
Neil Young's PonoPlayer: The Emperor Has No Clothes - aaronbrethorst
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html
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leonroy
Bit of an invalid test since the files played through both players were not-
identical. The iPhone had tracks from iTunes, the Pono tracks from the Pono
Store.

Any difference in loudness will give the edge to the track which is mastered
at a higher volume. That's precisely why tracks are mastered to go louder - it
helps sell records but unfortunately on any half decent hifi sounds like mush:
[http://www.leonroy.com/blog/2013/04/buying-hi-def-music-
toda...](http://www.leonroy.com/blog/2013/04/buying-hi-def-music-today-is-a-
crapshoot/)

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swish41
The problem is that 90% of their 2 mil song catalog is still only CD Quality
(16 bit / 44.1 Khz). 256 / 320 Kbps vs. CD Quality is pretty hard to
differentiate for most people. But 256 / 320 Kbps vs. 24 bit / 96 Khz should
be fairly obvious.

And of course, you need a good pair of headphones.

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thebear
The article keeps harping on the claim that humans cannot distinguish between
16 bit/44.1kHz and higher resolution. But the data from the author's
experiment suggests the opposite: a good majority of his subjects were able to
distinguish between the two resolutions. It's just that most of those picked
the "wrong" one as their favorite. That's not surprising. Most people these
days don't know what natural sound quality is, because all they ever listen to
is recorded or grossly amplified music. As a consequence, the sharp and edgy
sound of low-res audio sounds better to them than the softer and smoother
high-res. That's of course a legitimate choice, but it is not a reason to
dismiss high-res recordings.

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yoasif_
[http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-
young.html](http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html)

