PONO Hands-on Review

Prices vary -- Harvest (which is 24/192 and sounds fab, I can vouch for it from the DVD-A) is $21.79 in HiRez. Comes A Time is 16/44.1 and costs $14.29. Neither of those is selling individual tracks. Beck's Sea Change has HiRez (24/96) tracks at $2.79 apiece, or the whole album for $18.29. Mutations (16/44.1) is $9.29 for the whole album or $1.99 per track. Morning Phase is also 16/44.1, but it's $15.29 for the whole thing or $1.99 per track. Miles' Kind of Blue is $17.99 in HiRez (24/96) and you can buy all the tracks individually except "All Blues" (probably because it's over 10 minutes) for $1.99 each.

So that kinda sorta answers your question and probably raises more. Some tracks are available individually, some aren't. Nothing I've seen is less than Redbook. Price varies according to title and resolution, I don't know the criteria that determines price.

I'm ripping my DVD-As and checking out HDTracks. If I really feel the need to load up some Redbook titles, I'll just rip them from CD. That'll hold me until some interesting HiRez offerings start coming from the store.

 

I just checked HDtracks on KOB. Same price for 96/24 but you can't buy any tracks individually on HDtrackes. I guess this library is a kind of work-in-progress that will fill out over time. Thanks for the detailed info. Sounds like you're having fun!

 

Yeah, it's my guess that the folks in Pono-land are hanging on for dear life with this rollout. The Kickstarter players aren't all delivered yet, the library isn't ready yet, and to be honest, a lot of music fans are just a demanding pain in the butt. I feel for the folks taking the brunt of it.

My experience has been nothing but a pleasant surprise. I was told my player wouldn't arrive until December. I received no notice that it had shipped. The doorbell rang, and there was the UPS man with the box.

And it really sounds great with the HiRez stuff. They got that part right. The only downside for me is I don't have a BluRay player on my PC for ripping the stuff I've bought recently, like Marley's Legend, XTC's Drums and Wires, The Yes Album, and Quadrophenia. Gonna have to fix that pretty soon. After that I'll have to figure out the best way to make good-sounding HiRez transfers from SACD and LP.

 

I am so glad this kind of behavior is being called out on this subject!!!
I see NOTHING wrong with any attempt at upping the ante as far as sound quality goes. I don't understand why it is seen as wrongheaded.

 

Ok - Mr. Tom Petty Pono arrived....I still hate that big shipping company that shall remain nameless...

First thoughts... it's a lot lighter than I thought it would be - almost too light (i.e.) plasticky feeling, but that's just me...
Not the greatest UI but it's ok for what it is... let's face it - you just need to find an album and hit play.... and that is easy..

They do need to fix gapless - I have yet to load an album that has a gapless section... but everyone says it doesn't do it properly.. I'll have to be patient ( I take back my nasty Ebaying comments but will still only give them till March 1st to fix that - I'm pretty confident it will be fixed sooner.

I have yet to load a large library to see how easy it is to find stuff. The songs tab lets you sort by numerous parameters. You can create playlists on the fly from the unit - bit of a plus for me.

Quite simple to use - you really don't need to read the directions but they are very good. The door to the sd card is very flimsy - many people will be ripping that right off guaranteed. By far the biggest letdown of the design. You need a fingernail to access it. The screen is a bit sensitive to rotating. I will probably be locking my orientation...

I'm not going to A/B cause I'm too lazy. I've never heard a Hi Rez file on my rig (Quad 22l2s's, Exposure 2010s Integrated, VPI Scout, PS Audio Phono and various mid level cabling) and lemme tell ya - it's amazing. This unit just may save me from buying a Dac... I hate to say it, but my vinyl could be in serious trouble, but for me I kinda knew that day was coming. Too early to tell, but I do need a break from flipping vinyl. Most of my lp's are ripped anyway (redbook only) - I have yet to download the software and purchase anything. Will do that tonight to play around and I might purchase the new Floyd (from HD tracks... lol as it's not available on the beta Pono store).

I'll have to let the nice but crazy folk at Head-Fi do the A/Bing with the Astell and Kerns and other stuff. Hopefully Jude will do a full video review - he really knows his stuff.

I'm thinking pricing is going to be the big issue on the Pono store. I'm hoping it drives prices lower but from what I'm hearing, prices are all over the place and make no sense but again, the store is in early beta...

Overall - I'm very pleased. I will be buying lots of high rez stuff -

Wildflowers sounds insanely good as I type this.

A higher place indeed....

Get thee a Pono and don't look back...

yes - this is not an objective review cause I don't do that... it sound awesome dude!!

totally awesome. !!!

You can listen to music or you can waste time and hang with the idiots at Hydrogen audio... your pick..


some pho toes......

 

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Say it isn't so!!!

 

That would be "ain't" ... Joe.

 

I hope the product is a success. It might actually get more people to care about Hi-Rez sound.

 

You might notice that they've been silent for a good while now.

As I see it, I took a calculated risk when I signed up for the Kickstarter. If it ended up being only a HiRez FLAC player that sounded pretty good, I'd be out $400 (I blew that much doing 69 MPH in a 55 last week, but that's a whole 'nother story). It turns out that it's a HiRez FLAC player that sounds pretty excellent. You might notice that all the 1st person reports so far are trending in that direction. I'm curious to hear more feedback from some people with more experience with high-end DACs and such. My guess is that it competes at the very least.

I find it interesting what they didn't include with the Pono -- there are NO equalizer settings at all. Anywhere. That says a lot when you think about it. You're getting un-futzed with sound, and they trusted their circuits to deliver the goods. And they do.

 

can i still buy a PONO?

how much are they? more than the kickstarter?

 

They're now doing pre-orders for Q1 of 2015. The price for the "regular" version ($399) is the same as the price for the Kickstarter "artist limited edition" series. So same player, but less fancy outer shell. They say you'll get Neil Young's autograph on a certificate if you pre-order by Dec 15th, if that matters to you.

 

Nice shots Cwsiggy. That silver Pono version actually looks kind of sharp. Good to hear your liking it. If the player was functional with digital signals input/output plus DSD, I might have been interested. But I'm definitely looking forward to the music store opening up. I think Pono player folks are making way more out of the critical posts from non Pono player owners. Some are a bit out of line but others are very forthright. No need to make a big deal out of it, I'm sure these folks are not interested in a Pono player in any way shape or form. What matters is that you enjoy your new toy.

 

Me, personally...I'm more interested in better mastering than 24/96+

 

Hopefully some of that will also be available in the store.

Someone who received a Foo Fighters LE Pono stated 'Wasting Light' in 24/192 (included with that LE player) sounds amazing.

Hopefully that means the mastering is different than the DR 5 cd.

 

They've announced there will be a Deluxe Pono released early next year. No further info provided at this point, but maybe some of those features.

They also announced Pono headphones for early next year. Presumably they will utilize both output jacks.

 

Pono player seems to deliver the goods. After months and months of hype and commentary, I am glad to hear it.

 

Cheap shot.

 

I think I'm going to go broke buying lots of high rez stuff online.

ok...

 

I hope you guys can take a joke!

 

I'm all for a good threadcrap Crazy, the effort put into something like that

 

The video demonstrates why he doesn't understand the purpose or need for something like Pono. The video measures a DR12 but the vocal sounds like a DR4. Sound quality? What's that. It was painful (literally) to listen to. I made it through the first 30 seconds and stopped. Then downloaded the audio to measure the DR. Yikes.

 

Pono sent out a Kickstarter update last night. Update #50. Had this to say about gapless:

Gapless on Android can have some development challenges. One of the other portable manufacturers had problems with getting gapless working and later got it working with a firmware update. I forget which manufacturer (Fiio? iBasso? someone else?). They mentioned that the difficulty is that they needed to write a replacement for part of the Android OS in order to do gapless. That's not something you typically just whip up and code in a weekend. I suspect Pono is having the same problem. They'll get it worked out. It just takes some development time.

I do hope that they'll support gapless with mp3 too. Lossy needs gapless too. There's things like Grateful Dead shows and other live shows at Archive.org that are only available in lossy. Those downloads need gapless.

 

2nd that, I noticed the same. On various boards I think I've read roughly 6 unique first impressions. My rough count is that 5 exceeded expectations and 1 said his intention all along was to resell it on ebay but he still kept it for now (something about being the only solution to play a certain format for him).

So they like the dogfood, now the question is can they get beyond the early adopters. My attention is on the library since that should work with any player and will expand the available market. I think you have to be cautiously impressed by his determination to promote better audio. I dismissed his ability to follow through years ago, but here it is. Whether he succeeds or not. All firmly IMO.

 

Leo Laporte reviews the Pono music player

 

I guess people like me are just disappointed that gapless playback continues to be a problem with the launch of new players. I've had ipod, zune, cowan players and each had issues with gapless at various times, and this is going back several years.