Posted on 02/02/2015 12:29:06 PM PST by Swordmaker
It was one of Kickstarter’s most successful campaigns. Its inventors sought $800,000 in funding from the public — but raised a gigantic $6.2 million.
The project: the PonoPlayer, “a revolution in music listening.” It was designed to play back music files that use up to 20 times more data than the MP3 files that gave the first pocket music players a bad name.
“Everyone who’s ever heard PonoMusic will tell you that the difference is surprising and dramatic,” Pono wrote on Kickstarter. “They tell us that not only do they hear the difference; they feel it in their body, in their soul.”
In Pono’s Kickstarter pitch video, famous musicians react to the Pono sound they’ve just heard. “That music made me feel good. Much better than I’ve felt in a long time listening to music,” says Norah Jones. “This gives it to you as good as you can get it,” says Tom Petty. “MP3 [the old format] is like seeing a Xerox of the Mona Lisa,” says Elvis Costello.
Neil Young, celebrity founder and driving force for Pono, points out that MP3 is a compression scheme. It was developed in the era of music players with limited storage capacity; the idea was to shrink the music files by discarding music data from the original recordings. But these days, storage is copious and cheap. So why are we still compressing our music? Why can’t we listen to our music the way it was recorded in the studio, according to the musician’s original intentions?
The Pono Player, once just a Kickstarter prototype, is now a product that anyone can buy, for $400. To hear the magic, you’re supposed to buy all new music—high-resolution audio files—from Pono’s new music store (ponomusic.force.com), and load them onto your Pono using a new Mac or PC loading-dock program (Pono World). Albums cost about $25 each.
You’ve got to admit it: The argument for the Pono Player sure is appealing — that we don’t know what we’ve been missing in our music.
Unfortunately, it isn’t true.
Just as a matter of accuracy, 24/192 is FARRRRRRR superior than 24/96.
I’m in high-end audio and around state-of-the-art products - hearing the sonic difference is quite easy - even on affordable DACs with USB and SPDIF inputs.
Finally, the higher sampling rate of 192Khz provides a more accurate replica of the analog waveform than 96Khz - that’s just simple physics.
The Emperor has no clothes...http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/2238119/83996576.JPG
i point out to people that the winner of the 2005 Paris Wine best in show was a wine that had been a two buck chuck from Woodbridge California. . . Now, of course, that wine is really expensive. . . LOL!
I put this in the same category as the guys who are claiming that they can see the differences in resolution on a 5 or 6 inch screen between 350 dpi and 560 dpi. . . both of which are beyond the human eye's ability to discern the dots at the distance phones are normally viewed. One would need a microscope to see the differences. . . yet still there are those who wax rhapsodic about the screens on the high-resolution but laggy screens of the latest hyped so-called 4K screens that eat battery life to support moving all those pixels around just so their advertising agents can claim the highest resolution screens in the cell phone market to the geeks who absolutely believe that spec sheets mean something.
As for the artists getting much more in royalties. Frankly, I doubt that will happen.
There is always a difference between recordings and live sound. It cannot be avoided. There is an interplay between beat frequencies that is lost in recordings that is always present in live music that cannot be recreated with the limited means of reproducing recordings. Our ears can pick up these beat frequencies that change with the positioning of each instrument. . . and each voice. When I sang lead bass with a large chorale, it was amazing what a different sound could be had by merely changing who sang next to each other. . . because the voice mixture changed. Same with instrument placement. This is lost in recordings. Even inaudible high frequency overtones can create beat frequency tones that are in the audible range that add to the ambiance of live music that can be missing from live music recorded in studio. I had a long discussion about this with our conductor. . . and he demonstrated it with a super-high quality multi-channel analog tape recording that recorded into inaudible ranges had been mastered to a CD. There was a huge jaw-dropping difference. He said a lot gets lost in the digitizing.
There is no functional, qualitative or discernible difference found on Monster Cables when tested and compared to far less expensive cables. Testing laboratories searched and searched for any testable differences. . . blind listening by people found they could discern no advantage. There is no electrical advantage to using such an expensive cable. The founder of Monster claimed he experimented with different alloys until he found one that carried sound better than all the rest. . . but tests found no difference in Monster wire than the wires used in standard cables. They look cool. . . but you got just as good a sound from 15¢ per foot 14 gauge zip line as you could with Monster Cables. . . which tested just as good. . . as long as you had an excellent electrical/mechanical connection at both speaker and amplifier terminals. They are hype over substance.
“...compared porno to low resolution mp3’s...”
That’s the money quote. 96k is my bet. Now compare it to 256k :)
Meanwhile, my Carver CD player with tube pre-amp sits collecting dust. Too bad the rotary drawer mechanism they used wasn’t the highest quality.
128 bit sampling is crap. 192 is okay. I’ve found myself updating my library to 256, but given how cheap storage is these days, I may just go lossless. I don’t think I’ll be paying for Mr. Young’s contraption, though.
Nowadays, I do more listening with the phone and a set of Sennheiser headphones or in the car than I ever did in the living room. Such is the nature of having a job with lots of travel time.
Vinyl was great (hiss, snap, pop) reat (hiss, snap, pop) reat...
:)
Like wine connoisseurs, I think there are far more people who WANT OTHER people to believe they can taste/hear the difference than people who can ACTUALLY taste/hear the difference.
Yikes! $25 an album?!
He’s definitely sound better than vinyl, but if I’m gonna just sit and listen to music (rare), it,s always vinyl. It’s the experience that I like.
7-up does wonders for two buck Chuck. :-)
He’s = CD’s
“Music Porn?”
Aural sex?
Like all rumors related to Apple, I will believe it when Apple itself makes the announcement, not before, There have just been too many vapor ware and hot air ware rumors over the years that have not born fruit,
great info and i have question. on rock and roll aren’t the older masters just two track which they reduced for stereo reproduction purposes and didn’t some of them actually just record two track. as apposed to classical which tried to master with as many tracks as they could get. one of my childhood friends who was a violinist and created his own cd told me their was some difference between the way they were recorded and i probably don’t remember it correctly.
You may be aware of the "Vinturi" a device which will aerate wine and improve the flavor similar to allowing it to air out before pouring. They have come out with a Vinturi for Spirits. . . I thought it couldn't do much for hard liquors but one my doctors in our office got one. He was amazed. He had some Gin that was almost as bad as drinking kerosene. We did a side-by-side taste test of the Gin pour direct from the bottle and some poured through the Vinturi for Spirits. . . the one direct from the bottle was literally undrinkable, so much poison as far as I was concerned. After being poured through the Vinturi, it tasted like the best Gin you ever tasted. . . and I don't like Gin. AMAZING!
A brand new vinyl record, played fewer than twenty times, is probably better than a CD when played through an excellent sound system with superb speakers. . . with a warmer, more complete sound. However, after a few playings, the tracks start to wear and the sharpness of the highs begin to be lost. After 100 plays, nope.
all of the songs from one of the CSNY albums i downloaded on amazon sound like chipmunks. stuff i rip here at home sound pretty good even some old opera recordings.
Well, I’m certainly not a “sound connoisseur” because at my old age, my hearing is more limited than ever. But still, I can’t see that people are going to be able to detect an improvement in this new sound technology as compared to Apple Lossless.
But, I’ll defer to those with better ears than me ... :-) ...
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