Is anyone else sorta bugged by Neil Young's Pono?

Vice//Versa

Vice//Versa

Dude among dudes
May 5, 2013
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California
I've heard arguments about digital audio for long enough for me to be fed up with the nostalgia and scientific inaccuracy. The big labels and "regular" music media are all backing this up. It's also sad to see respectful musicians sponsor something based on placebo rather than any empirical truth. Am I overreacting? :goggly:

https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/projects/884493/video-355903-h264_high.mp4

 
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Neil Young is a tone deaf loon these days. There's no way his tinnitus/weed affected ears (being high enhances ringing caused by tinnitus, so does jacking off actually) can actually differentiate between Apple Lossless and FLAC or WAV.
 
JeffTD said:
Neil Young is a tone deaf loon these days. There's no way his tinnitus/weed affected ears (being high enhances ringing caused by tinnitus, so does jacking off actually) can actually differentiate between Apple Lossless and FLAC or WAV.
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:lol: maybe its my atheism (and inherent lack of a soul) that prevents me from feeling whatever the fuck Neil thinks he's feeling :)
 
JeffTD said:
Neil Young is a tone deaf loon these days. There's no way his tinnitus/weed affected ears (being high enhances ringing caused by tinnitus, so does jacking off actually) can actually differentiate between Apple Lossless and FLAC or WAV.
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Or a properly encoded MP3 either, lets be honest :lol:
 
Fucking 'audiophiles' and their imagined bullshit.

"Let's introduce a standalone digital music player RIGHT as iPods die out and streaming is rapidly growing!"
 
JeffTD said:
Neil Young is a tone deaf loon these days. There's no way his tinnitus/weed affected ears (being high enhances ringing caused by tinnitus, so does jacking off actually) can actually differentiate between Apple Lossless and FLAC or WAV.
Click to expand...

There goes my weekend.
 
Apparently most of those clowns from the promo video won't tell mp3 from CD.
No 192 khz,or anything else will help their products sound better either,(Rubin's stuff particularly)
It's much more simple than that;none of them care,the only reason they're backing this shit is because they hope that the new format will bring back sales...
 
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I guess all you'd hear would be just one big test tone :goggly:
 
The video was enraging.
I only watched 5 minutes of the gushing so I may have missed this but I didn't see an explanation of what the difference was. Just the file format? The actual player? The mastering? All of those things (this would be my guess)?
If this is a player that offers a better DAC, higher res playback and a better headphone amp than what's currently available then I'm all for it. I just desperately wish they'd cut the shit and say that. Ultimately, if going to a 24bit playback medium or a higher sampling rate reinvigorates music sales I don't care whether it's bullshit or not.
 
From their website:
The PonoMusic Store uses FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) audio format as its standard, for compatibility, although the PonoPlayer can play most popular high-resolution music formats from other sources. PonoMusic has a quality spectrum, ranging from really good to really great, depending on the quality of the available master recordings:

• CD lossless quality recordings: 1411 kbps (44.1 kHz/16 bit) FLAC files
• High-resolution recordings: 2304 kbps (48 kHz/24 bit) FLAC files
• Higher-resolution recordings: 4608 kbps (96 kHz/24 bit) FLAC files
• Ultra-high resolution recordings: 9216 kbps (192 kHz/24 bit) FLAC files
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So basically it's just typical hi-res stuff and an accompanying player. So Neil Young's revolutionary new idea is to create a product line that has existed for a decade.
http://discover.store.sony.com/High-Resolution-Audio/
 
You know it's bullshit when Rick Rubin thinks it sounds great.
I have huge respect for Neil Young as an artist and that won't change.
 
JeffTD said:
Yeah but he'll have a webstore to go with it. You know, one that will tank compared to iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, etc.
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and all the streaming services that are competing for domination like spotify, gloogle play, and that beats thing . I might be pulling the gun but it seems like this is the culmination of elitism and idealization of a past age. I sort of understand when people say heavy saturation from tape sounds best to their ears or when people say they prefer the organic aesthetic of older music which may have lacked polish. But this organized attempt from the "old school" to not only bitch about something that belongs to my era, but also profit afterwards... makes me really pissed :erk:
 
JeffTD said:
Yeah but he'll have a webstore to go with it. You know, one that will tank compared to iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, etc.
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Right, I just mean that hi-res web stores exist (there is a list on that sony site I linked). The douchiness not withstanding its a bummer that so many engineers (or hobbyists) are actively rooting against getting fidelity back to where it was. To my knowledge all of the mainstream stores still max at 256 mp3s. I understand that the arguments for 192k PCM vs 44.1 PCM is dubious at best but the differences between 256mp3 and cd/flac are pretty obvious.
 
Funny, I just found by chance my old Archos mp3/video player after I read about the Pono today. It still works very well, 7/8 years without powering it up and the battery still had some juice. This thing had so good converters than when I passed from them to using my iphone instead, I felt like I was going from 3D to 2D !

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Anyone else reads "porno" every single time he reads about this mp3 player ?
 
egan. said:
Right, I just mean that hi-res web stores exist (there is a list on that sony site I linked). The douchiness not withstanding its a bummer that so many engineers (or hobbyists) are actively rooting against getting fidelity back to where it was. To my knowledge all of the mainstream stores still max at 256 mp3s. I understand that the arguments for 192k PCM vs 44.1 PCM is dubious at best but the differences between 256mp3 and cd/flac are pretty obvious.
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Totally, I actually agree to a large extent, I just know he's doomed with this business model and would be better off pushing for webstores and companies to support FLAC on a major scale. I like the idea of a high res player, but I also haven't honestly had much to complain about with amazon/iTunes and the occasional reference disk via amazon prime when I want full res.
 
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