7 ms·

The Pono Player and Promises Fulfilled

23 points by oscarhong 12y ago

Chipchipperson 12y ago
"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 12y ago
  > "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.
  - Chipchipperson 12y ago
    Well that and if this device is so great that it will save music and we need to send $500 and re-purchase our entire music library from the Pono Store, then you should be able to tell the difference between it and a tablet pretty easily without 15 minutes of intense concentrated listening.
  - SloopJon 12y ago
    > 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 12y ago
      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.
- splitdisk 12y ago
  Self-deception is the hardest thing to contend with in these kinds of listening tests. An edge case might be this person's experience with self-deception in a hearing test: http://www.sociopathworld.com/2012/02/hyperlexia.html http://www.sociopathworld.com/2012/02/hyperlexia.html
al2o3cr 12y ago
"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!
joshuapants 12y ago
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
stolio 12y ago
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.
- tigeba 12y ago
  I'm personally torn about 192K. Some folks that know a ton more about the recording process than I swear by it. On occasion I will source things at 96/24 if the track count is going to be low. Generally I just stick with 44.1/24. The higher sample rates also use a lot more space and processing power.
  - stolio 12y ago
    For reference, here's Dan Lavry's whitepaper on the subject: http://lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-sampling-theory.pdf http://lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-sampling-theory.pdf It's possible there are counterpoints to this that I don't know about.
- tonyarkles 12y ago
  > 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. Please don't interpret what I'm about to say as audiophoolery. I'm an EE. I haven't worked in audio a whole lot, but I've looked at things enough that I feel like I could do a reasonable job at designing a DAC. The one thing that a higher sampling rate does is that it makes good engineering easier. Designing an antialiasing filter that both prevents aliasing and still sounds good at a 41k sample rate is hard. There's just not a whole lot of room between your passband and stopband, so you need a really sharp filter. Add in component tolerances, and your sharp filter is probably going to be a set of mediocre tradeoffs. I suspect when the author talks about "smoother treble", they're probably referring to the fact that the anti-aliasing filter doesn't need to have a weird phase response to be able work properly.
fredfoobar42 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
  - alricb 12y ago
    There's a song that goes: "Revenir d'exil comporte des risques // comme planter une aiguille dans un vieux disque" (coming back from exile has its risks, like sticking a needle in an old record)
  - mikerg87 12y ago
    Interesting that I always preferred LPs because of the random access they afforded. When I really got into music in late 70s I could deep dive my parents vast collection by moving the tone arm to different tracks and quickly assess if I was interested in hearing more.
  - TheCondor 12y ago
    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.
ricardobeat 12y ago
> It's my feeling that your average contemporary hand-held device is pretty darn good these days. Sums up the subject really well.

23 points by oscarhong 12y ago

"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 12y ago
> "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.
- Chipchipperson 12y ago
  Well that and if this device is so great that it will save music and we need to send $500 and re-purchase our entire music library from the Pono Store, then you should be able to tell the difference between it and a tablet pretty easily without 15 minutes of intense concentrated listening.
- SloopJon 12y ago
  > 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 12y ago
    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.
splitdisk 12y ago
Self-deception is the hardest thing to contend with in these kinds of listening tests. An edge case might be this person's experience with self-deception in a hearing test: http://www.sociopathworld.com/2012/02/hyperlexia.html http://www.sociopathworld.com/2012/02/hyperlexia.html

al2o3cr 12y ago

"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!

joshuapants 12y ago

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

stolio 12y ago

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.

tigeba 12y ago
I'm personally torn about 192K. Some folks that know a ton more about the recording process than I swear by it. On occasion I will source things at 96/24 if the track count is going to be low. Generally I just stick with 44.1/24. The higher sample rates also use a lot more space and processing power.
- stolio 12y ago
  For reference, here's Dan Lavry's whitepaper on the subject: http://lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-sampling-theory.pdf http://lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-sampling-theory.pdf It's possible there are counterpoints to this that I don't know about.
tonyarkles 12y ago
> 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. Please don't interpret what I'm about to say as audiophoolery. I'm an EE. I haven't worked in audio a whole lot, but I've looked at things enough that I feel like I could do a reasonable job at designing a DAC. The one thing that a higher sampling rate does is that it makes good engineering easier. Designing an antialiasing filter that both prevents aliasing and still sounds good at a 41k sample rate is hard. There's just not a whole lot of room between your passband and stopband, so you need a really sharp filter. Add in component tolerances, and your sharp filter is probably going to be a set of mediocre tradeoffs. I suspect when the author talks about "smoother treble", they're probably referring to the fact that the anti-aliasing filter doesn't need to have a weird phase response to be able work properly.

fredfoobar42 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.
- alricb 12y ago
  There's a song that goes: "Revenir d'exil comporte des risques // comme planter une aiguille dans un vieux disque" (coming back from exile has its risks, like sticking a needle in an old record)
- mikerg87 12y ago
  Interesting that I always preferred LPs because of the random access they afforded. When I really got into music in late 70s I could deep dive my parents vast collection by moving the tone arm to different tracks and quickly assess if I was interested in hearing more.
- TheCondor 12y ago
  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.

ricardobeat 12y ago

> It's my feeling that your average contemporary hand-held device is pretty darn good these days. Sums up the subject really well.