So, who's getting a Pono?

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Gregg Juke
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Post by Gregg Juke » Thu Mar 13, 2014 8:52 pm

Shakey the Moyel (twitches and blinks eyes)-- Sweetheart, why did you put the Pono on the edge of that table?!?

Elaine-- I just...

StM-- Why did you have to choose the exact edge?!? Sweetheart, do you know what happens when you accidentally brush the Pono off of the coffee table? It breaks. Then, you've got glass (and resistors, various audiophile components, very expensive wire) DEEP, DEEP in the shag!!!...
Etc., etc., etc. ......

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Post by jgimbel » Thu Mar 13, 2014 10:27 pm

ubertar wrote:JERRY: I know, I hated those kids. In fact, I hate anyone that ever had a pono when they were growing up.

MANYA: ..I had a pono.

(The room is dead quiet)

JERRY: ..Well, I didn't really mean a pono, per se.

MANYA: (Angry) When I was a little girl in Poland, we all had ponos. My sister had pono, my cousin had pono, ..So, what's wrong with that?

JERRY: Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just merely expressing..

HELEN: Should we have coffee? Who's having coffee?

MANYA: He was a beautiful pono! And I loved him.

JERRY: Well, I'm sure you did. Who wouldn't love a pono? Who wouldn't love a person that had a pono?

MANYA: You! You said so!
This is the best thing I've seen today.

(btw I'm getting back to you, I'm sure I have a backup of that file, just have to find it which should be very soon, sorry for the delay!)
My first new personal album in four years - pay what you want - http://jessegimbel.bandcamp.com

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digitaldrummer
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Post by digitaldrummer » Fri Mar 14, 2014 7:52 am

Hello Jerry.

Hello Neumann!
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Jeff White
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Post by Jeff White » Fri Mar 14, 2014 8:15 am

chris harris wrote:PoNOPE.

What a joke. I thought he was going to revolutionize THE DELIVERY FORMAT. Now, he's just making a cumbersome portable player with some audiophile-ish components, that plays files that other players already play.

It's really kind of sad. He began his SXSW talk with the ridiculously up-his-own-ass suggestion that he is "rescuing an art form." Please... Just like with his ridiculous electric car project, his heart is in the right place. But, in the end, he just comes off kinda goofy and out of touch. I think all of those artists that hammed it up and made all of those bullshit statements in the Kickstarter video should be ashamed of themselves for enabling him on this waste of time.

Thankfully, while he's got the pull to get tons of famous people to blow smoke about how great this portable player sounded in Neil's car, there are people with a more complete understanding of audio technology who are continuing the work that has produced a pretty steady increase in digital quality over the last couple of decades. Neil will get lots of press. But, this notion that he's revolutionizing ANYTHING is silly.
Amen.

I really love Grandpa Neil, and I still love the fact that he's tinkering on some cool projects out there in the barn. However, I'll stick with my vinyl collection, Lossless audio files, and quality songs that I like.

I hope that Pono makes everyone happy. I'd love to hear it. I'd love for studio-quality audio to be the norm, as well as treated listening environments, great headphone amps and headphones, etc. But I'm not going to turn blue waiting for it to happen. And I'm not ponying up for a Pono.

Jeff
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Fri Mar 14, 2014 8:58 am

kslight wrote: And forget the quality of the compression or the quality of the D/A on your average music player, let's just get everyone to remaster all their loudness war songs, because I think that would make a much more noticeable difference than any amount of audiophile hoo-hah in this thing.
agreed. and while i'd love it if 88.2/24 was the consumer standard, good old fashioned 44/16 is really just fine for most things...it just needs to be in wavs or flac or some lossless format that isn't shit sounding mp3s.
digitaldrummer wrote:Music will cost 2X the price of a CD? Yes. $15-25 will be the typical proposed cost for an album.
this is crazy. who's going to pay that? why is it so much? hifi is a hard enough sell already, don't make it more expensive. make the hi-res version of the record the same price as the mp3s. there's no reason it should be more. it's actually way less work to make the hi-res version...

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Post by digitaldrummer » Fri Mar 14, 2014 9:36 am

in my car, I can't tell much difference between CD and 256Kbps MP3's (using a decent MP3 conversion - I'm not talking about iTunes...). I even... gulp... find them almost acceptable.

and yeah, $15-25 for a "hi-res" download is just CORPORATE GREED.
The big labels will never learn and they obviously still are completely out of touch with reality.

big record company: "Let's raise the price of these hi-res digital downloads to encourage even more piracy""

minions: "yeah, great idea!"
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ampguy
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fwiw - my cd in 192/24 is the same price as cd

Post by ampguy » Fri Mar 14, 2014 9:52 am

Just mentioning that prices often do come down.

10-11 years ago, I sold several folks here on tapeop 24/192 masters in DVD-A format for the same price as my regular CD.

If you think my CD sucks, it's probably because you didn't order/request the 24/192 version ...

Bro Shark
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Post by Bro Shark » Fri Mar 14, 2014 10:14 am

Dude, I think CD Baby died. Can you put your shit on bandcamp or something? Oh wait, bandcamp: there's a totally fair business model selling lossless audio and paying artists directly. What's pono for again?

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huh

Post by ampguy » Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:31 pm

what's bandcamp? it sounds like campmeeting?
Bro Shark wrote:Dude, I think CD Baby died. Can you put your shit on bandcamp or something? Oh wait, bandcamp: there's a totally fair business model selling lossless audio and paying artists directly. What's pono for again?

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Post by Bro Shark » Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:36 pm

:(

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ubertar
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Post by ubertar » Fri Mar 14, 2014 4:38 pm

It's where something interesting occurred involving a flute...

Image

kuene
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Post by kuene » Sat Mar 15, 2014 6:06 am

let's forget for a moment that the majority of people on earth believe that a high quality 256 mp3 from amazon or iTunes equivalent sounds amazing and better than CDs. Because this is true. You simply do not have a significant number of people out there thinking for a moment that high quality mp3s are anything but perfect representations of albums. the people are happy - there is no problem, that's problem #1 for Neil.

Problem #2 - A dedicated audio player - meaning it ONLY plays music? Not a chance! Apple iPod sales are falling through the floor because people don't need or want that dedicated device any more (not talking about iPod touch, which is much more than an mp3 player). People want ONE thing in their pocket or purse, and they have it. It's called a phone and it does everything.

And then the form factor of this thing.... a huge triangular toblerone? Problem #3. How in god's name is this thing so huge and who in their right mind would even consider that portable in the age of tiny slim phones that you can wear in your skinny jeans.

Neil has been talking about PONO before we had portable devices. So much time has passed since the inception that he is 1) solving a problem that no longer exists, and 2) solving it very poorly with a ridiculously clunky huge embarrassing product that has no chance in hell against apple, samsung, htc, or anybody making new phones and tablets.

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she's pretty

Post by ampguy » Sat Mar 15, 2014 2:09 pm

Is that your daughter? Our kids play the clarinet, their school has a summer band camp, but I think they've only gone to one. They do several concerts a year, and I try to record them when I can.
ubertar wrote:It's where something interesting occurred involving a flute...

Image

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Post by IDQ » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:42 pm

3 possible scenarios crossed my mind when I watched Neil's SXSW talk today:
1) He's out to make a buck by putting his name on something that doesn't do anything different than a hoard of other devices could
2) He's such a nut that he really believes that 24/192 is so CLEARLY better than CD quality (do any of us think CD quality is that bad?) that he's passionate about getting everyone in on it
3) He's just trying to make the conversation relevant

I like Neil Young. I think he's genuine, and I don't buy number 1. I think #2 plays a role in it. I myself am on the fence about the whole "more samples is better" thing. I really want to believe that I can hear the difference. I want there to be a reason to aim for that kind of quality. But I've yet to see anyone make a convincing scientific argument that super high conversion rates actually matter to humans. Not saying I don't believe, I'm just saying I want someone to prove "why" some of us love vinyl, other than its emotional appeal.

I think it's mostly about number 3. In my mind, it has a lot to do with trying to create honesty and integrity at all the points in the chain from musician to listener. Neil didn't really voice that well (I don't think), but I think that's what he keeps talking about with the "ecosystem" thing. I love vinyl (I don't know if it actually sounds better or I just believe it does), but it's incredible what a high percentage of NEW vinyl is pressed like shit, probably from a CD master or WORSE. But good luck finding out. At least SPARS codes were an effort, but there's no such thing anymore. No one really knows. How many times does a signal go from analog to digital before it comes out of the cone of your speaker? How many studios (home or pro) are recording a guitar at "24/192" after it came through some stomp box or rack unit that is processing digitally, probably at a lower rate, and adding an extra cycle of A/D>D/A into the chain? How many of our digital downloads (legal or illegal) were converted from previous iterations of the file - possible "up-sampled" to make it look higher quality than it is? Do we believe that all the premium services before PONO got their hands on some master other than the 44k CD master? Unless you are super anal about this stuff, it's hard enough to keep track of the number of conversions in your OWN music, let alone the things you buy.

And I won't even start on the loudness war, but that's part of all this, too. It's probably even MORE about compression than it is about conversion.

I think Neil will be happy (and I will too) if more people start caring and thinking about it.

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Post by Scodiddly » Sun Mar 16, 2014 6:07 am

kuene wrote:And then the form factor of this thing.... a huge triangular toblerone? Problem #3. How in god's name is this thing so huge and who in their right mind would even consider that portable in the age of tiny slim phones that you can wear in your skinny jeans.
Perhaps it will about popularizing a fashionable lump in ones pants.

I keep meaning to make myself an iPhone out of nicely finished hardwood so I can have the currently fashionable lump.

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