Has anybody looked at or know about Neil Youngs Pono device??

bobt

The device itself is supposed to have a good DAC in it. 192/24 bit. You download the music from the Pono site. He says it's about as close as you can get to a master tape.
In theory this should work. Anybody know anything about this???

decal

I have one and really like it a lot.

F1nut

I have no interest in the product.

He says it's about as close as you can get to a master tape.

Yeah right, only 1% to 2% of the offerings are actually hi-rez. People should know by now that Neil is full of it.

bobt

Well your not really right. there are more then 1% far more, BUT they are trying to update music all the time. This is an ongoing thing. Now i'm not so sure the "device" is worth the money, but at 400 bucks and has 128Gig of storage, it does a lot. The DAC that he put in there.. is SUPPOSED to be.. lets say Ok. Is that worth the money.. maybe. But I think the site and down load is the key.... If he can keep remastering this stuff, Then I think this is worthwhile.
Now is this better sounding stuff, then I get off my Jolidia CD player.. at the stock 44.1/16 bit.... i don't know I would hope so. if not, then just go back to your turn table and have a nice day... LOL

F1nut

The 1% to 2% was reported by someone involved in Pono. I think they would know best.

bobt

LMAO your just a wonderful person...LOL The point here is they are trying to upgrade the music as fast as they can. I've looked at it..far more then 2% at this point. They can only do so much so fast.....

They have the right idea and in theory this should work.
There 400 buck box... I don't know... it does have a 128 Gig storage. what the thing sounds like.. I just don't know at this point... not about to spend 400 bucks to see if it sounds better then my Jolidia At least at this point.

BlueFox

I thought the Pono was for portable music. I would never use it a a CDP replacement in the two channel. There are plenty of audiophile grade file players on the market. Some with built-in DACS, and others that require an external DAC. The external DAC is the path I prefer since it allows me to upgrade the DAC as better DACs become available.

Neil is trying to turn the tide against MP3 files by exposing people to higher resolution files. A major problem he has to overcome is getting people to stop using their phones for music, but now they have to carry two devices. Maybe he should add a phone to the Pono, and call it Phono.

gudnoyez

Phono now that's a good idea, but when out and about, as walking the dogs or biking the phone stays home and one of the I - pods goes with I want to listen to tunes not talk on the phone. If I had the funds to try ol Neils device to hear the difference I would. It sure is a lot cheaper than the new Walkman Sonys trying to sell.

bobt

No.. that's not the deal here. Yes you can carry it, and use it in your car.
BUT this is not a crappy MP3 player.. far from that. You can get the highest resolution you can get.. pretty much studio quality... master tape out of the studio.
But you can plug this into your system, just like a CD player. How good his DAC is.. that I don't know, but it is supposed to be pretty good. This is not toy or an MP3 player that you walk around with eat buds....

ken brydson

Eat buds, mmmmm

gudnoyez

So you download high rez files off Neils garage or Ponos site then what hook it up via USB or someting? I have never looked into it much I thought it was a portable device.

tonyb

There's a difference between a master tape and a jazzed up 16/44 file that some might call "hi-rez". How do you know which is which on Neils site ? We suppose to take his word for it I guess.

BTW .....some phones can now play higher rez files so no need to carry 2 devices.

ZLTFUL

bobt wrote: »

No.. that's not the deal here. Yes you can carry it, and use it in your car.
BUT this is not a crappy MP3 player.. far from that. You can get the highest resolution you can get.. pretty much studio quality... master tape out of the studio.
But you can plug this into your system, just like a CD player. How good his DAC is.. that I don't know, but it is supposed to be pretty good. This is not toy or an MP3 player that you walk around with eat buds....

Per their own website, it's first and primary purpose is portable music.
The ESS ES9018M (must be a proprietary variant as it doesn't show up in ESS's current product line) is a derivative of the ES9018 line. There are several models in this line and all are decent but none of the 9018s are game changers.
In fact, the mobile variants of the 9018 are used in everything from portable players to phones to tablets.
Nothing ground breaking there.

To me, it looks like nothing more than a hyped up portable version of Sonos or the like with nothing to really set it apart other than Neil's name stamp and a portable format. Nothing to make me want to throw any money at them.

headrott

Now if it had a tube output, using some RCA long black plate 12AX7 tubes, I might consider buying it.......... Do they make a portable tube player?

In all seriousness, the ESS ES9018 is great DAC. Although I haven't heard the portable variant of it. The one I have in my DAC sounds phenominal though. I do have the analog output sent through some tubes though.

tonyb

I get what Bobt is saying, and Neils passion of getting people off the MP3 bandwagon. Heaven knows Neil isn't the first for those desires and Pono isn't the first product either to entice people.

However, imho there are 2 things that keep people planted in MP3's. One is age group, of which they are addicted to cheap sound and don't really care too much about hi-rez.....or good sound for that matter.

Two, is ease of use over a variety of gear, compatibility with everything they own.

Pono doesn't address either of those concerns. Most I know in the younger age brackets can't afford the Pono anyway, and won't pay additional for higher rez music files that won't play on their other devices.

Older folks don't want to carry around 2 devices, and with cell phones now being able to play higher rez files, makes it a no brainer. Pono as a stand alone player already has it's grave stone written, Neils site for hi-rez files may still have some legs though as another source for digital music files.

MP3 files still holds a considerable portion of the market. Hi-rez files is still a niche market, kinda like SACD was, and still is. The bean counters look at trends with a global view. Here in the states may be one thing, but the second biggest market is Japan which they are still addicted to cd sales evidently.

Funny, on another forum I was called an "Elitist" by other members from other countries who took my viewpoints on better gear/files as irrelevant to better sound.

bobt

OK... he is trying to put better music out there to the fools with MP3.. and it is portable. But he has rigged the thing for stereo input. The DAC he is using is not bad at all. In fact a very good DAC, that's what the 400 bucks is about.
You can just plug it into any decent stereo system.
Now the theory should be... it should wipe the ground with my Jolidia tube CD player.. as i'm playing "redbook" or stock Cd's of this. 44.1/16 bit...

Now if he's handing you, 192/24 bit.... then this should be a major difference.
The question is... dose it sound that much better????

erniejade

I had a jolida cd player. I it sounded darn good. Redbook on the jolida beat several sacd players playing the same sacd. It took me a bit to go up the chain to find a reasonable price sacd player to match it.

Then, I got an external dac. Again Redbooks now was sounding better then sacd. That started another search to go up the food chain to have my sacd sounding as good as redbook did going through the dac. Just because something's higher rez doesnt automatically sound better. There is a lot more to components then just how high the rez Is.

And then again, its also how revolving your system is. I had friends systems that neither one could hear a difference between sacd or redbook because their system wasn't up to snuff

tonyb

Amen Ern, well said.

Bobt,
There's more to a dac than just a chip set which seems to be the major selling point for most gear in peoples minds.

ZLTFUL

tonyb wrote: »

Amen Ern, well said.

Bobt,
There's more to a dac than just a chip set which seems to be the major selling point for most gear in peoples minds.

I wish I could quote this over and over and over and over until people got the point.

I think it is funny that Stereophile's Facebook page had a post about this same topic and the majority of opinions mirrored here while whoever at Stereophile was posting was disagreeing with *anyone* who had anything to say that wasn't in agreement with their view. And I feel bad for the guy who mentioned that Neil wears hearing aids...

bobt

No, I agree. Numbers are not the end all be all. all that matters is the sound.
My jolidia in fact sounds very good with 90% of redbook stuff. There are of course bad recorded cd's as with anything else. I was looking to go a bit beyond that for sound. I really don't want to go back to Vinyl to get "that" sound. It's really too much work at this point, more then I want to deal with.
I was also looking at the Sony HAP-Zi ES.... Now they "say" it will upgrade stock redbook, over sampled 8 times and what ever hype Sony want to put on it.

Now does any of this work.. I don't know, can you hear the difference.. again I don't know.
I don't think I can make the Joilida sound any better then it already sounds, but I may be wrong.

BlueFox

Pono might exit hardware market.

http://www.stereo.net.au/news/pono-will-likely-exit-hardware-market/

tonyb

Well, looks like I called that one, lol.

Bob,
Your right, all that matters is the sound to your ears, regardless if it reached them by a native format, up sampled, down sampled, or put in a Vita mix . IMHO, to do better than the Jolida, you'd have to move to a good SACD player or DSD files and a good dac. Once again though, everything is dependent on....well, everything. Money spent, additional cables and their quality, quality of the dac,how those files are stored and played, yada yada.

Bluefox, DK, or Rich can guide you into that realm if you so desire.

bobt

LMAO, yeah , I had a feeling it was not about the player..more about the music offered..LOL
The Jolidia CD player with the Tube output in a lot of cases in reviews comes up better then the SACD stuff. It sound more analog then the SADC stuff does.
So what this is worth as far as the PONO is concerned... I don't know... More about the music files you can down load.. if you have the right stuff.. it may sound better.. Don't know.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Leave to a bunch of audio guys on the Polk forum to bash an attempt to improve the sound quality of our music

F1nut

The Jolidia CD player with the Tube output in a lot of cases in reviews comes up better then the SACD stuff. It sound more analog then the SADC stuff does.

Maybe compared to the SACD playback on a $200.00 consumer grade player, but not on a player in the same price range or higher. I owned and did a maxed out upgrade to the Jolida CDP, which resulted in a player far better than stock, but not on the level of the SACD playback of my reference player.

tonyb

What Jess is saying is, you have to compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges.

The Jolida cdp you wouldn't compare to a JVC cdp, nor would you compare a 200 buck SACD player to an Esoteric. You can't make a solid judgment on comparing a higher end cdp to a lower end Sacd player, then paint that with a broad brush.