It remains to be seen if they will actually be able to gain access to and remaster all those albums.
Well now that their Kickstarter has launched, it looks like they are probably just going to be selling the masters already available on sites like HDtracks, at similar prices... which is disappointing to say the least.
So much for all the talk of bringing high res "to the masses" and caring about the quality of the masters. (HDtracks certainly don't)
You provide no information what-so-ever about the equipment and methods used (sorry but state-of-the-art WHAT?). With a simple Google image search, it's pretty plain to see those are Stereophile test graphs. (perhaps not same DAC, but same type graph/measurements and same initials
http://www.stereophile.com/content/musical-fidelity-v-dac-ii-da-processor-measurement )
Yes, they are Stereophile measurements of Benchmark's latest DAC.
What you are leaving out for the crowd is that those are UNDITHERED test signals being represented. It's true that an undithered sine wave near the limits of dynamic range will be ragged looking like that due to quantization error, but it can be greatly improved with the judicious use of dithering.
My point is that as you move away from 0dB, you are immediately losing resolution with PCM formats. 24-bit helps mitigate this without requiring nearly as much dithering - even when you are still in the upper 16-bits.
Dithering can be very effective if it's done right - but it's still better to use as little of it as possible.
I know quite a few people that would much rather have a 24/48 file than a 16/192 one - based on listening tests.
I have actually been doing work which involved dither algorithms for video, rather than audio recently. This makes the differences very obvious, compared to audio where it is a lot more difficult to make the comparisons.
And it's certainly impressive what dithering can do as you reduce the bit-depth of the original signal - but there can be very big differences between different dithering algorithms, and nothing is as good as the original source.
TPDF - the "standard" used to dither audio, is very noisy compared to the original source. There's a reason there are products devoted to dithering and noise shaping alone - though I would be surprised if its use is that widespread.
The point is that dynamic range is LOUDNESS changes and beyond a certain level, it starts to become moot in actual practice. Audiophiles are obsessed with 24-bit/192kHz and yet these SAME people typically praise the vinyl record. Guess what? Even the most state-of-the-art vinyl system would be lucky to get 60dB of dynamic range. Yes, 60. It's more typically around 55dB. So your grand "evidence" that 16-bit CD audio is not good enough is an undithered -90dB sine wave that a vinyl player would have buried in 30dB of surface noise?
I don't like vinyl at all. Don't assume that anyone who cares about sound quality will automatically prefer listening to records.
So tell Neil to offer the same masters in Apple Lossless or FLAC while he's at it instead of making it ONLY available to the hardware he's pushing (which for god's sake could they make it rectangular instead of triangular so it fits in a pocket or a normal slot type holder?
I'm not sure where you got this idea from. The files are not in some proprietary format that will only play on their hardware.
If you so much as move the volume a half of a dB, you have ruined the test since the ear will focus on that obvious level change more than anything else. The test is not about the volume differences, but the sound quality at a given more real-world level. Distortion typically sounds bad (save even-order, which the brain seems to like which is why tube distortion is so popular with guitars, etc.)
If you do not reduce the volume when you encode to lossy formats, you end up with a lot of intersample clipping on playback - which should be easily heard.
Both the lossy and lossless encodes were reduced by the same amount when ABX testing.
If you don't reduce the gain before encoding to a lossy format, the lossy file is instantly recognized due to the clipping.
Frankly, I don't know if this Neil Young format is going to even have multi-channel support. If it's goal is to take on the iPod, I doubt it.
Probably not.
Maybe it is too soon and i just need to wait for the details, but from the information so far, I am missing how this device does anything an iPod does not. You can play lossless or uncompressed music on an iPod or iPhone, you just cannot buy lossless or uncompressed music on iTunes.
An iPod will play CD quality "lossless" files. It will not play "high definition" tracks. And the audio hardware in an iPod is not nearly up to the quality of what is inside the Pono.
Being that enormous lossless music files would be to only satisfy a very small part of the population which has a problem with 256AAC, it just doesn't make any sense from a business standpoint.
Millions might be "satisfied" with 256K AAC. But you can see it in people when they come over and I start playing CD-quality lossless or HD files.
After a decade of less-than-CD quality, hearing it again on a good system is a shock.
It's no surprise that music has become background noise for most people now, with everything having shifted over to lossy formats and convenience products like those terrible bluetooth/airplay speakers everyone seems to be buying these days.
THIS is what I've been waiting for. I do NOT want streaming music. A LOT of my music is my own rips and not from a service. I have been begging for a HIGH capacity, flash based MP3 player for years. with 128 gig on-board, and a 64 gig add on card. this is perfect.
Unfortunately they're shipping it as 64+64, and it doesn't support the new 128GB cards.
