
The Pono Player and Promises Fulfilled - oscarhong
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/pono-player-and-promises-fulfilled
======
fredfoobar42
For a counterpoint, based on actual science, make sure to read [Daniel
Rutter's excellent "Righteous
Bits"]([http://www.dansdata.com/gz143.htm](http://www.dansdata.com/gz143.htm)),
and his [responses to the
responses]([http://www.dansdata.com/gz145.htm](http://www.dansdata.com/gz145.htm)).

I listen to MP3s, I listen to AACs from the iTunes store, I listen to FLAC
(concert bootlegs), and I listen to vinyl with a tube amp. I cannot tell the
difference, even on quality studio headphones, between a v0 MP3, an iTunes
256kbps AAC, and a FLAC file. I can tell a difference with vinyl and the amp,
but while it's different, I would hesitate to say it's _better_, let alone
assume the reason why.

~~~
bigdubs
I love vinyl not for the audio quality but for the ritual and commitment of
putting the needle down on a side and listening to the whole thing. It's a
really nice, anti-add way to listen to music.

~~~
TheCondor
That's what is different. When you bought an album, brought it home and put it
on, you really relished the moments listening, you put more effort in to
listening, you put more effort in to experiencing the entire product... The
song ordering, the album art, etc..

U2 gave away a new album last year, it has song great U2 tracks in it, it's a
strong album from them. The entire discussion about it revolved around not the
music but the delivery. Not about them getting old or how they've only made
crap since War or any of the other slags on them, it was about the delivery.
Maybe it's always been this way but it seems like the appreciation is going
down. Seems like in a few years, people won't buy dedicated audio equipment,
not generally at least.

~~~
bigdubs
Yeah most of my friends are content with a laptop with Spotify and a cheap
pair of headphones. Definitely a different mentality.

------
Chipchipperson
"In terms of its sound, I would say that for me it's without equal in the
realm of hand held portable players in terms of pleasurable listening...When I
compare it side-by-side in blind tests with other players I find its smooth
yet resolving treble to be its stand-out characteristic. "

" This test pitted the Pono Player against a Galaxy Note 4 and an Apple iPad
Air. This was actually the hardest test to get a reliable grip on identifying
the various players... Because differences were so small I had to rely more on
a subjective approach—just relaxing and sensing how the music was affecting
me. Usually it would take me 5-15 minutes of listening and slowly switching
back and forth between sources before I could determine which was the Pono
Player."

One of these things is not like the other...

~~~
gwern
> "Usually it would take me 5-15 minutes of listening and slowly switching
> back and forth between sources before I could determine which was the Pono
> Player."

Yes, I'm not clear on how his blinding setup works, but this sounds like the
sort of activity that could easily unblind oneself.

~~~
SloopJon
> I'm not clear on how his blinding setup works

Search for "Blind Testing" on the first page: "I use a passive three-way
switch to route the outputs from the three sources to a pair of headphones.
... without looking, I scramble the cables in each hand."

~~~
gwern
Can that possibly work? I would not expect cables to be perfectly
indistinguishable (human touch is pretty sensitive), if only because of slight
differences in tension/position/direction.

------
joshuapants
This should be required reading for anyone in this discussion:
[https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-
young.html](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html)

------
al2o3cr
"The articles that have been published by others criticizing Pono for lauding
the virtues of the small differences between file resolution or between a Pono
Player and an iPod are ignoring the importance of subtlety in an art form."

TL;DR - Don't you bring your SCIENCE in here, I like being conned with
audiophool nonsense!

------
stolio
I almost get a kick out of the cries of "science" debunking the Pono player.

Yes, a 192k playback sampling rate is a joke and maybe even superstitious.
There's not much of a reason for anything to play back at over 96k and many
argue 41k is sufficient for mixed/mastered material. Point granted.

However good engineering is most definitely not a joke. Using higher quality
DAC's (digital-to-analog converters) and better designed circuitry, spending
the extra few pennies and dollars here and there to get the parts with lower
tolerances, designing the shape of the product around the circuits instead of
cramming circuits into the shape of the product, these are the exact things I
would expect to see in a better music player.

~~~
badsock
The thing is, we've long past the point where it's a difficult task to exceed
the the perceptual limits of the human ear. Even the middle-of-the-road DACs
are indistinguishable from perfection now, and the rest of the circuit is just
ensuring that any noise in the power supply and the output traces are below a
certain threshold - not trivial, but the industry has built techniques and for
doing this in much, much more demanding applications than audio reproduction,
and so it's not like you have to use exotic components or circuit design
techniques.

Yes, there's lots of crappy audio kit out there, but it's not hard to get
superfluously good stuff either.

I think people just liked the fact that in the 60's and 70's you could make a
hobby out of actively pursuing a better sound in amplifiers, and are
disappointed that some time in the 80's it became possible to buy gear that
was indistinguishable from perfection, and these days it's not even expensive.

Neil Young should have focused on headphones, or speakers - that's an area
where there's still detectable amounts of distortion. But that would require
something more difficult that attaching a big branding effort to a solved
problem.

~~~
stolio
Isn't this the middlebrow dismissal we're supposed to avoid here? I'm not sure
where the ubiquitous, portable, high-quality music players are that make Pono
redundant. Are you referring to smartphones?

If you look at actual studies of the performance of smartphone audio you see
it's not a trivial task to get right[0], if we're seeing problems on a large
company's flagship model like Samsung's Galaxy S5 then this isn't a solved
problem.

Playback at home while plugged into a 120V power grid with equipment that only
needs to fit into a shoebox is a bit different from playback from a device
that's simultaneously a computer and a phone which also happens to have severe
space and power constraints (and a giant color touch-screen to boot.)

[0] - [http://www.anandtech.com/show/8078/smartphone-audio-
testing-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8078/smartphone-audio-testing-htc-
one-m8-and-samsung-galaxy-s5/3)

------
ricardobeat
> It's my feeling that your average contemporary hand-held device is pretty
> darn good these days.

Sums up the subject really well.

