Anyone here play with Pono/DSD?

[Middleman-77]

Hi guys,

I was lucky enough to get a PonoPlayer from last year's Kickstarter which has now been updated to include DSD quality playback - the files sync right off of my PMW app on the MBPro and sound great! Anyone here had a chance to play around with it or tried other DSD/HiRes-compatible gear?

 

[fastlanephil]

From what I've read the Pono player has a high qualit DAC in it so it is capable of a little better audio specs than most inexpensive players.

The big issue is the notion that CD quality audio Never reproduced the music that was originally recorded in the studios. It sounds to me like there is a real misconception about this and that people may be getting sold a bill of goods if they think that they need to repurchase all their favorite music files.

It looks to me like the issue is actually the over compression of the master recordings that began in the late eighties that destroyed the natural dynamics of music in favor of over-all loudness. This was called the Loudness Wars. That's why people started listening to vinyl again because it can't be compressed nearly as much as digital can so the dynamics were still there. The problem with vinyl is that it is such an inferior medium for audio recordings compared to good digital audio.

So if you have digital music that wasn't smashed with over compression and play it through a player with a better DAC then it's as good as it gets for the consuming listener using the standard CD specs of 16-bit 44100 HZ.