Neil Youngs PONO format/player

[Elwood]

Has anyone looked into this yet ?

I just started reading , I like the tag line..." How we deliver music that’s transformative – not transformed. "


http://www.ponomusic.com/#home

[fianoman]

Interesting idea. He has always felt, and I agree, that the audio quality of recordings has slipped over the years since the start of the digital age. However, I am not sure that 95% of the crap being released today would sound any better on the pono player so I would probably be collecting all of the same music for the 3rd or 4th time in my life (no comments about 8 tracks guys LOL). What passes for talent or quality production today is mediocre, at best. Sad but true.

I applaud his idea but I am not sure there are enough people in the general population that know the difference for it to be successful. Hope I am wrong.

[Elwood]

I applaud his idea but I am not sure there are enough people in the general population that know the difference for it to be successful. Hope I am wrong.

sigh...yup, I'd say your spot on

Here's to getting the word out " It CAN be better "

[fianoman]

Here's to getting the word out " It CAN be better "

Yes, cheers to that! I can remember listening to some albums, like SD's "Aja" when it first came out and thinking "what phenomenal production". You wanted to listen to every nuance the producers put in it - on a kick-butt stereo. The engineers were as much an inspiration as the musicians were. I couldn't wait to hear and analyze another new release. Good stuff.

[Philby]

I hope this movement gets off the ground. Not only do I love music, but I love the sound of music. Unfortunately much of the music released these days is squashed and volume maximized to within an inch of its life. There is little subtlety or nuance or musicality to be found in the production values of today. I literally cannot listen to it because it hurts my ears. I'm not sure that the Pono player will improve such inherently bad production, but at least the conversation is being dragged in the right direction with the talk of higher quality, higher resolution file formats.

The last CD I bought was by a young English guy called Jake Bugg. It had a big sticker on the front hailing the production by Rick Rubin, who is apparently a renowned American producer. After 2 songs I had to turn it off. The material sounded promising but the sonics were awful. The frequency response was strangled, the dynamic range was strangled, and I hadn't even converted it to MP3 yet. How Mr. Rubin got where he is is completely beyond me.

I agree with fianoman, it's time to haul out the old Steely Dan LP's to re-acquaint my ears with how things could be.

[bloodied_fingers]

There are plenty of lossless formats that are freely available, and have been for some time. It is awesome that Neil is taking up the mantle of audio quality.

I keep all of my music in both a variable bitrate mp3 (small for portable devices) and FLAC. This does take a bit of extra space, about 200GB of music now, but I feel it is worth it.

Unfortunately (and I don't know who is) but when companies like Monster Cable (Beats), Amazon and Apple have so much inertia and influence over the market it is hard to believe it will be more than a niche.