Jump to content
Gibson Brands Forums

Niel Young's Pono


saturn

Recommended Posts

I read his bio and he talked about Pono a lot. However, as I understand it, the whole thing is dependent on labels allowing access to the original masters. Otherwise all you are getting is CD quality (ie a FLAC player).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

He's not been a fan of low-sound quality mp3 for a long time now...

 

Go Neil!

 

True - but it's more than that. He's not a fan of CD quality either. That's why (as I mentioned earlier) his concept is dependent on getting original studio recordings and then creating higher quality Pono files from those. If it was just an .mp3 quality problem he'd only be creating the next FLAC or OGG or Apple Lossless. The quality of the Pono sound could be amazing, but how many original studio recordings can he get hold of and at what time expense?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I heard that Niel Young was hawking some "product" at the SXSW Festival I thought I should at least look into this thing. Niel doesn't usually promote or endorse anything other than his songs.

 

It looks very promising to me.

 

http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/neil-youngs-pono-hi-def-mp3-player/#!zV0fa

 

Porno? WTF??? Ohhhh ... PONO a new music player that promises higher fidelity for digital tracks. How much does it cost, Mr. Young? Ten thousand dollars (just like the first Apple Macintosh computer ... hahahahah). Seriously I do sympathize with quality. I notice when I plug my MP3 into my regular receiver some of the sound or parts of the track (that you swear you heard were there) just don't come through, but I don't have an issue like this playing Mp3's on WinMedia with desktop speakers, that's okay.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I'll reserve judgement until I hear it. Could be like the Revo sun glasses that came out several years ago. They had adds with people putting the glasses on and flipping out saying, oh my god, these glasses are amazing. Now I can see like never before. I tried them and it was like, oh my god, now I see everything with a yellowish tinge to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been following this since I read Neil's autobiography, it looks good, but presumably you would need to replace all your CD's etc (I never buy downloaded music anyway), this would prove very expensive and would be the difference between buying it and not buying it. If the music is download only, who really wants to explain to the Missus that the items on your credit card are for downloading Pono? It might sound like you'd suddenly acquired a speech impediment!

 

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd like to give it a listen.

I was surprised how bad standard mp3 tracks sounded when played-back through my (fairly decent) hi-fi.

 

OTOH....

My daughter is currently learning (bits of) "Chatanooga Choo Choo" in her piano lessons.

Just for fun I dragged out the ten-track, 10" 1953 recording I have on vinyl to let her hear the original Glenn Miller version.

After a handful of seconds she asked; "Daddy, what's making the 'rain' sound?....."

 

I had to explain why some records have 'Snap, Crackle and Pop' as a backing track.....lol!

 

P.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...