[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] PCWorld (IDG News) Reviews Pono Player

[w3wilkes]

I guess this guy didn't drink enough Kool-Aid.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2871956/neil-youngs-pono-a-ghost-in-the-music-machine.html#tk.nl_today



2 Duets - 1 for upstairs and 1 for downstairs
Rock Solid with LMS 7.8.0 and WHS 2011
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[ralphpnj]

I really love the "Pono Music Quality Spectrum" graphic - a classic
example of using information in all the wrong ways. And if the graphic
wasn't enough to show you how badly misinformed the folks at Pono seem

Music in the Pono store starts at regular CD quality, or, to get
technical, 44.1kHz/16-bit. That means the analog signal of the sound is
sampled at 44.1 kilohertz, which is a unit of electromagnetic wave
frequency. The 16-bit number is a way of representing the accuracy of
how well the digital music was sampled. The higher the sampling and bit
rates, according to PonoMusic, the better the sound.

Although, to be fair I don't know if the above is taken directly from
Pono or just a badly done paraphrase.

So for $400 we get yet another priority music player but with no wifi,
no bluetooth and no digital out but we do get yet another music app for
one's desktop.

Now comes the real test: Will the high end audio world embrace the
outsider Pono, which clearly buys into all the high end misinformation,
or will they circle the wagons and defend the established purveyors of
high resolution audio. Seems like a real challenge since defending
something like HDTracks (who have pumped lots of advertising dollars
into the various high end audio magazines over the years) while trashing
Pono would be rather difficult. Hopefully lots of fur will fly.



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[cliveb]

Let's assume for the moment that the hi-res music available from the
Pono store does actually sound great. That will be because it's been
mastered properly.

What now needs to happen is for someone to take a hi-res file from Pono
and convert it to something like Lame V0 or V1. Also take the mangled CD
master and upsample it to 24/96 (or 24/192). Then sit Neil Young down
and ask him to pick his preference in a blind test. When he picks the
MP3 file, perhaps he'll then actually begin to understand. (May as well
get David Crosby to take part too, given his recent comments about
MP3).

I wonder if there anyone in "the industry" who understands the
difference between dynamic compression and data compression and has Neil
Young's ear? If there is, they really ought to try and do some
educating.



Transporter -> ATC SCM100A
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[Archimago]

There's of course this nugget:
http://nypost.com/2015/01/11/do-consumers-really-care-about-digital-quality/

The thing is, they know internally at least... But when "artistic
license" has been taken so far that it has become the cornerstone of the
business venture, a guy like Neil Young probably doesn't have much
choice than to stay the course. I suspect that for many people (probably
many here), if Young comes out and admits it's more about mastering than
bitrates, we'd rejoice and thank him for his honesty because *then we
can really get somewhere*!

However, I don't know if his company can handle the truth. And do the
record companies want the truth be out that they've sucked at
remastering for the last 2 decades? (Another obvious unspoken truth.)



Archimago's Musings: (archimago.blogspot.com) A 'more objective'
audiophile blog.
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