Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Neil Young to Debut 'PonoPlayer' High-Definition iPod Competitor This Week
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Sigh....
PONO = Hawaiian word for "Righteous". Not porno.
Being a musician, a recording engineer and mastering engineer I've found that the higher you in sample rate / bit depth the more room you have for getting the 'real deal' in terms of the sound.
Yes, the "loudness wars" have moved the general consumer away from great sound to "how loud can we get this so people notice it on radio?".
I've noticed a backlash - even the band Rush went so far as to remaster their album "Vapor Trails" that many considered unlistenable due to the massive amounts of brickwalling going on that recording.
I've heard the horrifyingly clipped original and was shocked that the remastered version had shimmering clean twelve and six string acoustic guitars and a really nice balanced clean soundstage - on the original the bass, drums and guitar all were very hard to listen to.
The re-master engineer said in an interview that "all the tracks are top quality, it wasn't recorded that way". Boy was he right. I hope we see more of this because the whole brick wall trend came out out of a sort of "pissing war" on who could get their record on radio and be noticed more.
And some bands, Porcupine Tree for example and also some of Steven Wilson's solo releases he provides you with the CD as well as a 24-bit DVD audio two channel or multichannel mix. And some of the Wilson stuff sounds terrific - he's been slowly remastering the heavies of prog-rock and has gotten a name for himself doing multichannel surround mixes of classic recordings.
But as far as Pono goes:
Closest analogy: take a 24 megapixel raw photo off a dSLR and save it as a 800x600 jpeg and post it on a website.
If you distribute the jpeg to people they might get a representation of what that picture looks like but there will be no comparison when you look at the raw file.
So this device purports to give you master quality audio.
It's expensive, it's not for everybody. But I can save CD master quality audio files to my iPhone if I need to and that's all anyone is going to hear in the car or the like. Only if they're using great mastering quality cans or monitors are they going to hear a difference between say my 24-bit masters at home and the 16-bit downsampled master for the car. It's very subtle, most non-musicians won't be able to hear it.
But for people who love that stuff? Priceless. I replaced my blu-ray player with a Sony that plays Super Audio CD discs because that's a nice economical way of getting "master quality audio" in an environment I'm most likely to appreciate it (my studio monitors). My car speakers aren't really going to be able to show off how good that sounds. The Sony? $99.
I like the IDEA of Pono - we'll see about the implementation - if enough people buy it maybe the price would come down. Still, the form factor - I don't want to get poked in the groin with a plastic trapezoid, do you?
PONO = Hawaiian word for "Righteous". Not porno.
Being a musician, a recording engineer and mastering engineer I've found that the higher you in sample rate / bit depth the more room you have for getting the 'real deal' in terms of the sound.
Yes, the "loudness wars" have moved the general consumer away from great sound to "how loud can we get this so people notice it on radio?".
I've noticed a backlash - even the band Rush went so far as to remaster their album "Vapor Trails" that many considered unlistenable due to the massive amounts of brickwalling going on that recording.
I've heard the horrifyingly clipped original and was shocked that the remastered version had shimmering clean twelve and six string acoustic guitars and a really nice balanced clean soundstage - on the original the bass, drums and guitar all were very hard to listen to.
The re-master engineer said in an interview that "all the tracks are top quality, it wasn't recorded that way". Boy was he right. I hope we see more of this because the whole brick wall trend came out out of a sort of "pissing war" on who could get their record on radio and be noticed more.
And some bands, Porcupine Tree for example and also some of Steven Wilson's solo releases he provides you with the CD as well as a 24-bit DVD audio two channel or multichannel mix. And some of the Wilson stuff sounds terrific - he's been slowly remastering the heavies of prog-rock and has gotten a name for himself doing multichannel surround mixes of classic recordings.
But as far as Pono goes:
Closest analogy: take a 24 megapixel raw photo off a dSLR and save it as a 800x600 jpeg and post it on a website.
If you distribute the jpeg to people they might get a representation of what that picture looks like but there will be no comparison when you look at the raw file.
So this device purports to give you master quality audio.
It's expensive, it's not for everybody. But I can save CD master quality audio files to my iPhone if I need to and that's all anyone is going to hear in the car or the like. Only if they're using great mastering quality cans or monitors are they going to hear a difference between say my 24-bit masters at home and the 16-bit downsampled master for the car. It's very subtle, most non-musicians won't be able to hear it.
But for people who love that stuff? Priceless. I replaced my blu-ray player with a Sony that plays Super Audio CD discs because that's a nice economical way of getting "master quality audio" in an environment I'm most likely to appreciate it (my studio monitors). My car speakers aren't really going to be able to show off how good that sounds. The Sony? $99.
I like the IDEA of Pono - we'll see about the implementation - if enough people buy it maybe the price would come down. Still, the form factor - I don't want to get poked in the groin with a plastic trapezoid, do you?
That's not all.........
In related news, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills just announced their new high-end, fully digital 8-track player. Says Stills "It's really bitchin' dude, now you can switch back and forth between 4 songs at once." Graham concurred, "I think this will really be something for the kids, well older kids, much older."
David Crosby could not be reached for comment, well, actually he could be reached, but he was too incoherent to make sense of anything he was saying.
In related news, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills just announced their new high-end, fully digital 8-track player. Says Stills "It's really bitchin' dude, now you can switch back and forth between 4 songs at once." Graham concurred, "I think this will really be something for the kids, well older kids, much older."
David Crosby could not be reached for comment, well, actually he could be reached, but he was too incoherent to make sense of anything he was saying.
At present, nobody really cares about MP3 or whatever portable/mobile audio players anymore.
If you're gonna make a portable HD audio player, better make one inside a smartphone. It will be more expensive and probably a bit bulkier, but audio geeks will buy it. It's better than having to carry 2 different devices at the same time.
And please, people will want to put it in the pocket, Toblerone shape is not pocket-friendly.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. Just giving a smartass consumer opinion on this topic.
If you're gonna make a portable HD audio player, better make one inside a smartphone. It will be more expensive and probably a bit bulkier, but audio geeks will buy it. It's better than having to carry 2 different devices at the same time.
And please, people will want to put it in the pocket, Toblerone shape is not pocket-friendly.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. Just giving a smartass consumer opinion on this topic.
Sometimes I get jealous of "audiophiles", people who can hear minute differences in quality that most cannot. I personally can't tell any difference, and even if I could I don't have the time to just sit and listen to music like my college days. Most of the time though I'm glad that I don't have to spend extra money to satisfy listening to music.
As for this device, it's quite bad in form factor. I believe I owned a MP3 player 10+ years ago that had the same shape, I think it was from iRiver or something like that, a big company back then for MP3 players, but now I don't think they are even around anymore. What a horrible shape to carry around in your pocket, there just was no need functionally to shape it like that. I think the old ones were shaped like that because they needed a regular alkaline battery.
Seems like someone figured out a way to funnel money out of Neil Young via this product and getting him to back it.
Arn, I know iPods are now irrelevant categories and all, but please check your facts before writing an article.
Apple didn't just update the iPod Touch in 2012, it also introduced major design changes to the nano and shuffle. Only the classic is more than 3 years old. We have only seen signs that Apple will phase out the classic because all the other models are still following the 2 year renew cycle that was introduced years ago.
Yes, kind of like how the Beatles dabbled in music during the 1960s.
I'm a big fan of Neil Young, one the few musicians from his era who has followed his muse (rather than market trends) and remained artistically viable. Not everything he's done has been artistically successful, but at least he takes chances.
However, reading his rants about how current compression formats don't do recorded music justice, I have to wonder. He's 68 years old, and he's spent his career playing high-volume rock music. Is it even possible that that he can hear the difference between his format and 256 Kbps AAC?
I haven't read every post in this thread, but in case nobody else has mentioned it, "pono" is Hawaiian for righteousness, excellence, accuracy, and so on. Neil has a home on the Big Island, so I'm guessing that's where he got the name Pono.
Not sure about your pseudoscience babble, but...I'm not an audiophile and I can tell you nicely mastered Vinyl sounds damn good and MP3 sounds very one-dimensional.
But Vinyl is for people who don't treat music like it's disposable garbage. If you're into the top-10 at the iTunes music store shuffled through a phone into Apple earbuds, then I can understand why it wouldn't make a difference to you.
To each his own. But there's a reason Vinyl has made a huge comeback. Don't knock it just because you can't appreciate it (or because you can't afford it).
Last edited:
It'll be an even bigger flop in Canada
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-series-with-show-in-calgary/article16398977/
He spent a week this year on an anti-Canada crusade based on made-up "facts".
All I need to know is that mental microbe put his name on the product to know it's complete crap.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-series-with-show-in-calgary/article16398977/
He spent a week this year on an anti-Canada crusade based on made-up "facts".
All I need to know is that mental microbe put his name on the product to know it's complete crap.
You know, in all your rants about audio here, you never mention >2 channel. Don't care? AIX Records is one of my favorites, puts 2 surround versions on every disc. Much more immersive than stereo when recorded well. That's what I generally look for in better-than-CD discs.
----------
I think the 1st version was just being playful. People didn't need to take it literally, like MR staff had never before heard of Neil Young.
Niche product will remain niche.
But those in that niche are willing to pay for even the smallest of improvements, even if they are only perceived improvements.
But those in that niche are willing to pay for even the smallest of improvements, even if they are only perceived improvements.
It's actually reasonable for what it is.
LOL not for me.. I have IPad, Note 3, and a Yamaha stereo to listen to.
It remains to be seen if they will actually be able to gain access to and remaster all those albums. Remastering is a time-consuming process and more damage than good can be done if it's not done properly. I know how long it took to master my own albums to my satisfaction. They need access to the unmastered feeds and they need to mix/master them all over again. Any tapes already mixed are worthless. In other words, it's a very ambitious project and selling to a tiny market would be hard to justify. They would do a lot better to simply offer remastered albums under an audiophile name with existing formats (including lossless).
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 )
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. Sony even pioneered noise-shaping dithering (Sony SBM or Super Bit Mapping) that can effectively achieve 20-bit "audible" resolution on a 16-bit CD by shifting noise from a sensitive spectrum of human hearing to a part where it's not sensitive enough to pick it up. Dither is standard practice in commercial music.
Even so, I recall even some of the best recordings available in SBM had so few parts that were below the 16-bit threshold dynamic range, that it was hardly noticeable. In other words, even a quiet room typically has 40-50dB of noise in it at any given time (I know of few that record in anechoic chambers) and that noise floor represents a psycho-acoustic wall at which point you have masking effects coming into play. While human hearing can hear sounds well below the noise floor threshold, you are steadily getting diminishing returns the lower level sound you are trying to hear (i.e. imagine trying to hear someone whisper to you a few feet away while standing next to Niagara Falls; it's more difficult. People have to raise their voices more. If you were in an anechoic chamber, you'd have no difficulty hearing the whisper.
This limit applies to BOTH the recording room and the room you are playing the signal back in. In order to get any useful true data below 16-bits (98dB) resolution, you need a pretty darn quiet room with pretty good equipment. Just recording those sounds is one thing, but try doing it with useful information (i.e. music). Am I going to hear a flute somehow playing at -105dB in a concert hall with actual people in it? No. Not a chance. A flute can't play that low anyway, but it could be picked up that low by a microphone, perhaps in a very quiet room. Show me one "rock" recording that has dynamic range more than 16-bit at the master stage. I'd wager no such thing even exists. Typical commercial albums are lucky to have 70-80dB of actual dynamic range. Some classical albums do have slightly better than 16-bit resolution actual information, however (most quiet passage to loudest).
But next comes the playback room. Is your living room quiet enough to hear more than 98dB of dynamic range? In order to hear it, you have to turn the volume up loud enough so that the loudest passage is at least 98dB and then hear more than 98dB into the noise floor. You might achieve that with in-the-ear headphones that block outside room noise (closed earphones help as well, but will only go so far; this is why noise-canceling headphones were invented, but they typically mess with the playback signal in the process as well due to interference frequencies).
Even so, you might get a soft passage that is barely audible. A good question here is WHY? Why does anything need to play that quiet? Are you enjoying straining at the limits of human hearing to hear a signal? It only gets worse with 120dB dynamic range which implies that the loudest sound will be as loud as standing next to a large jet engine at take-off and the quietest sound will be a whisper that is barely audible with the best of ears. WTF kind of recording would that be? And that is STILL only 20-bit resolution. 24-bit is 144dB dynamic range. I've seen car vehicles that could output in that area, but if you got inside one your eardrums would literally explode.
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? (that's at LEAST 30x physically louder on a linear curve or 3x louder sounding noise levels). You'd have nothing but a NOISE random signal at -90dB if you attempted that graph on a vinyl player with a sine wave on it at -90dB. In other words, WTF? People think vinyl sounds natural at 30x less resolution and CD dynamic range isn't good enough for actual real-world music? Sorry, but that's a load of horse manure.
No, actual loudspeakers typically vary +/- 3dB on good ones (bad ones are far worse). The best I've seen without digital correction is around +/-1dB and that's just one thing to measure (i.e. loudness variation by frequency) by typically explains why you can hear something like a triangle clearly on one speaker in a given room and not well at all on another speaker design. There are plenty of other more transient features (ringing/resonance, damping, etc.) that greatly affect things like bass quality, etc. These are REAL problems that are HUGE compared to a simple lack of ability to hear into a -90dB noise floor that only applies to really quiet classical music in the first place.
But that's NOT what is advertised. Neil Young probably doesn't give a crap about catalogs of classical music. We already have companies producing Sony SACD catalogs, etc. for high-end classical recordings. He's implying that things like his own rock music "sound better" on higher resolution masters made from the analog master tapes, DESPITE the FACT that those analog recordings don't contain those levels of resolution. Newer digital recordings might contain those levels if they were classical.... Show me a pop/rock/metal/jazz/hip-hop recording that has enough dynamic range to require a higher resolution format. It's total bullcrap.
If all they wanted to do was offer uncompressed digital files (Apple Lossless or FLAC or even WAV), they could do so on existing equipment and files and simply offer an online store where you could buy uncompressed music instead of having to order CDs. No, they're pushing "higher resolution" formats but have NO DATA to backup that there's any reason to go to those formats. It's high-end snake-oil and Sony and Philips (SACD and DVD-Audio) were both monumental FAILURES except as niche classical formats. That's despite offering a multi-channel mode that DOES offer a "different" experience than 2-channel, but short of Pink Floyd type groups, who the hell makes quadraphonic or 5.1+ recordings of MUSIC other than the movie industry? Why are violins flying around the room? And I don't really need to hear the audience surrounding a set of live microphones coughing, etc. if you might refer to a simulated listening position recording. Why would I want to? It's either that or psychedelic effects. And as I said before, they could remaster "audiophile" versions of even rock albums with "better" dynamic range mixes on existing formats as well and get a HUGE improvement in some cases where the only released recordings are squashed to death.
No no, the market for Neil Young's idea is Audiophooled snake-oil nonsense which is why I stand by recommending that most ordinary people looking to improve the sound of their music catalogs would do better to spend money on room treatments or better speakers than anything else. There's some quite nice room correction technology and a hell of a lot of nice speakers most people have never heard of, let alone heard (hard to audition, though since most places selling them have no bearing on your own listening room setup).
The point is that it's a non-issue period with dither and proper quantization correction methods, especially due to the utter lack of recordings or environments in which you could hear it. Frankly, applying a small amount of compression to a recording that DID have such a quiet passage would make the passage more audible for everyone (my hearing isn't getting any better) without having to blast the roof off the house when it gets to the canons in the 1812 overture or whatever. Personally, I don't WANT that kind of dynamic range. But 80-85dB of range would be acceptable at the volumes I listen to.
It "should"? By whose authority? Digital quantization errors are inherent in digital recording systems. What they "should" have is what follow the laws of physics. Dither gets around the physics so WTF is the problem and why would any-non numbers obsessed person CARE about that loud of dynamic rnage in the first place? Show me the sine wave undithered at 80dB (still 20-25dB BETTER than Vinyl). I guarantee it looks nothing like that. Now
show me a dithered -90dB signal. It won't look like that either.
Even closed ear headphones only go so far. And define "reasonable" levels. The problem with headphones is that you cannot effectively measure the levels actually going into your ears (you'd probably need a dummy head with a microphone in its ears to even get a fairly reasonable idea) and according to my own ear doctor, people cannot apparently judge what's too loud or they wouldn't have all these people with 30% hearing loss at age 18 due to Sony walkmans (witnessed first hand in the mid '90s).
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 call BS. I want to see proof.
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.)
Tell me what material I can use to do this test myself even as I've tried my best recordings and I can't hear squat for a difference once level matched against 256kbps encoded AAC (which is at least the equivalent of 320kbps MP3). I used to know the guy who helped create AAC and they double-blind tested the living hell out of the format. If he says it's transparent at 256, I'm apt to believe what he says even if I can't hear it with my own ears.
It's not that I don't "care" about multi-channel, but rather multi-channel has NOTHING to do with the "resolution" claims being made in this thread. Yeah, I like multi-channel for some things when well done. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was great in both the Alan Parsons quad-mix and the SACD re-mix. The sound quality was noticeably better as well, but all I have to do is downmix to 2-channel 16-bit to tell the differences are in the mastering once again as the overall sound quality improvement is still apparent in the downmix over the studio CDs.
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.
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.
Sounds like the only thing new with this device is a new service to buy uncompressed music. Unless they also are using a new proprietary format (which we all no how well this goes over with consumers), there is no reason this new service couldnt be used without the device and uploaded to an iPhone.
And i am pretty sure it would have taken less than 10 years to put together an iPhone app and set up this service, they could be making money already instead of trying to fund a useless product on kickstarter...
and what kind of quality audio output could you possibly get from this device? it is too small to have a decent amplifier, and it only has a stereo headphone jack... I can tell the difference between an MP3 and Lossless, but not when listening through headphones (Unless they are studio headphones with a quarter inch jack and hooked up to a decent amplifier), problem is no matter the source, audio cables with an eighth inch jacks (headphone cables) add noise no matter the source.
Sounds like the only thing new with this device is a new service to buy uncompressed music. Unless they also are using a new proprietary format (which we all no how well this goes over with consumers), there is no reason this new service couldnt be used without the device and uploaded to an iPhone.
And i am pretty sure it would have taken less than 10 years to put together an iPhone app and set up this service, they could be making money already instead of trying to fund a useless product on kickstarter...
and what kind of quality audio output could you possibly get from this device? it is too small to have a decent amplifier, and it only has a stereo headphone jack... I can tell the difference between an MP3 and Lossless, but not when listening through headphones (Unless they are studio headphones with a quarter inch jack and hooked up to a decent amplifier), problem is no matter the source, audio cables with an eighth inch jacks (headphone cables) add noise no matter the source.
That's pretty much sums up an Apple fanatic who will pay high prices just to say they own an Apple _______. This product would fit right in here if it had the right logo & price would not even be considered a factor for purchase.$399 ... I guess it's cool if your a geek and have extra money to blow
From what I can find, there are presently around 10,000 movies for rent and sale in the iTunes Store.
How many songs or albums do you think are available?
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.