided to fold his tent and go home.
I went through two Pono players in a few short years. The only thing I loved about it was the sound quality. I thought I'd really miss it, but I don't. Not at all. I bought an Astell & Kern player earlier in the year and it's been great for me.
