Neil Young's Pono

I've got a $50 music player that plays Flacs.. and it fits in my pocket. Even if this sounds amazing it's a stupid shape for a portable device, pass.
 
My brother has one.

Stupid shape indeed.
Buying music for it is expensive.
It's has a terrible user interface.
I played it in my car and was not impressed.
 
I'm remaining somewhat reticent about the whole idea. In principle I understand the fact that Mp3's and the like are 'dumbed down' and a lot lower fidelity, significantly for convenience, but these days folks are telling their friends "hey, check out this awesome tune" and then playing it to them on their phone, through it's tiny little mono speaker. The 'tune' sounds like a knats fart. In the face of all this convenience, few seem to be craving quality as well. Until that happens, then we are stuck where we are. I overheard a 21 year old colleague the other day, when asked "Does your car have a CD player?" he replied "CD?...jeez I don't live in the dark ages!" There is a whole generation that grew up with Lo-Fi and are more than happy with it.
 
As soon as I see a bunch of double blind listening tests, with consistent results showing this thing actually sounds noticeably better, I'll stop viewing this as simply the empreror's new clothes.
 
You can get just about anything in an mp3 format...and it sounds terrible....but its free. This gets people buying records again. If this is simply a flac format then that's enough for it to sound light years better than an mp3 according to my ears.
 
guitarmike said:
You can get just about anything in an mp3 format...and it sounds terrible....but its free. This gets people buying records again. If this is simply a flac format then that's enough for it to sound light years better than an mp3 according to my ears.
Click to expand...

Well, you can get anything in mp3 format legitimately too. You can also get lossless formats of an ever increasing number of things. According to the literature this isn't just flac (and, again, I'd love to see you do a double blind test between an mp3 at 320 and a flac file), it's a new, proprietary format (basically one that allows them to charge a premium).
 
The only thing that really interests me about it is capacity. I have a 128GB iPod and wish it had more storage This holds up to 192, that would probably cover me. Unfortunately the market for high-capacity players has been reduced to a niche because of Spotify, Pandora, phones, etc.
 
jefferski said:
The only thing that really interests me about it is capacity. I have a 128GB iPod and wish it had more storage This holds up to 192, that would probably cover me. Unfortunately the market for high-capacity players has been reduced to a niche because of Spotify, Pandora, phones, etc.
Click to expand...

The only thing to keep in mind is that it needs that large capacity simply because the files are likely to be huge compared to mp3s.
 
Ben.Last said:
The only thing to keep in mind is that it needs that large capacity simply because the files are likely to be huge compared to mp3s.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I bought a FLAC version of VH1 and it's 791MB, 24/96 at 3Mbps. Sounds dynamite though.
 
Ben.Last said:
The only thing to keep in mind is that it needs that large capacity simply because the files are likely to be huge compared to mp3s.
Click to expand...
Sure. But the advantage for me is I can have all my mp3s... a bigger drive is still a bigger drive. They don't sound as good as HQ FLACS, but when I'm driving, skiing, or whatever, I can't hear the difference anyway.
 
I'm for anything that raises awareness of the benefits of high-fidelity audio. MP3 set us back 20 years. I won't buy this product (don't need it), but if it gets younger people to discuss better alternatives to lossy compression, then I encourage it.
 
steadystate said:
I'm for anything that raises awareness of the benefits of high-fidelity audio. LOW QUALITY MP3 set us back 20 years. I won't buy this product (don't need it), but if it gets younger people to discuss better alternatives to lossy compression, then I encourage it.
Click to expand...

Edited for accuracy :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom