Is Pono All It's Cracked Up To Be?

As I posted back in #6, I think the store is more important and has much greater potential for audiophiles. If the player increases appreciation and demand for hi-res digital audio, even better.
 
rbbert said:
As I posted back in #6, I think the store is more important and has much greater potential for audiophiles. If the player increases appreciation and demand for hi-res digital audio, even better.
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I think you nailed it Rob.
 
Pardon my ignorance but you could play Neil's Pono software on an iPhone? That wouldn't eat up storage space?
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Pardon my ignorance but you could play Neil's Pono software on an iPhone? That wouldn't eat up storage space?
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Myles-Pono simply plays back PCM files from 16/44.1 up to 24/192. It is not an encode/decode device. The software available from the Pono site is the same as any other PCM download site except Pono "guarantees" their software to be exactly what they say it is and not simply RBCD that has been upsampled to make it appear as hi-rez.
 
rbbert said:
As I posted back in #6, I think the store is more important and has much greater potential for audiophiles. If the player increases appreciation and demand for hi-res digital audio, even better.
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honest question- how much demand for hi res audio really exists? and have they fixed the redbook upsampled to "hirez" issue.

i've really only focused on analog for the past two years.
 
mep said:
Myles-Pono simply plays back PCM files from 16/44.1 up to 24/192. It is not an encode/decode device. The software available from the Pono site is the same as any other PCM download site except Pono "guarantees" their software to be exactly what they say it is and not simply RBCD that has been upsampled to make it appear as hi-rez.
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how many big labels are truly hi rez now?
 
KeithR said:
honest question- how much demand for hi res audio really exists?
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First of all, I don't think 'everyone' agrees on a standard definition of hi-rez. Neal says it starts at 16/44.1, but surely others will argue that it doesn't start until you have higher bit and sample rates. If we included everyone that fits into Neal's definition of hi-rez, the demand would be higher.

KeithR said:
and have they fixed the redbook upsampled to "hirez" issue.
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I don't know who "they" are because there is no regulatory body that is monitoring websites that proclaim to sell hi-rez downloads to my knowledge. Neal claims he "fixed" it with his Pono website. If you have the Pono player and you download a file from the Pono website, a little blue light comes on to let you know you can be assured you have a pure file that is what they said it is when you downloaded it.
 
There's always going to be stuff that's not exactly as advertised (like upsampled file formats); after all this is big business we are dealing with. I look at everything I download in an audio esiting program, and spectral analysis shows all kinds of weird stuff. For exmple, the vast majority of analog tapes converted to hi-res digital have ultrasonic "spikes", but not at consistent frequencies or amplitudes between different albums. A few presumably all-digital files have these as well, but it's much much less common. Some stuff is hi-res but not as advertised, like 24/48 in a 24/96 shell or 24/96 in a 24/192 shell, but again most albums sold by all the sites (and the files sold by all the vendors tend to be the same for any given album) are what they claim to be. And there is really quite a lot available now.
 
rbbert said:
As I posted back in #6, I think the store is more important and has much greater potential for audiophiles. If the player increases appreciation and demand for hi-res digital audio, even better.
Click to expand...


Yep, thats what John Hamm told me (see post 8).
 
KeithR said:
honest question- how much demand for hi res audio really exists? and have they fixed the redbook upsampled to "hirez" issue.

i've really only focused on analog for the past two years.
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This is an attempt to show the masses what they are missing....a gateway drug to fidelity....an mp3 killer.
 
Mike said:
Wow! Good for him.

His comments on MQA from Meridian are also fascinating. Now I'm really interested to hear it.
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I was wondering if anyone was going to notice that. Let's see what someone whose ears we trust hears it in THEIR system, not a Meridian system! I have to say that I don't know anyone who owns Meridian electronics or speakers. And I've heard them.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
I was wondering if anyone was going to notice that. Let's see what someone whose ears we trust hears it in THEIR system, not a Meridian system! I have to say that I don't know anyone who owns Meridian electronics or speakers. And I've heard them.
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That will be interesting.
 
Do we even know of a MQA DAC and where to get the files?


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