Neil Young to Debut 'PonoPlayer' High-Definition iPod Competitor This Week

[MagnusVonMagnum]

My point is just that CD can't offer more than stereo.

So you're looking for multi-channel sound, then? I like multi-channel for some albums, as I've said earlier in the thread (suited to some types of music like Pink Floyd, for example), but ultimately, most live events are up front and center and not with guitars flying in circles around my head (as my Edgar Winters DTS album does). If you really want a more realistic sound field, you could try out some binaural recordings. It depends on how close your head is to the dummy head they used to record with, but it can really make you think you're "there". Good headphones are a must, of course.

I realize most of your comments are about resolution and theory, but claiming Redbook is the answer fails in other ways. Also, I'd love to see a website/database that gives quality reports on CDs vs other formats. For actual audio products, not theoretical tolerances of the media. You seem to be of the opinion that every CD made after some date (1990?) should be great and whatever album you want shouldn't need a higher quality version made.

I suggest you re-read my posts because that's not what I said at all. In fact, I've said quite the opposite, that most mastering jobs have been tailored to the least common denominator and almost totally lack dynamic range these days, which is ridiculous given the digital media they appear on is capable of so much more. Albums have typically cranked up bass response (so they sound better on cheap tinny crap speakers that come with most cars and cheap all-in-one "sound systems" and so they sound utterly ridiculous in some cases on a high-end system with flat bass response. But NONE of these problems has a damn thing to do with red-book audio limitations. Take a good remastered 2-channel SACD that sounds oh-so-wonderful and make your own 16-bit/44.1 resampled version and compare. I think you'll find they sound virtually if not entirely identical. The reason most SACDs (not counting multi-channel) recordings sound so good is they have been mastered with higher end systems in mind. It is my opinion that ALL recordings should be mastered assuming you can play it back on a good system. It should always be the low-end side that should have to crank the bass controls, etc. not the high-end systems having to (and often then have to buy one first as we don't "need" them) adjust an equalizer to "fix" a crappy album so it's not booming bass and tinny highs at us. Certainly, many CDs in the '80s were little more than LP vinyl masters moved straight over to CD. The thing about vinyl is that it has its bass turned down for an EQ curve designed around the limitations of vinyl. If you just move that master over, you get anemic sound on CD (where there is no reverse curve to turn it back up). The problem is then that people blame the CD for the lousy sounding album, but it's the not the format's fault that someone put out a crap product. Today, they tend to do the opposite (crank up bass and highs). Even something that sounds good on CD like Pink Floyd sounded a hell of a lot better when I got hold of the Alan Parsons MASTER instead. It just sound freaking in-the-room REAL. And while it is a multi-channel (quad) recording, it still sounds real if I mix it down to DTS (oh no, lower-bit rates!). The same is true of the SACD version as well (less ping-pongy, but still real). It's the mix that is better, not the format.

But it's certainly not the case. I just bought Imagine Dragons on MP3 because the CD wasn't any better. Worst recording I've heard since Adele's 19. Very sad to have such crappy sound, both have such wonderful writing by the artists. I'd upgrade both in a heartbeat if an upgrade existed.

Yeah, and what you need is a better mastered release, on any format. You can't really fix a bad source at the playback end (well you can get a high quality EQ and only use it in tape loop when it's a necessary evil and "try" to improve the response a bit, but it only goes so far and to do it for every album when they're all mastered differently is a nightmare (better record the end result if it's worth effort). But an EQ is no substitute for the sheer amount of control available on the mastering side from processing effects galore to phase and spatial effects that can't be fixed with EQ (which is band-targeted and can't fix a single instrument already down-mixed with all the other instruments, etc.) It's unreal what you can do to make nice and horrible sounds in something like Logic Pro. I spent a ton of time making my own album sound "Pink Floyd" quality. I think I did pretty well for a first effort. And no, there's no audible difference between my 24/96 master and the CD version or even the AAC version. They all sound identical and I tested them on 6 different systems including my reference ribbon speaker rig that cost me over $5k with bi-amped custom crossovers.

 

[RenoG]

This Pono device will sell a good few to its initial supporters and then die. The last time the masses really cared about anything close to high quality music was waaaay back in the late 80's when the cd came out. Now, convenient low bit rate cheap 99 cent mp3's that are downloaded directly into ones phone rules. HD music has always been a niche market.
The reality is, stand alone MP3 players is a dead dog market. If Apple's ipod business is currently a sinking ship, Neil has no chance whatsoever at reviving this old business, not with his tonka triangle. Nice hobby though Mr. Neil, hope your having fun seeing your old dream see the light of day, at least you can say you've done it.

 

[JAT]

So you're looking for multi-channel sound, then? I like multi-channel for some albums, as I've said earlier in the thread (suited to some types of music like Pink Floyd, for example), but ultimately, most live events are up front and center and not with guitars flying in circles around my head (as my Edgar Winters DTS album does).

Of course, it is all dependent on the mastering/recording. But any type of music would be better in surround, if you have the equipment at home. You are limiting it to stuff you think "fits" with the concept of surround. I am not interested in guitars flying in circles, just better reproduction. Stereo has always kept music "front and center", I don't see why we have accepted that for so long. We didn't for movies, but still do for music. Strange bit of psychology.

If you really want to take a live recording and play it as near as possible to the original in your home (which is what most aficionados want), stereo is going to be limited to your room's reflective capabilities, it will always sound like "your room", despite what reviews of equipment and recordings say. With surround, the ambient sound of the original can be put in the right place/channel to effectively play it back. If it is recorded correctly. Not nearly enough are, though.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Of course, it is all dependent on the mastering/recording. But any type of music would be better in surround, if you have the equipment at home. You are limiting it to stuff you think "fits" with the concept of surround. I am not interested in guitars flying in circles, just better reproduction. Stereo has always kept music "front and center", I don't see why we have accepted that for so long. We didn't for movies, but still do for music. Strange bit of psychology.

If you really want to take a live recording and play it as near as possible to the original in your home (which is what most aficionados want), stereo is going to be limited to your room's reflective capabilities, it will always sound like "your room", despite what reviews of equipment and recordings say. With surround, the ambient sound of the original can be put in the right place/channel to effectively play it back. If it is recorded correctly. Not nearly enough are, though.

Even with surround, you're still bouncing a lot of reflections around your room so the total sound field still isn't going to be like the original recording. Even more complex, you would really need to know where the surround channel microphones were placed relative to the venue (assuming the effects aren't just created in a mixing station) in order to know where to put your surround speakers to best recreate/correlate that sound field to a given room or the data would have error in it. Then, you would want to have material to absorb as much of the sound reflections as possible to avoid mixing your own room's ambient effects into that of the recording. It gets to the point where complete accuracy is not going to be possible. There's also the question of accuracy of a sound field given a 5-8 channel system. Some have suggested before you might need a surround system with 32 channels or more to get even a remote representation of sound that could possibly come from any direction and any point in between because the fewer speakers you have, the more "stereo" effects have to create a phantom image between all the speakers in the room.

This leaves you with two possible other methods of getting more life-like sound. One is binaural, which solves most of the problems and creates an eerie result (I've got some demo binaural recordings that are less music in nature and more effect like hair dryers, people walking around and talking in your ear, bees landing in your ear, etc. They work astoundingly well, but the musical versions I've heard aren't as convincing plus the effect supposedly depends on how close your head is to the dummy head used to record it.

The other possibility for creating more "life-like" music is to use dipole speakers. This won't recreate the actual sound-field any more than a regular speaker in a room will. In fact, it will use your own room's borders even more so since the speaker will generate an out-of-phase back wave in addition to the front one. This back wave is normally absorbed in conventional speaker designs. However, most real-world sounds generate dipole or even multi-directional sound waves. Some have speculated that hearing only one wave (particularly with studio recordings) sounds artificial to the human ear and thus unrealistic. You know you're hearing a recording with your eyes closed rather than someone singing in the room. A dipole speaker generates a sound wave more resembling a natural one in your room and then interacts with it in a more natural fashion. Thus, a studio recording might (and in my opinion does) sound more like there's a real person in your room singing when you have your eyes closed. One might rightly point out that a live recording has its own reverberant sounds picked up by the microphone and thus you'd be mixing signals once again, but certainly for believability of a sound in general from studio recordings, a dipole can and does sound more "realistic" to my ears, at least.

I have Carver dipole ribbons (bi-amped with custom crossovers) in one of my rooms along with a Sonic Holography pre-amplifier which mixes and cancels the stereo phase effects at the listening position, which creates a more natural "3D" sound by doing what 3D video projectors do with polarizing light with those grey polarizing 3D glasses which is to provide one eye with only one image and thus with Sonic Holography set up correctly, your ears get mostly one stereo channel per ear at the listening location (in practice, the cross-talk is reduced, not eliminated and certainly with dipoles only the initial wavefront really does that). Even so, there's a HUGE difference in the width and depth of the stereo image with it turned on compared to off. Some recordings have sounds coming 180-240 degrees to the side and behind me with just two (dipole at that) speakers in the room. With my eyes shut listening to something like Tori Amos' Boys For Pele, she absolutely sound like she's singing in the room with me. Now she was recorded in a dead sound box around her piano, so the combination works well compared to live recordings in a venue, but the effect is uncanny. It sound realistic and believable whereas many other recordings and particularly with conventional speakers and no surround or sonic holography effects, sound pretty flat by comparison.

So I agree that sound fields are better when they sound more realistic, but to my ears at least, I don't care what the venue was as long as my brain is fooled into thinking I'm listening to a real band playing and not a recording. That is more important to me than recreating an exact acoustic environment, which I wouldn't recognize on its own anyway.

 

[JAT]

snip for brevity

That sounds amazing. I haven't gotten nearly as far. Acoustic paneling is probably next for me. I don't have a good listening room, but I should at least attempt to improve what I have.

Some want Dolby Atmos in the home. 64 channels, not sure how I'd get 1/4 of that into my room, but it sure is fun to talk about.

 

[AppleScruff1]

as of today

7,522
Backers
$2,448,208
pledged of $800,000 goal
33
days to go

and i count 6055 players purchased at several price points.

Five days later:
12,087 backers
$4,058,875 pledged
28 days to go

There are a lot of big name musicians singing its praises. They've already achieved 5X their goal and there are still 4 weeks to go. Over $1.5 million raised in the past 5 days. I hope it is as good as they are claiming and I for one would love to see it succeed.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Neil Young interviewed about Pono. It's not the Kickstarter video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6292ZaPD_4

 

[koruki]

I dismissed this along with everyone when it was announced then I looked into it and was amazed at the amount of support its been getting from all the music veterans.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...here-your-soul-rediscovers-music?ref=category

btw its been funded within a day

 

[AppleScruff1]

As of now:
14,180 backers
$4,799,445 pledged
11,655 players sold
21 days to go

It seems to have slowed down a bit, but the limited edition players from the popular artists seem to sell out quickly. More details have been released about the player and service. They are getting a lot of feedback from the backers about what they want in the player. Since the details haven't been finalized there is still the possibility for changes. Gapless play will be supported which many were hoping for.

It looks like they will end up with at least $5 million in pledges. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 6 months or so.

 

[penplotter]

One's a Pono, the other's loved by Bono (the one that doesn't make you say "oh no!")

 

[AppleScruff1]

Pono finally cracked the $5 million barrier, 14,854 backers so far. I hope that's enough to make it a reality.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Pono finally cracked the $5 million barrier, 14,854 backers so far. I hope that's enough to make it a reality.

What is this? The daily update?

14,854 people will not make for a successful commercial product. SACD was an utter failure on a marketing scale. This is just an iPod-style SACD rehash. To be a commercial success, it needs real people to want it. But why would they when it's barking up the wrong tree entirely for why most commercial audio recordings are poor quality (mastering, not the medium) as explained earlier in the thread. It's already destined to be an utter failure before it even begins and only someone that believes in magic number placebos would even consider buying one, IMO. If they want to push better recordings, offer WAV/FLAC/ALAC recordings that are re-mastered for actual sound quality, not loudness/radio/earbuds. It's that simple. That's something that could be done by a small dedicated team based on demand and sold online for all existing players, computer, portable or otherwise. No, they want to play the "magic numbers" snake-oil game (that SACD and DVD-Audio already tried and failed due to an utter lack of mass market interest) and that tells me the whole thing is total BS, not actual seriousness about getting better quality recordings out there for reasons explained earlier in the thread.

 

[AppleScruff1]

What is this? The daily update?

14,854 people will not make for a successful commercial product. SACD was an utter failure on a marketing scale. This is just an iPod-style SACD rehash. To be a commercial success, it needs real people to want it. But why would they when it's barking up the wrong tree entirely for why most commercial audio recordings are poor quality (mastering, not the medium) as explained earlier in the thread. It's already destined to be an utter failure before it even begins and only someone that believes in magic number placebos would even consider buying one, IMO. If they want to push better recordings, offer WAV/FLAC/ALAC recordings that are re-mastered for actual sound quality, not loudness/radio/earbuds. It's that simple. That's something that could be done by a small dedicated team based on demand and sold online for all existing players, computer, portable or otherwise. No, they want to play the "magic numbers" snake-oil game (that SACD and DVD-Audio already tried and failed due to an utter lack of mass market interest) and that tells me the whole thing is total BS, not actual seriousness about getting better quality recordings out there for reasons explained earlier in the thread.

I apologize, I had no intent of irritating you or anyone else here with the updates and I will refrain from doing so in the future. From what I have read about the Pono project, they want to offer music in better quality than mp3 which has become the standard for most people. iTunes is a major source of music purchases, it seems it has help contribute to the demise of the CD as less people by CD's in favor of digital music, which in the case of iTunes isn't of CD quality.

I know that there is a niche market for high end audio and audio players such as the Astell & Kern, HiFiMAN, etc. Pono and the Pono Music Store seems to be an attempt to create a high quality version of iTunes and the iPod. Again according to what I have read, they are working with the studios to get high quality versions of music available for sale and the downloads will be in FLAC format. As far as I'm aware, iTunes doesn't sell in ALAC or FLAC format and the iPod doesn't support FLAC, but maybe I am wrong about that.

Neil Young has had much to say over the years about the poor quality music that is being sold today, and perhaps you are right and he is just doing it for his own personal gain, but he does seem to have the support of a fair number of popular artists for this project. Maybe they are just looking at it for their own financial gain, I don't know. I'd like to think he is sincere in his desire to bring something better than mp3 quality to the market and a higher quality player at a reasonable price, but again, I have no idea what his true motives are.

Lots of good ideas have been failures market wise, that's for sure. It seems that people settle for something that's good enough, not as good as it could be. And maybe this project will be a failure too. Personally I am interested in hearing it myself before I judge it. And I wouldn't expect it to be any competition at all for iTunes as many people are satisfied with the quality which it offers.

Again, my apologies to all for keeping this dying thread active when there is no interest here. I'm out.

 

[fertilized-egg]

I find it pretty fateful that the player looks a lot like the old iRiver "Prism" models, since iRiver is a Pono competitor with its Astell & Kern players. If anything, with niche hardware like this, Pono should've gone more upscale by charging more and putting more "audiophile" design cues into the player, such as high quailty knobs with machined metal front plate, which audio enthusiasts generally really love.

I also find it also fateful that this idea of supreme audio quality is being championed by Neil Young, a rocker nearly in his 70s with known hearing problems and almost certainly cannot substantiate the purported advantages of Pono himself in blind tests. Actually I'm curious if he can tell between 128kbps MP3 and 320kbps MP3, let alone the CD quality audio vs. Pono. My (biased) guess is he won't be able to tell in a double blind test.

If they want to push better recordings, offer WAV/FLAC/ALAC recordings that are re-mastered for actual sound quality, not loudness/radio/earbuds. It's that simple. That's something that could be done by a small dedicated team based on demand and sold online for all existing players, computer, portable or otherwise. No, they want to play the "magic numbers" snake-oil game (that SACD and DVD-Audio already tried and failed due to an utter lack of mass market interest) and that tells me the whole thing is total BS, not actual seriousness about getting better quality recordings out there for reasons explained earlier in the thread.

Yes and yes. For that kind of money they could've easily gone for a pair of quality earphones or headphones at $400-500 instead of a player, and that would provide so much more actual value to the supporters. The current portable players and even the smartphones are all mostly capable of wonderful music playback, just need better recordings and headphones.

 

[Xiroteus]

The design needs a bit of work and I understand it as a niche product like millions of items for sale in the world. Not everything is a mainstream product and iPod works just fine.

Another note is I figure when someone says MP3 players are on the way out they mean stand alone digital music players. MP3 is just a generic term to use.

 

[albertfallickwa]

I ordered one of these and look forward to using it on the go. Thanks.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

How much can even the greatest amp on earth help a lossy compression format sound better? This thing looks terrible in all aspects.

The reviews have not been the best.

 

[albertfallickwa]

I got mine and really love using it.

 

[eRondeau]

Does it come in Zune brown?

Give it another twenty years and the the collectors will be falling all over themselves to get a brown Zune at any price. It'll be like our generation's Honus Wagner rookie card. Something to display in a glass cabinet as a conversation starter with your guests. Just wait and see...

 

[RenoG]

10 years too late

For real, he's competing in a dead zone where no one is looking. What's his next project a cube shaped digital point and shoot camera?.

 

[Skoal]

I like the design in itself. Just not for a music player. It looks awkward as hell and not something I'd want in my pocket. Maybe as a portable wifi router or battery charger but not a music player....at all!

 

[satcomer]

If I remember most all Live music is in Mono so everyone in the cloud can hear all the music wherever the are sitting/standing! If you get stero then a mic splitter I'd used to another mixing board for stereo, etc.

 

[The Evaluator]

I find it interesting that so many who take time to post in a forum like this can't take a few minutes to educate themselves on what Mr. Young is trying to accomplish. Consumers have allowed the quality of sound reproduction to be degraded for decades, starting with the wide acceptance of cassette tapes.

For those of you who do not understand what you are missing, consider being able to watch a 4K widescreen TV but instead you willingly opt for a tube TV from 1990. Neil Young is trying to point out to you that you have made a bad choice and he wants to lead people back to enjoying music closer to what artists like him actually produced. You may disagree with his product and the service he has been trying to promote, but the bigger issue is that matter of poor sound quality.

Getting back to better sound is the next step in the evolution of music and in that regard, Mr. Young is well ahead of the curve. The movement back to vinyl discs is an interesting diversion, but that is not the answer. I can't carry a record player with me.

People that love music want better quality downloads at an affordable price. We want DAC built into our gear as a standard offering. We want to hear all of the music we are paying for. That is a noble cause and Neil Young should be applauded, not ridiculed.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I find it interesting that so many who take time to post in a forum like this can't take a few minutes to educate themselves on what Mr. Young is trying to accomplish.

No, the problem is that we HAVE educated ourselves and we know BS when we see it. I'm an electronic engineer and I took a lot of interest in digital audio back in college (I even built my own voice scramblers from scratch and by scratch I mean starting with AutoCad and etching my own circuit board designs).

Consumers have allowed the quality of sound reproduction to be degraded for decades, starting with the wide acceptance of cassette tapes.

8-tracks were superior, sound quality-wise but had this annoying habit of easily breaking due to cheap parts used in their construction plus that jolting switch between tracks. Records, even on high-end players (I know since I have one) still suffer from loads of surface noise plus clicks & pops and a magnitude more wow & flutter than even the cheapest of CD players. Ah, but you skipped over the CD format (which is superior to the AAC and MP3 formats sold online) and had "wide acceptance". The ONLY problem with CD sound quality was on a given album's mastering (most record companies wanted LOUD, not high quality). There is NOTHING wrong with the CD format itself. NOTHING.

For those of you who do not understand what you are missing, consider being able to watch a 4K widescreen TV but instead you willingly opt for a tube TV from 1990.

This is a BS comparison and if you actually knew ANYTHING about audio you'd know it too. Most consumers would benefit 100x more with better speakers or headphones than anything else, especially given the fact you can't MAKE the studios put out better mastered albums (the REAL cause of bad audio quality). Neil Young is DEAF from years of playing live on stage. WTF does he know about sound quality? There's a difference between sound quality and MUSIC. I write and play music and I'm into the tech end of things as well.

People that love music want better quality downloads at an affordable price. We want DAC built into our gear as a standard offering. We want to hear all of the music we are paying for. That is a noble cause and Neil Young should be applauded, not ridiculed.

Go educate yourself about digital audio and then come back for a real discussion instead of just pretending you know the slightest bit of anything about sound reproduction.

 

[The Evaluator]

Well "MagnusVonMagnum", in your haste to compose such a finely written retort, you didn't take the time to even attempt to understand my main point. I am a big fan of Neil Young and had just finished reading his biography yesterday when I stumbled on this discussion. I scanned through a couple of pages and found nothing but what appeared to me to be a bunch of Millennials disparaging Old Neil with little discussion of the issues he is trying to address.

If it is your general opinion is that the majority of responses in this discussion are from people who understand these issues, you probably need to go back and read some of them again.

You will have to forgive me if I put more credence in the well spoken comments of a rock and roll icon, rather than you. I just checked my music library and I could not find any of your stuff. Did you play another a different name?

To be fair, I do challenge Young's contention that CDs contain only 15% of the available data. That makes no sense. But to his main point, that a great company like Apple convinced me to spend thousands of dollars on a music library that almost immediately had to be upgraded, and now will likely need to be upgraded again, is very bad on multiple levels. You don't need to be an audio expert (which I am certain you think you are) to comprehend that part of the equation.