PONO - Neil Youngs portable hi-res music player - Page 7

yep, yep, and yep

 

I have some 16/44 rips that are fantastic - if all albums were mastered with the same care, we'd be spared a lot of trouble.

I think it's pretty easy to hear HiDef on a good master. That said, I'd also take a good master at a lower bit rate also but I never cared for the either/or perspective. How about getting it all right. Most A2Ds, DACs, players and interfaces have issues that can mask differences especially when using a computer as player or recorder. Until you're absolutely certain that you've heard the best transcription from front to back, don't blame the format. When you simple mic something into a good dedicated recorder and don't mess it up, the difference in sampling becomes more obvious, not less so, IMO.

Not sure if Neil explained how he came up with the name? 

 

In Hawaiian it means:

 

Pono =  proper, right, or morally correct.

Well, we'll see & hear how "righteous" this player really is once it's released.

There's no way of getting around the ginormous file sizes of 24/192 recordings and double-blind tests have shown that people cannot distinguish between hi-rez and 16/44, so whatever card Neil has up his sleeve will have to be something unexpected with regards to the Pono. I think it's a bit of a quixotic mission he's on since a lot of genres clearly don't care about catering to the audiophile crowd. As I said before, the best thing he can do is convince some big labels to really hunker down on the actual recording of the music - they'd come around if they could market it as a sort of blu-ray format for music if it really delivered the goods...if there isn't any financial incentive for the major labels, it simply won't happen.

 

I can... barely... sometimes.  My older player would default to CD layer, and often I forgot to change to SACD.  Sometimes I would notice during listening, other times not so much.  

 

I believe that double blind does not prove people "can't."  If you consult a statistician in for example the medical field, you will find that the "null hypothesis" (assumption) is that "no difference exists."  What you can prove (if p<0.05 usually) is that differences can in fact be heard, if the results indicate.  But if not, you have simply failed to prove that differences can be heard.  You have not proven that they cannot.  Widespread misunderstanding. 

Point well taken, but the lesson being that a file 5 or 6 times greater in size offering alleged improvements in sound that cannot be detected with any accuracy = waste of space, especially in a portable DAP.
 

That could be attributed to the SACD and CD layers having different masterings. Or, since it happens only "sometimes", pure luck.

That's correct. However, the likely theory (supported by scientific facts other than double blind testing, such as physics and anatomy) is the null hypothesis. There is no scientific reason to believe it is false to begin with. Only the audiophile crowd does (and they believe A LOT of crazy things), and they've failed to ever provide any proof of it. So, it's actually fair to assume that the null hypothesis here is true, and it's up to high res believers to prove otherwise. My point is that there isn't any reasonable doubt about it, and worrying about it is fairly pointless.

When we compare, we use 1st generation digital dubs of an analog master as source. Record different bit rates natively on a Nagra VI which we've favored over other D2A setups and also do downsample comparison as well. (Nagra is not computer interfaced. We use a regulated linear supply which is a bit better than battery power, the included switching supply is worst.) Results favor HiDef but I've run into HiDef not offering anything significant when sourced elsewhere. It's why I tend to think problems are more related to mastering, the encoding process and kit, not the so much the format. Playback is also on dedicated audio kit and not a USB DAC. Whether these results are important for moderately priced usb DAC setups or portable may be debatable but, for me, there is no question as to the higher capabilities of HiDef. I get the spec stuff as well but I also know the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning and is why I test for myself.

Edited by goodvibes - 12/11/12 at 7:56am

Is this DAP dead?

Was supposed to come out in march 2013.

at this point , it might as well be dead

Have you heard something or you mean you haven't ???