Neil Young's Pono music service

[Daddy Dee]

This is all brand new on my radar screen. Don't have a clear sense of what this will be like, but he takes the quality of music seriously for sure. Should be interesting to see how things shake out.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-expands-pono-digital-to-analog-music-service-20120927

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-trademarks-new-audio-format-20120403

BTW, he is also taking clean and sober seriously. [Y]

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-opens-up-about-sobriety-20120919

[Gilbert]

Thanks Dee. Good read on the pono.... MP3's sound like crap to my ears too, can't stand'em.

[skonopa]

I've heard about this "Pono" thing before.

There are a lot of unaswered questions that I still have here.

How is this going to be any better than say 96khz/24bit FLAC or even 192/24 FLAC?

What kind of pricing are we talking about, for both the music itself and these players?

Just what kind of selection is going to be available? Is it all going to be the boring "mainstream" stuff from the "big labels" or is there going to be a fair amount of the more interesting underground/independent stuff available as well?

Is this going to be an "open" standard or at least licensing will be resonable so other companies can implement it in thier players as well as allow smaller, independent labels/bands to produce music in this format?

Is this all going to be encumbered with DRM?

It is nice that it seems that "Big Music" is now taking notice that there is a market and people do care about audio quality. It seems it takes a high-profile artist to get them to listen. Now, I hope much of the more independent/underground stuff that I like to listen to would become more available in these high-res formats as well. I just only hope that it is actually accessible and that the "Big Labels" don't kill it by making it too expensive or strangling it with draconion DRM. If they do, I hope they realize that they have to compete with perfectly good open, free, non-DRMed hi-res formats that are already out there and readily availlble such as FLAC, with which people probably would not even be able to tell a difference from this 'Pono' format (which brings me back to my first question above).

[DizRotus]

My recent experience with Pono has been very positive. There is no special Pono format, but FLAC is recommended. The best recordings are those closest to the original masters. Nonetheless, other formats, such as CD or vinyl, sound very good when ripped to FLAC files and played through the Pono player.  To the best of my knowledge, Pono downloads are not encumbered by DRM.

Edited December 16, 2014 by DizRotus

[GlenRasmussen]

First Experience with my new Pono! I am on a border town, NYS and Ontario, and my pono came last friday, with two Neil Young Albums  on it. Pono store still can't accept non-USA  credit cards, so I have not been able to buy any High Res Flac  files yet. 

The Harvest Album sounds good, on my Klipschorns, but waiting for more music to load before I pass judgement. Seems that most songs that I want to audition and buy, are coming soon.  Seems that most are Album only.  At 20+$ a album this is a expensive proposition to re-purchase an entire library.  I plan on putting together a HiFi   playlist of select songs. My high end listening tends to be from BlueRay albums.  I have loaded some music from my iTunes Library, and it sounds good, but hard to justify having to haul around another player, other than my iPhone 5s.  Keep ya posted as new music come available. Anyone else out there been blown away by the pono player??  My first impression is that I would wait for them to get the problems ironed out, and for more  music in their catalog,  I want single songs only, there are only a few Best of  Albums or classics that I will buy.  Update, I was at a friends house who has a Full B&W system, and we had company, so could not crank up the sound for vary long, but it seems my Klipshorns perform better with the pono player, as the Dynamic Range increase of audio signal is really apparent.  He couldn't see any Pono difference, the output of the pono is quite a bit less than any streaming device. You need to advance your output 20% on the gain control to get the same sound pressure level on a db meter.  This is a common complaint of Headphone users, directly to the pono. So far 3 and a half stars. 

Edited January 6, 2015 by GlenRasmussen

[joessportster]

First Experience with my new Pono! I am on a border town, NYS and Ontario, and my pono came last friday, with two Neil Young Albums  on it. Pono store still can't accept non-USA  credit cards, so I have not been able to buy any High Res Flac  files yet. 

The Harvest Album sounds good, on my Klipschorns, but waiting for more music to load before I pass judgement. Seems that most songs that I want to audition and buy, are coming soon.  Seems that most are Album only.  At 20+$ a album this is a expensive proposition to re-purchase an entire library.  I plan on putting together a HiFi   playlist of select songs. My high end listening tends to be from BlueRay albums.  I have loaded some music from my iTunes Library, and it sounds good, but hard to justify having to haul around another player, other than my iPhone 5s.  Keep ya posted as new music come available. Anyone else out there been blown away by the pono player??  My first impression is that I would wait for them to get the problems ironed out, and for more  music in their catalog,  I want single songs only, there are only a few Best of  Albums or classics that I will buy.  

from what I have read you can buy music from other Hi-Rez places like HD-Traks and the sound quality is the same after all bits are bits no matter who sells them