PonoMusic

[bigburner]

PonoMusic is a continuation of Neil Young's fight against low-res (mp3) music. It comprises an online music store (PonoMusic.com) and a hi-res playback device (the PonoPlayer) that was developed in conjunction with Ayre Acoustics. You can read about it here:

http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=cb216c0b595d986a7fd73f2aa&id=617fe79177&e=a223088ca8

Nigel.

[mjb]

Thanks for the link. Too many unanswered questions to make judgement just yet, but the "PonoPlayer" does seem a little expensive.

[wkhanna]

The more info I get, the more I support the effort.

Link to Kickstarter

With Charley Hansen's involvement & the files being offered in FLAC, along with a suspicion that J River will be handling the media management application, it looks like it may have legs.

I am all for anything that brings higher resolution music to the masses.

[Johnloudb]

My first thought was this thread was supposed to be called PornoMusic, whatever the hell that would be? lol, shows where my mind is at! Not that I look at porn much, I just stay away, I'm in Utah for crying out loud. No porn here! Actually a little know fact is that more people look at porn percentage wise, online in Utah than any other state in the US! True. A bunch of sexually frustrated people here!

Well, that's cool! But, it's just too easy to go for my iPhone for casual listening. I don't have much music on my iphone either and just use my Pandora App. But, I want a PonoMusic server for my stereo! When's that coming? Also, Sony, has got a line of high res music servers now too! Not too pricey for just a 1TB music server.

John

[wkhanna]

Getting access to new music in higher quality resolution is just as, if not more, significant, IMHO.
The pricing for music is quite reasonable, and they will even be offering single tracks.
Some competition can only be a good thing.

AFA the hardware cost, people are shelling out $200 + on headphones these days that are as much fashion / status accessories as anything else. The Toberlone enclosure will power headphones from a normal mini-stereo output specially designed for headphones. A second stereo mini-plug analog output is specifically designed for listening on a home audio system, in a car, or with a Sonos Connect for example. And it is designed by Arye for crying out loud! It incorporates a minimal phase no pre-ringing filter. If that's the same filter they implement on the QB-9, it is one of the best filters around with no smearing or audible aliasing like most all other filters.

[Johnloudb]

Getting access to new music in higher quality resolution is just as, if not more, significant, IMHO.
The pricing for music is quite reasonable, and they will even be offering single tracks.
Some competition can only be a good thing.

AFA the hardware cost, people are shelling out $200 + on headphones these days that are as much fashion / status accessories as anything else. The Toberlone enclosure will power headphones from a normal mini-stereo output specially designed for headphones. A second stereo mini-plug analog output is specifically designed for listening on a home audio system, in a car, or with a Sonos Connect for example. And it is designed by Arye fro crying out loud! It incorporates a minimal phase no pre-ringing filter. If that's the same filter they implement on the QB-9, it is one of the best filters around with no smearing or audible aliasing like most all other filters.

Very good points Bill! I'm all for Arye and Pono making more high res (and high quality) recordings available to more people. Funny, my dad came to me today with an article in the paper about the Pono Player, with reviewers saying that it sounds like an analog recording. So the news is getting out apparently ... that's great! He's thinking about getting one, but for our stereo!

But he has a huge music library ... I'll have to visit their website and figure out what type of small storage media I need to create playlists on those. And what about battery life? The power has to be connected to the USB port and the same one external storage would use. Maybe there is an adapter I could use to hook up both?

Perhaps a great little music server for car trips?

I need a simple music server that my dad can use, that you can just slap a huge hard drive on to. So, perhaps waiting for Pono to bring out a home music server? Or maybe go elsewhere.

[Johnloudb]

But he has a huge music library ... I'll have to visit their website and figure out what type of small storage media I need to create playlists on those. And what about battery life? The power has to be connected to the USB port and the same one external storage would use. Maybe there is an adapter I could use to hook up both?

I see it uses an SD card for external storage. Cool!

[Johnloudb]

From a news article ... "No news yet on whether a clothing line featuring special pockets that will actually hold the triangular player is in the offering."

Lol.

Looks like my dad is pre-ordering one, for his favorite music and of course high res downloads from Ponomusic.

[JonMarsh]

Any additional awareness of high res/non compressed downloads is good, and so is a new source of them. The player doesn't really excite me, truthfully, I'm more interested in an AK120, but have so little spare time, and none of the travel that I usually do, so a portable music player is not a high priority.





Most of what I would put on this would be just standard CD resolution, but under portable conditions, with good playback quality, that will suffice. you only have to hear what CD's sound like on my TotalDAC-D1 to gain an appreciation for how good CD's can sound. Of course, this won't match it, but the Wolfson DAC's used are not exactly shabby, and it is DSD capable, too.

The AK120 even has an external SPDIF connection, so the system flexibility is fairly good. Of course, the price is rather a bit more...

[Hdale85]

As nice as that device sounds Jon, it's sort of in a different league lol! 1300 bucks vs I think 300 or so for the pono?

[Chris D]

Interesting stuff. I can't find information about the integrated amplification sections though.

I chose to upgrade my portable music capabilities last year by adding a line-out cable and portable headphone amp to my iPod classic. It's pretty cool. But if these devices would ideally need a headphone amp too, then to me that just defeats the point.

[mjb]

As nice as that device sounds Jon, it's sort of in a different league lol! 1300 bucks vs I think 300 or so for the pono?

The AK120 might have a couple of Wolfson WM 8740 Dac's, but its apparently got some software issues, an there's no Mac support. I'll be checking out the Pono.

[Johnloudb]

Any additional awareness of high res/non compressed downloads is good, and so is a new source of them.

Well, I think that's the best part of Pono. It's all about getting more people, especially young people, interested in High Quality sound. If Pono can do that and make high quality recordings, and not just high res, more available then that would awesome!!! Time will tell, but Neil Young does seem to be doing a good job at marketing the player, even before being released. Even Forbes noticed the 2.0 million raised in two days, up to 4.4 million now.

From reports I've read the Pono has the mobile version ESS Sabre DAC 9018, with the digital filter bypassed to use Charles Hansen's filter and no feedback analog output circuitry with high current output stage. I don't see much not to like about it especially for the price! The more accessible quality recordings and playback become the better for all of us.

[Hdale85]

Wow if it's using the Sabre it certainly has one of the best DAC's out there... I may have to look into this for going to the gym and chores around the house haha.

[aarsoe]

Points for the effort but why does anyone think consumers would/will be willing to pay 20+ USD per album. Electronic distribution is almost without cost so why do they believe people will accept another rip-off? Will pay 20+ for an LP but not for some bits.
Makes me almost as furious as when a bank ask for money to accept cash.
Most of all the so called hig-res is questionable anyway. We need a format were all tracks have a clear marking on what the audio chain was. Like AAA DAA etc in the beginning with CD's. Have a lot of high res were my CD version sounds better or equal.
Sorry, but as you can tell I am not really buying in to this..

[Hdale85]

Digital distribution doesn't cost nothing. In fact with higher quality high bitrate tracks it costs more. Bandwidth costs money.

[mjb]

Neil Young quote, from an "easy to find" online PONO interview:

The problem with some of the things we're going to encounter, if you have a new Ford or Chevy or something like that, you're going to have that Microsoft shit in there and it's going to downgrade whatever we put into it. We'll have to work through that.

Classic!

[Chris D]

Greeeeeeeat...

[aarsoe]

Funny - bandwith does cost money but it is pennies pr gigabyte. Don't let anyone else fool you into thinking that it is more. If so youtube would be dead now..

[Chris D]

If you already have robust fiber networks set up where you personally live, sure, bandwidth infrastructure is already there and is cost effective.

For the rest of us in the world, it's not pennies, especially if you are trying to increase the location infrastructure. I pay hundreds of dollars for gigabyte overages. Wish it was pennies.

[Hdale85]

He's talking about companies bandwidth costs for streaming the content.

[Chris D]

Yeah... same thing. Cost effective if the infrastructure is already there, to get it to a customer in an urban area or whatever. Expensive to get it to all other customers. So the cost averages out to providers, it's not just cheap and easy.

[aarsoe]

I am sorry, but unless PONO installs cable in your area they don't care about cost as they will only pay pennies. Check website prices for limitless bandwidth. Starts at $29 per month. Sure they will pay more, but not that much..
So back to my question on why they feel they need to charge that much for an album ($ 20-25). Remember they are up against all you can eat services for 9.95 or less per month. Yes, they are not loss less but I can guarantee you that they all have full CD bandwidth waiting for the day they need something more to compete with. So we will have it although when is the big question.
Now that is for the software side of it, the hardware is equally crazy in terms of pricing. So I feel very skeptical about the long term outlook..

[Hdale85]

I am sorry, but unless PONO installs cable in your area they don't care about cost as they will only pay pennies. Check website prices for limitless bandwidth. Starts at $29 per month. Sure they will pay more, but not that much..
So back to my question on why they feel they need to charge that much for an album ($ 20-25). Remember they are up against all you can eat services for 9.95 or less per month. Yes, they are not loss less but I can guarantee you that they all have full CD bandwidth waiting for the day they need something more to compete with. So we will have it although when is the big question.
Now that is for the software side of it, the hardware is equally crazy in terms of pricing. So I feel very skeptical about the long term outlook..

Those sites for unlimited bandwidth, their prices do not apply to people streaming large amounts of media files. Their prices are paid on a per gig basis generally. Also it's likely more than pennies per gig. Companies like google and such get around this by owning their own data center hosting their own servers. Netflix gets better prices by having deals worked out with companies that own these data centers hence the recent deal with Comcast and such.

Those "all you can eat services" that are 9.95 a month are not giving you high quality high bitrate files. And I can guarantee you that they do not have full cd bandwidth, they are MP3's and generally 384kbps max which is still a very lossy format and nothing even close. You're talking about downloading 90-100mb of data in mp3 format tops to downloading up to and over a gigabyte in data for one album in a lossless format.

[JonMarsh]

It all comes down to what you expect when you listen- if MP3's work for you, then don't worry about Pono or HD Tracks or Linn or any of the other sources of higher quality music files. If one only listens on standard ear buds, it's not going to make significant difference.

If you like to integrate your libraries between home and mobile, to at least some degree, then even CD quality is a bit of a challenge in portable storage, and true high res is even more of a challenge- I have a large library of music which I have extracted from my SACD's into 24/176.4 format; it sounds great on good gear, but a typical album of older music (when there's not so many tracks as CD's today) is 4 GB. 1GB for Pono sounds optimistic- there are CD's up to 800MB, after all. At 2-4 GB per album, it doesn't take long to go through 1TB, for example. FLAC helps, as does Apple Lossless, which I also use. But flash based players still don't have the necessary storage at any kind of reasonable price, unless you just want a handful of favorites in Hi Res. Not really anything wrong with that, especially for travel...

As for streaming service, well, that's like eating at McDonalds all the time. Not good for you! You ought to at least try Panera once in a while... I like to control both the music I listen to, and the quality, and my tastes may be enough off the beaten path that generic services hold no allure for me.

[bigburner]

Project Update #23: More about the PonoPlayer Design

Many of the more technically inclined have asked for more details about what is so special about the Pono Player design. Charlie Hansen, founder of Ayre Acoustics, and one of the major contributors to the technical audio circuit design of the PonoPlayer that will ship in October, provided the information in this memo to share with you.

But first, let’s be clear that we have no publishable measured “specifications” for the PonoPlayer as of our Kickstarter campaign. While we have a basic design that is a working prototype, and it sounds great today, we have been evolving the design of the Player throughout the last year, and will continue to make changes through the next month or so, as we approach our handoff to manufacturing for October shipments.

When we have stabilized the design of the Player and built a sufficient number of test units, we will being to measure the audio specifications of the Player, and will have those “specs” available at shipment.

One of the primary reasons we chose a crowdfunding platform was to raise the necessary funds to completely finish the design of the PonoPlayer. So, obviously, we can publish “specs” on an unfinished product. We belive our backers understand this idea. So, now, on to the design of the Player.

For the best audio experience, we begin by getting the highest resolution audio recording available from the labels. Our goal is to deliver to the consumer the file that is the closest possible representation of what the artist heard in the studio when the album was being made.

Our singular aim during the development of the Ponoplayer was to build a device with one purpose: the playback of music at the highest possible level of performance given the boundaries of the design. This design called for a small, portable structure capable of storing high-resolution digital files and converting them to analog music, thereby providing a more-than-fulfilling experience for the listener. This product wouldn’t function as a phone, WiFi router, Bluetooth transceiver, portable gaming platform or GPS widget. Any additional features would only detract from the resolution of music in its fullest dimension, and thus, the enjoyment we know possible when music is reproduced with this level of fidelity.

The music is downloaded and stored in a format called FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), a widely accepted, robust, industry standard. It allows for the compression and subsequent storage of large audio files without the loss of critical data. All information stored on the original file can be retrieved with zero loss once the FLAC algorithm decompresses the file. This provides the best of both worlds: compact storage and high potential fidelity. Founded by Charles (Charlie) Hansen (chief engineer and product designer), Ayre has been designing and building high-performance, award-winning home audio electronics for more than 20 years. With their feet firmly planted in both the digital and analog domains, we felt they were the perfect choice for a partner that could design an audio circuit capable of championing the difficult and delicate challenges of high-resolution audio playback.

Everything Ayre has ever made has had fully balanced, all-discrete, zero-feedback analog circuitry. Even Ayre’s digital products employ custom digital filters. The reasoning behind the use and implementation of every one of these technologies is to fortify the presence of the signal and defeat noise in the path of that same signal. Without this, the rendering of high-resolution music would be a futile task, as the listener wouldn’t be able to hear the actual benefits of high-resolution audio.

In the Pono Player, Ayre began their work by designing the circuitry after the main processor retrieves the audio data from the memory and presents it in "3-wire" form - audio data, bit clock, and word clock. They chose the just-released version of ESS's top-of-the-line ES9018. It has two channels, comes in a very small package (5 mm square), and is extremely customizable, able to tackle the rigors of sensitive, low-level signal path design.

The filter generally favored by Ayre is a minimum-phase digital filter (to eliminate pre-ringing), with a "slow" roll-off, to minimize the overall amount of ringing (ringing can be thought of as an oscillation in the digital signal, causing all sorts of errors if misconstrued as actual signal to be converted to analog, which is engineer-speak for music). For the Pono Player’s D/A (digital-to-analog) converter Charlie went a step further and used a moving average filter for both the double and quad sampling rates because it has no pre-ringing, no post-ringing, no overshoot, and no undershoot (these create inaccuracies in the rendering of digital signal and sacrifice fidelity). In other words, it has none of the digital artifacts (digital artifacts also add to distortion and occlude signal) at all.

The DAC chip’s output comes in the form of current, so Ayre designed a proprietary, fully discrete, fully- balanced, zero-feedback current-to-voltage stage. This then goes to a fully discrete, zero-feedback buffer stage to drive both the headphone output and the line stage output. The output impedance is roughly 5 ohms, allowing the Pono Player to drive any headphone on the market with minimal frequency response errors.

Project Update #24: Clarifications Regarding Update #23 & the PonoPlayer Design

Clarification about the PonoPlayer Output Impedance

Some have expressed concerns about the output impedance of the PonoPlayer being 5 ohms. It is important to note that it is trivial to make the output impedance arbitrarily low -- simply add more and more and more feedback. The problem is that this will make the player sound worse, not better!

All products designed by Ayre (since its inception 21 years ago) have no negative feedback. This results in a more natural sound because feedback can only attempt to correct for an error after it has occurred -- clearly an impossibility. If negative feedback actually worked as people claim, then all products would sound the same because the negative feedback would eliminate the errors. But not all amplifiers sound the same, so feedback is clearly not the answer!

The reason that output impedance is somewhat important is that the impedance of headphones almost always vary with frequency. If the output impedance of the headphone driver circuit is too high, then there will be a voltage divider action between the impedance of the headphone and the output impedance of the headphone amplifier that results in audible frequency response errors.

Now, to some extent this is meaningless as all headphones have inherent frequency response errors anyway. It may be that some headphones (through sheer luck) may produce an overall flatter frequency response with an amplifier that has a high output impedance. But luck and hope are not good ways to design things.

Instead, the goal it to reduce the output impedance to a point that is low enough that there are no meaningful frequency response errors with almost any headphone on the market. In the real world this means that the output impedance of a headphone amplifier should be less than about 10 ohms or so. Lower impedances will result in lower frequency response errors due to the interaction between the output impedance of the headphone amplifier and the headphone impedance itself. But lowering the output impedance through the use of feedback will introduce new sonic problems that are much worse than the original problem.

The only other way to reduce the output impedance of the headphone amplifier is to increase the idle current in the amplifier circuit. This is fine for a home stereo where there is virtually unlimited power available from any wall socket. But a portable player is a different animal altogether. Increasing the idle current of the amplifier will obviously shorten the battery life of the device. The art of engineering is the art of compromise. And when you have a chance to listen to the PonoPlayer, we promise that you will be more than happy with the choices we have made.

The 5 ohm output impedance of the PonoPlayer is the best overall compromise which minimizes interactions between the headphone amplifier and the headphone while maintaining good battery life, and completely avoiding the sonic problems created by the use of negative feedback. Thanks for reading this, and thanks for your questions.

Correction about Converters

The Ayre QA-9 ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL converter uses a moving average design with no undershoot, overshoot, and ringing but not the digital-to-analog converter in Ayre products.

Nigel.

[Chris D]

Huh.... interesting. Not sure I understand, though, and whether people will need to use a separate headphone amp, unless they have very efficient headphones.

[Johnloudb]

Huh.... interesting. Not sure I understand, though, and whether people will need to use a separate headphone amp, unless they have very efficient headphones.

From what I've read it should work very well with most headphones out there. So no need for headphone amp unless you use something like Stax.

[Johnloudb]

Okay guys, it's the last day to back Pono Music and preordered a Pono Music Player ... Come on guys, let's push them over 6 million dollars raised, we can do it!!!

Edit: oops looks likes 50 hours left ...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003614822/ponomusic-where-your-soul-rediscovers-music

[Hdale85]

I know we were talking about some other players here as well, so I thought I'd post this FiiO player I found which looks like it may be decent?

http://www.parts-express.com/fiio-x5-portable-high-resolution-music-player-for-lossless-music-formats-192k-24-bit--230-142?utm_source=Retail&utm_medium=Email_Newsletter&utm_content=230-142&utm_campaign=email051514A

[Johnloudb]

I know we were talking about some other players here as well, so I thought I'd post this FiiO player I found which looks like it may be decent?

http://www.parts-express.com/fiio-x5...n=email051514A

That looks like a very nice player too! Has the well liked BB/TI PCM1792 DAC, and offers DSD playback, and has an equalizer ... a nice option in my opinion!

[Johnloudb]

A pono article by Steve Guttenberg ...

http://www.cnet.com/news/will-the-400-pono-music-player-sound-like-a-27500-stereo-preamplifier/

[Johnloudb]

A FiiO high res player review by Steve Guttenberg ...

http://www.cnet.com/news/fiios-nifty-200-portable-high-resolution-music-player-is-a-knockout/

[Johnloudb]

CNN's included Pono in it's 10 gadget inventions -http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/...rebar_facebook

[Burke Strickland]

If they had called it "Porno Player" (that's with an "r" between the first "o" and the "n") they likely would have gotten their $6,200,000 in the first five minutes... wonder how many donors mentally "filled in the blank" and contributed with "that" in mind anyway? (Present company excepted of course.)

[Hdale85]

Well the Pono player actually has a pretty strong following I believe.

[Johnloudb]

If they had called it "Porno Player" (that's with an "r" between the first "o" and the "n") they likely would have gotten their $6,200,000 in the first five minutes... wonder how many donors mentally "filled in the blank" and contributed with "that" in mind anyway? (Present company excepted of course.)

Thanks for that last sentence, but who knows what that subliminal message has done to my brain? Maybe it pushed me over the edge? Perhaps this is part of Neil Young's marketing strategy, to appeal to people of all personality types? Well, whatever his plan I hope it works. I'm sold!

Yeah, it's so much about marketing and like someone mentioned above if people will shell out hundreds of dollars on Beats headphones why not a cool high end digital player? Just got to make people think they need it and once they get hooked to high end sound, well could start a new wave of audiophiles? Let's hope!

[Johnloudb]

Well the Pono player actually has a pretty strong following I believe.

Yeah, I think so too.

[Johnloudb]

Well here is another update from Pono Music. I know I've become like the ultimate Pono fan boy since Nigel started this thread and I ended up pre ordering one. Anyway, here it is -

"Update #36 Jul 14 2014
Pono Selects Omnifone to Power PonoMusic Service
5 comments Like 14 likes
Omnifone today announces that Neil Young’s PonoMusic has selected Omnifone’s MusicStation to power its high-resolution digital music service. Neil Young’s vision is to revive the soul of music lost to popular compressed digital formats.

PonoMusic service, which will launch in the US, UK and Canada before the end of the year, is a complete music ecosystem that includes the purpose-built PonoPlayer, the PonoMusic Media Centre desktop app, and the PonoMusic.com social music store. Pono will revolutionise digital music and allow fans to hear and feel the music, experiencing the way the artists created it in the studio.

Omnifone was selected to power the PonoMusic store because of its award-winning cloud music platform and its industry-leading audio expertise and commitment to audio quality. Standing at 35 million tracks, MusicStation - Omnifone’s cloud music platform - hosts the industry’s largest catalogue of high resolution content, obtained from rights holders in all corners of the world. This rich collection of premium quality audio - and its distributed delivery from the cloud - will enable PonoMusic to achieve global scale quickly.

As PonoMusic’s founder and legendary recording artist Neil Young puts it: “Omnifone shares the same passion for high resolution audio as we do at Pono. We are committed to bringing the original recording sound quality from the studio to the PonoPlayer, and Omnifone is a key partner in making this a reality."

Phil Sant, Omnifone Co-Founder and Chief Engineer commented: “PonoMusic is the perfect partner for Omnifone to debut its high resolution audio cloud delivery capabilities. The Pono team has done an incredible job with the PonoPlayer, the attention to detail and the quality of audio engineering delivers a sound which is utterly spellbinding. What the Pono team is trying to achieve is close to our hearts.”

“Omnifone is providing the scalable music acquisition and delivery infrastructure but we are also working on some funky stuff such a technique to verify the provenance of the audio and its end-to-end signal path from the studio to the listener via the cloud.”

Omnifone had the vision to start using highly compressed audio to power music services on 2G feature phones as early as 2006. To achieve optimum sound quality, it made the decision to ingest only master recordings from labels, hire the best audio talent in the industry and do the encoding itself. Omnifone has the highest possible quality pulse-code modulation (PCM) audio recordings for delivery in free lossless audio codec (FLAC) and wave form audio (WAV) formats and is now adding new formats such as Direct-Stream Digital (DSD). As a result Omnifone has the largest licensed high-resolution audio catalogue in the world.

Pedram Abrari, PonoMusic SVP of Technology states: “We’re working tirelessly to give digital music listeners the intensity, nuance and emotion originally captured in the studio. We selected Omnifone as our content delivery partner because of its unique experience in end-to-end digital audio quality and its ability to scale globally.”

Jeff Hughes, Omnifone CEO, says: “We are innovators in the digital music landscape and the PonoMusic service will showcase that. Now that digital music services are becoming more mainstream, users are turning their attention to audio quality and it is fast becoming one of the deciding factors when choosing a music service. Omnifone has the platform, the passion and the knowledge to deliver it.”

Pono will soon begin shipping more than 15,000 PonoPlayers to its Kickstarter backers. The players retail at $399. High-resolution digital albums are anticipated to cost between $15 to $25. With the support of high profile artists, Pono raised over $6.25 million on the leading crowdfunding website, Kickstarter. Pono is the third most successful campaign in the history of Kickstarter."