I was talking to a Pro-Audio Edd last night about the new crap Neil Young album (if you buy it you're a mug imho), the conversation moved on to his new much hyped pony pono device, Edd suggested it has a great DAC so could be a great DAP. I kinda agreed with his sentiment but I pointed out a few things to bring a bit of reality to the proceedings, firstly it won't connect to the Hugo (major oversight imo but I suppose crowd-funding has its limitations), secondly the shape is a disaster waiting to happen, you put this thing in your front jeans/trouser pocket when out & about and you could be up to get arrested as it will look like you have an erection, I'm certainly not up for being labelled as a sexual predator because Mr Young is promoting one of his stage props. I guess the real crux of our convo was about the old Arcam Alpha-9 CD-Player that featured the dCS ring-dac and cost about £900 back in the late '90's, how things have moved on now that Arcam no longer uses it and dCS now produce their version of the much heralded Alpha-9 but charge a lottery winners price for it, there's an irony within the hi-fi industry I guess.
talking of irony... Neil Young preaches audio quality which is what the Pono is meant to be all about, the same Artist then releases the worst album of 'covers' which has dire production methods and sounds bloody awful... guess it must be because he's skint, if you want to hear music recorded from a bygone era invest in some Woody Guthrie albums, remarkable stuff for sure and should sound pretty awesome on the Hugo.
