PONO Hands-on Review

That was a good review, I use the same Etymotic ER4 that guy talked about and they sound great. I can't understand this direction that headphones are going that need Apogee speakers level type of amplifiers to drive them. Headphones are meant to be listened to on the go. I guess if you want to carry around something like this.... great? The Pono is already pretty bulky, glad they didn't make it even more just to accommodate an amp for those Apogee type headphones.

 

Hookers and blow, likely. My Uncle is a degenerate scumbag; every family has got one, yeah?

 

At a minimum, I would say his lifestyle has an 80s feel to it. Sounds like he needs a little vice makeover for the 21st century.

 

Ummm, well, The Young family has one . But when you can write songs that sell you get to remake yourself as an audio god.

 

Oxycontin, then? ;op

 

It doesn't...I have one, and after the comments made in another thread on Pono here I am holding my tongue. All I will say is, my Tom Petty model is exactly what I was hoping for in a portable device. The converters on the Pono exceeded the quality of my iPod Classic, hands down. I am very happy with mine.

For those who keep mentioning it, gapless playback is on their list of things to accomplish and sent a memo via kickstarter yesterday saying that they are hoping to make it a reality in early 2015. For those who doubt the quality of this product, wait until it is in full production. While you wait I will be enjoying my yet-to-be-released-to-the-general-public hi def version of "Wildflowers" on my Pono (and yes, it sounds phenomenal!)

 

Hookers are a timeless commodity!

 

How could they not have implemented this from the get go? If they had bothered to investigate the portable community, or the audio community for that matter, they would have known about the screaming and holler for years about the players that don't feature gapless. Everyone has had to implement gapless. Jeuss! What an oversight!

 

Yep! Even more so when you consider the demographic. Woodstock with gaps! Good one!

 

Because software development takes time. And features get prioritized and scheduled during development. They plan to do gapless. They'll get to it. They're still in active beta mode and is not feature complete yet.

 

I wonder, will there be a way to load DIY needle drops into this gadget?

 

YES! I would do them in 24/192 to get the most benefit.

 

I agree it was an oversight but I believe they wanted to get the players out as soon as possible and they focused on the unit sounding good. I am normally one to complain about something like this but I can wait...This is a company being built from the ground up. There are realities in life and in business. Should I be so forgiving? All I know is I love how it sounds

 

Gapless play? Huh? Wah? Le'me finish this J dude!

 

Of course -- I've already done this.

The unit will play just about anything you put on it -- FLAC, ALAC, WAV, MP3, AIFF, and AAC. It doesn't care what the source was.

 

No you cannot. I tried. It seems they are on track for January launch. They show a counter that is around 1.7M tracks. I heard Neil say they were trying to get to about 2.5M before launch. But once they do, I will try out a few.

 

Got a notice that my Tom Petty LE has shipped and will be arriving from China in Ireland on Friday. I have a busy weekend so I will have a limited opportunity to get to grips with it. For what its worth, I have an ADL Esprit which has an ADC and DAC and I hope to transfer some of my most valued and treasured vinyl albums onto to the PONO ay 24/96 resolution. I suspect this will be some improvement over my iPhone 4. I also have quite a few DVD-As and have all the McCartney 24/96 downloads save the Wins over America album. I have therefore quite a bit to test it with. Secondly I will try it through my set up, which I think it quite respectable in the hifi stakes. Roksan Xerses 20 turntable, Tabriz Zi Arm, Van Den Hul MC Super 1 cartridge, Airtight 2 Power Amp, ADL Esprit as pre-amp, Van Den Hul Phono Stage, Classe CDP 300 cd/dvd-a/dvd-v player, Quad 2805 speakers, REL S3 subwoofer and Nordost Heimdell speaker cable, Nordost and Wireworld interconnects.

As soon as I have had a chance to evaluate the sound I will post here. I for one was convinced Neil Young was serious about the sound when Ayre came on board. I cannot see how they would risk their reputation by being associated with a turkey. Most of the serious opposition is way more expensive. Astell and Kern start at over twice the price of a Pono.

Finally I will be using Sennheiser headphones, I forget which iteration, I think 545, not the top ones but it is quite respectable. Heres hoping I get it on Friday!!!

 

Wow - that really takes me back! My first portable digital player, and I think it held about 30 songs....

 

Nice - I posted about my Petty model in another thread here. I'm loving it. yeah the software is a bit frustrating but I called Pono and they helped sort it out very quickly.

It really is essentially a portable stereo component. I may actually bail on getting a Dac since I can now use the Pono rather than running music from my laptop (I'm sure a nice Dac would best it, but for me, this will do nicely. Matter of fact, it's one of the main reasons I bought it. Sounds great through my main rig. What really shocked me was the fact that my second pair of crappy earbuds sound better.. I don't know how that's even possible but I swear it's true. My main Audio Technica ATM50's or whatever that number is are getting a bit worn (headband is losing almost all the pleather) so I'm due for new cans - eyeballing the Shure SRH 1540's.

They need to improve stuff of course, the screen rotation is too sensitive to movements, if you retag a track purchased from Pono (fix a title or whatever) the blue light doesn't work, if you hit the circle button while the screen is dark it will stop the music, whereas hitting the plus or minus button lights up the screen first, then another hit does the volume. Little nitpicks, but the dude at Pono said they are very aware of many, many issues and are obviously working hard to fix them.

Bought my first Lp from the Pono store- new Robert Plant on a total whim. That's now on my list of best releases this year. Just amazing. The Petty Lp's are sounding insane. It's really the first time I've heard Wildflowers on a decent system. (only previously heard it in my car)

They just mentioned they are coming out with headphones that they claim are revolutionary (I know...hyperbole... ) but still - could be very interesting.

 

I'm eyeballing one of the Oppo planar headphones for use with the Pono. Mainly because I generally like the sound of planar headphones. Oppo recently announced a PM-3 model that is a closed planar headphone. Due to be available around January or so. And that's really got my eye right now. There's a head-fi thread about them here: http://www.head-fi.org/t/737787/opp...and-ha-2-portable-headphone-amplifier-at-rmaf

 

You better make sure it will power it. That Leo Laporte review doesn't fill me with reassurance that the pono has a powerful amp. He said when using some phones he keeps it at 75% and for his HiFi Man planars -- all the way up. All the way up? What? Who runs any device like that? Let's talk distortion. I don't like pushing any amp more than 50 or 60% full tilt. Maybe Leo is deaf?

 

Now that is a HE man's rig!

 

The Oppo headphones are much more efficient than the HiFiMan HE-560. They'll likely do just fine from the Pono. There's also the option of running the headphones balanced from the Pono which will give the headphones more power. Leo didn't try the HE-560 in balanced mode. Pono was demoing the early prototypes with Audeze LCD-2 headphones. Then later prototypes with Audeze LCD-X and LCD-XC headphones (they're a little more efficient than the LCD-2).

Depending on the amp design it can be OK to run the amp at 100% volume and still have enough headroom to avoid distortion.

 

so to the people who have gotten one of these, is the music from the pono store any better? or is it the same mastering that exists on cd and other places already?

 

I have not purchased anything yet from the Pono store, but from browsing the titles and the bit depth/sampling rates states, it appears that the HiRez titles are the same masterings as what's available on HDTracks. Not sure if they have HiRez stuff that's NOT in HDTracks. If it's not available in HiRez, they're selling standard Redbook in FLAC.