Once I tried balance mode with surf cables and my Sennheiser/massdrop 6xx, I figure there’s no point in going back. Great to bring to the office or when traveling. A 400gb memory card helps too...
Yes it is hard to go back after hearing the balance mode. What other portable DAPs offer that setting?
Yes, the PonoPlayer does spoil you once you hear it with good balanced headphones. But don't assume that a different balanced DAP or balanced desktop amp/DAC combo will get that same style of benefit in balanced mode or deliver similar sound as the PonoPlayer. When picking a DAP or desktop all-in-one, concentrate on finding one that sounds good. And not whether it is balanced or not. Single-ended headphone amps can also sound very good. And properly designed, a single-ended DAP could sound better than a similarly priced balanced DAP.
Does anyone know if their USB charging cable is standard issue? When unplugging it from the Pono after a recent charge, it separated at the point of connection. Nothing got stuck inside the player, thankfully. Hopefully it's something that's easily replaced.
I have had my Pono since 2016, still works great. I loved the sound with my regular headphones and an amp. Decided to try balanced cables in April of 2018, and the sound improvement was stunning. I know I overpaid for the cables, someone handmade them and sold them on ebay, but now it is so hard to not hear the music in balanced mode. I never gave the feature much thought, really is worth it. I use Sennheiser HD 700s, they just seem to have a balanced sound themselves. Sadly they are not in production anymore, so I hope they hold out for a bit yet. The Pono is a great player no matter what, but balanced mode is worth checking out.
When I bought the Sony Z7 I thought they were a little over priced for the sound quality, but the fact they came with a balanced cable made them "affordable", and a nice gap filler to go alongside my Sennheiser 650s.
Yeah, luckily the HD 700s were fairly reasonable back then, around $350 I think. The cables ended up costing me $265 in total, probably too much but they have been worth it. As I remember the main cable was about $160, but they I needed the Pono adapter, the same place had both so it seemed the easiest way to go. After the fact I seen some cables were made all in one piece, and were cheaper, but I've been very happy with the sound. They have that OOC plating, maybe they all do. I'm assuming the 650s took the 700s place, are the 650s pretty good sounding? Not planning to get them at the moment, but if my 700s ever gave out I've had the 650s in mind.
No,I think the 650's came before the 700's. I did a short demo of the 700's in a store with the Pono and did not care for them, but they may not have been broke in.
Sorry to bring this thread back up, but just wanted to confirm that a 1TB SanDisk micro SD card will work with the Pono. It gave me a little trouble, got a couple messages saying a file was corrupted, but after the 3rd try it worked great. I remember the 400 GB card did that at first too, with the error messages. So if anyone is on the fence about it, the card works great in the player. I don't know if it is just my Pono but it doesn't seem to have the 3 card cache they talk about, when I put a different card in it takes an hour or so to read. So having this big card saved in the memory is much easier for me.
Just a general tip... Regardless of storage capacity, there are a lot of knock offs on Amazon and EBay that either arrive DOA or significant portions of the memory are corrupted and don’t work. For example, a 200gb cheap card may only have 50gb of storage that actually works. It’s best to check out reviews and make sure you’re getting a genuine article. this is coming from someone who made this mistake!
Thanks for the tip, I've seen those horror stories. This is a genuine SanDisk card, the errors were from the internal memory on the Pono, my fault for not making that clear. The card works great in my Walkman player, but finally wanted to try it in the Pono. It does take a bit to read the card, though I think the last update for the Pono allowed 200 GB cards, so I'm just glad it can handle it. Hope you were able to get your money back! As far as I know, SanDisk is the only legit company producing 1TB cards at the moment, so be wary of any that say 1024 GB, they are knockoffs. But as you said that goes for every size, hope you got a working card in the end.
Thanks for asking - I did get my money back and then bought a legit 400gb memory card. No problems, other than wishing that i could transfer my foobar playlists over to the Pono. I also wish there was a homebrew/mod scene for the Pono’s firmware. Search and a few other features are badly needed...
^^^This. But I imagine that there were never enough Ponos sold to foster a homebrew scene. What I was always hoping the company would do is to implement a DAC mode, where you could change a setting and the Pono would stream from your computer over USB. The FiiO DAP I had before I got my Pono had this feature. Such functionality would even make the Pono compatible with the Neil Young Archives.
Too rich for my blood. I do wonder whether this would as simple as new firmware, if all the hardware to do this is already in the Pono?
I should have put a winking smile after suggesting the Codex. It's multiple multiples of the cost of a PonoPlayer. Adding USB DAC functionality to something like the PonoPlayer is more than just a firmware update. It requires specific hardware support that I doubt is secretly included in the PonoPlayer.
I still use my PONO regularly, which I've done since 2015. I have it line connected to my stereo rig, and I'm convinced it's still the best Hi-Res player of my equipment. My 4k player (OPPO 203) and receiver (Yamaha A770) will play Hi-Res via USB, but none match the sound quality of the PONO, to my ear. Anyway, I'm having my first ever troubles with my PONO. During a listening session, the audio will suddenly drop out for a second or two. The problem is intermittent and not song dependent, as in the same song will play just fine the next day. Restarting the PONO seems to help for a time but not for long. Any thoughts on what the issue could be? Someone above mentioned errors in the PONO's software. Is there any way to address such errors? Thanks in advance.
I love my Pono, still, and agree about the great sound. But I worry about when it's going to crap out, so hope the issue above gets resolved somehow....
wish it were easier to keep what I want to keep on the device, delete some of what I don't want on the device and with JRiver or whatever, I can't figure out how to do this without wiping everything. My issue is, the computer where these original downloads from the Pono store lived got corrupted...
I don't use any software to update tunes on the device - I plug it into my computer, and it reads like two drives, one for the internal storage, one for the SD card. I just delete things that way, and drag new tunes into the drive to add.
I have seen this behavior on occasion. A reboot always resolves it for me. Occasionally it also has trouble reading the micro SD card on startup. Again a reboot (sometimes several ) resolves the issue. I listen to my Pono pretty much daily at work. No major issues to date. Listening at home during quarantine, I get to listen with HD600 headphones in balanced mode which is a plus. At the office I usually use IEMs (unbalanced) because the HD600s mess up my hair
