[Koolpep]

 
Koolpep - I respectfully disagree with your assessment (I think I'm about as old as you).  Or at least I think you need a little more nuance / detail.
 
Those old formats weren't worse than what's popular now.   The analog hardware might not have been worse either.  The plastic, the gimmick, the screen, etc, that doesn't compare. Your Fiio might be better but it's not the standard, an iPhone is.
 
A properly recorded metal cassette on a good walkman sounds better than an iPhone playing most MP3's. In my not so humble opinion.
 
"Better" is a trap word. I find cassette to be more accurate in the stereo field, and far more accurate in the realism of the instruments and reverbs.
 
What cassette suffers from is a high noise floor (tape hiss), wobble/flutter of misaligned players, failing tape, and bleed through to the program on side 2. It's instantly recognizable due to the hiss.
 
Thing is, all of those shortcomings are more natural and organic than digital compression and poor integrated circuit audio.
 
So the end result is a more natural, human representation of the music than the typical 2015 rig.  Not the good rigs from people on this board, but the average samsung.
 
 
Everything is crappier these days -- the speakers in mainstream stores are garbage too. All the wireless and plastic everywhere, far worse than the 70's when everything was wood.
 
Everything is over boosted and sculpted and fake makeup crap. It's a low point for audio, which is why PonoPlayer is blowing people away.  I think they head-fi'ers that built their own custom rig don't hand it to people or leave it plugged in on some PA like pono owners do. We make it public because the device wants to be handled again.

Hi!
 
interesting, but I think you are mixing up the quality of the music and the quality of the playback device. So I am trying to give another very respectful rebuttal, if I may....I actually think we are saying the same thing, but I would like to make the distinction between technical sound quality and music enjoyment....
 
A current generation phone is way superior to any walkman regardless of which Nakamichi tape deck has recorded the metal tape typical download sites give you 256kbit/s AAC or 320kbit/s mp3 which is close enough to CD quality. A typical cassette tape deck (Hifi range) gave you: 40Hz-16kHz theoretical frequency bandwidth, if using Dolby B or C and any not-top of the line tape medium you probably end up with a top cut at 12kHz - and by the way, some Ferrochrome tapes were close or even better than some metal ones. Plus every playback reduced the quality of the medium slightly....so it only got worse over time...
 
A well encoded MP3 of a 1980 song will sound better than any tape - sound quality wise. I have wonderful sounding 128 kbit/s mp3s. I also have absolutely horrendous, horrible sounding ones. It depends how they were encoded. I think for us the romantic memories of using these highly technical/mechanical devices is making it all looking better than it was. Heck putting on a record or creating a mix tape - hours of fun and enjoyment. But when I got my first CD player in the 80s (with 2x oversampling, woohoo) - listening to my tape deck wasn't as nice anymore...it was very apparent to me, that I didn't want to go back to that...if I could prevent it.
 
I agree that in todays world of loudness wars and overly compressed music - the mastering/mixing quality is way down. Or, let's say, created for the target audience. If your song needs to sound "ok" streamed with 64kbit/s then, well, you have to make certain compromises.
 
So if you are talking the same price range (taking into consideration the difference in purchasing power/value of the currency) then today you can get a much better sounding rig for way less money. Let's leave the romantic memories of tape wobble and misaligned read/write heads aside.... So, a real apples to apples comparison would be pretty bad for the 80s...
 
Again, talking about the mixing/mastering of the music today versus back then - that's a different story. Record todays music with your old tape deck - it won't sound better. What sounded better was the music back then, when MUCH more attention was given to make the recording sound good - rather than "loud"....but on the other hand, there is also absolutely amazing music being produced today....so, well, mainstream pop music is worse maybe?
 
I fondly remember my first record (Village People - YMCA) and my first CD: Swingout Sister - It's better to travel. I do not remember my first download - and I doubt anyone will. Buying a record or CD in a record store - bringing it home and playing it - sigh, these were the days....
 
Anyhow, to anything the PONO is an evolution, not a time machine into history. It's giving us better quality than we ever had....I think we had more fun with music back then because music wasn't everywhere and we simply had more fun LISTENING to music. Friends would come over and we would listen to a whole record of the Beastie Boys - License to Ill at high volume and not talk. Just listen and rock to the music - no tweets to check, no status to update, no TV to watch, no distractions, just music. Then later we would listen to Pink Floyd - The Wall - oh my...what memories... but it wasn't the sound quality for sure that was better, I am pretty sure about that
 
Cheers,
K

 

[Drew769]

  My Pono Player stopped playing music in the middle of an ocean voyage. In the sudden silence, I thought about what had happened.
 
The player still contained roughly the same number of electrons it had when it came from the factory. Now, though, they were tired and couldn't get out of the battery. What has changed? They're still electrons but they can no longer be stirred to go out, pick up their tiny burdens, and make their directed way through the labyrinth cleverly designed for their use.
 
It's quite a job they have. Fresh and vigorous, they do... something. Each one carries a tiny piece of a number whose origin lies in the dim recesses of some other device but now is fixed in the patterns written into a million transistors. Electrons carry those bits of numbers, and then suddenly they're not numbers any more, but potential on a smooth curve. Amazingly they have been directed, each to precisely the right spot, and then, even more amazingly, they take a tour through more circuits that make them bigger? Stronger? More enthusiastic?
 
Whatever the change is, each electron with its new burden now makes a long journey bouncing through and around much larger structures that both make possible and hinder their progress. Eventually... something arrives at... a theatre? The Land of Electronic Auto-da-fe? What changes in an electron as its energy is dissipated as heat and that magical motion that's communicated to air molecules, and then organic structures even less probable than the electronic gates?
 
I hear music. Well, at least until I don't, and then I have to go plug in the Pono and move the 'phones to the mains-connected amplifier. The cans can't tell the difference. An electron is an electron. In a few hours the ones in the Pono will be rehabilitated and ready to continue following their appointed rounds. The poor things just get tired.

I didn't realize that you could take a cruise to Colorado?

 

[ImperialBlade]

  Listened to my newly acquired Rockets tonight on the Pono. My impressions this far as vocals sound congested to me. At times bass and sub-bass are distant then on other tracks are right there. Mids were good, highs were also pretty good. Overall, I am not overly, wow'd. I am going to listen to them more tomorrow. If my opinion doesn't change these will be a "catch and release" for me.
 
I listened to (all in 24 / 192)
Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory
Eagles - Hotel California
Norah Jones - Many Songs of hers.
Adele - Skyfall
 
Regards,
Eric

Update:
 
Called me spoiled of weird or whatever...but I just don't care for the SQ signature on the Rockets. I really wanted to love them, especially since they are made right down the road from me in Nashville but alas, I cannot get "in tune" with the sound of the phone. For me it is way too flat. Imagine for some folks they will love them. To qualify my statement, I enjoy the sound of my JVC HA-FX850s with the Pono. I know some will tell me they are colored or too bassy...sure I get it. However, that is what I currently enjoy for  a SQ signature. As it is said, to each their own. That is what makes this hobby great, there is something for everyone...you just have to find it!  
 
That being said the Rockets will be going up for sale in headphone section in the next day or so.
 
 
Regards,
Eric

 

[castleofargh]

  Koolpep - I respectfully disagree with your assessment (I think I'm about as old as you).  Or at least I think you need a little more nuance / detail.
 
Those old formats weren't worse than what's popular now.   The analog hardware might not have been worse either.  The plastic, the gimmick, the screen, etc, that doesn't compare. Your Fiio might be better but it's not the standard, an iPhone is.
 
A properly recorded metal cassette on a good walkman sounds better than an iPhone playing most MP3's. In my not so humble opinion.
 
"Better" is a trap word. I find cassette to be more accurate in the stereo field, and far more accurate in the realism of the instruments and reverbs.
 
What cassette suffers from is a high noise floor (tape hiss), wobble/flutter of misaligned players, failing tape, and bleed through to the program on side 2. It's instantly recognizable due to the hiss.
 
Thing is, all of those shortcomings are more natural and organic than digital compression and poor integrated circuit audio.
 
So the end result is a more natural, human representation of the music than the typical 2015 rig.  Not the good rigs from people on this board, but the average samsung.
 
 
Everything is crappier these days -- the speakers in mainstream stores are garbage too. All the wireless and plastic everywhere, far worse than the 70's when everything was wood.
 
Everything is over boosted and sculpted and fake makeup crap. It's a low point for audio, which is why PonoPlayer is blowing people away.  I think they head-fi'ers that built their own custom rig don't hand it to people or leave it plugged in on some PA like pono owners do. We make it public because the device wants to be handled again.

that's when subjectivity and fond memories of K7 tapes come to alter the crude reality of the world.
tapes are usually said to have a noise floor around -60db. as it happen that's about where mp3 320 stops being identical to 16/44. the slight difference being that from that point, in mp3 they remove the parts that are likely to be masked by louder sounds, when the tape just hisses like mad.
 
now there is tape and tape, and professional stuff are very different from what we had in our walkman(how much width used to reduce noise, the left/right physical separation...). if anything what you call more accurate in the stereo field is also false, as the crosstalk values of both the good old consumer k7 tapes, and the walkman playing them, were clearly much worst than an iphone playing mp3. now TBH crosstalk needs to be madly bad to be perceived and even vinyls end up making a nice soundstage when they have horrible measurements.
as often, feelings don't make for facts. maybe you should just add a good deal of white noise to your digital albums, that's probably what you're really missing with an iphone and mp3.
 
also I don't get why the iphone should be limited to mp3? but I guess that was just a way to make it look worst than it is. and I'm saying this while I never bought an apple product and don't think highly too of them. it's just that most modern portable stuff are massively better than old one. 
I remember dearly all my walkmans and just had so much fun with them all, but they sounded like crap, tapes were crap, the walkman weren't so great and the headphones were just a joke. that's how it really was.

 

[FFBookman]

I disagree.  MP3's digital compression ruins music far more than any tape hiss ever did.  Tape hiss is natural and our ears can filter it out quite easily, and it won't remove us from enjoying the song and understanding the emotion that that artists were conveying.
 
Digital compression and crispy integrated circuit audio, complete with cheap DACs, radio interference, sensor interference, battery interference, and totally horrible audio signal path design makes an iPhone sound "worse" than my walkman did.   Not memories, I listened to it the other day. I actually have 3 working cassette decks around and some stuff that I never bothered rebuying so I still listen to tape occasionally.
 
MP3 "masking" is actually removing all the good stuff from the music. Like a bad photocopy. A fax of fine art.
 
So while a cassette might be limited and hissy, at least it's giving you the real program. It's not letting an algorithm decide what 80% of the material you don't need to hear.

 

[castleofargh]

 
I disagree.  MP3's digital compression ruins music far more than any tape hiss ever did.  Tape hiss is natural and our ears can filter it out quite easily, and it won't remove us from enjoying the song and understanding the emotion that that artists were conveying.
 
Digital compression and crispy integrated circuit audio, complete with cheap DACs, radio interference, sensor interference, battery interference, and totally horrible audio signal path design makes an iPhone sound "worse" than my walkman did.   Not memories, I listened to it the other day. I actually have 3 working cassette decks around and some stuff that I never bothered rebuying so I still listen to tape occasionally.
 
MP3 "masking" is actually removing all the good stuff from the music. Like a bad photocopy. A fax of fine art.
 
So while a cassette might be limited and hissy, at least it's giving you the real program. It's not letting an algorithm decide what 80% of the material you don't need to hear.

well I don't want to drag the off topic too much for no reason, but you will be hard press to find any kind of measurement showing the superiority of the sound in an old walkman being superior to most modern DAPs or even cellphones. and that's all there is to it and the point koolpep was trying to make.
it's exactly the same as vinyls vs CDs, you can get as many people testifying that the analog stuff is better, it's at best a subjective opinion and any type of measurement screams the opposite.
 
we could talk about how mp3@320 really sounds, but I would have to cast the ABX spell on you. and use of magic control testing is forbidden on the holy land of "not sound science" by the all mighty TOS.
 
 

 

[fiascogarcia]

I would guess that a lot of the artists' emotion being conveyed was frustration coming from the fact that their music was playing back through crapty cassette and cassette playback equipment back in the day.

 

[Koolpep]

I disagree.  MP3's digital compression ruins music far more than any tape hiss ever did.  Tape hiss is natural and our

So while a cassette might be limited and hissy, at least it's giving you the real program. It's not letting an algorithm decide what 80% of the material you don't need to hear.

Hmm, I think you are over estimating the digital vs analog issue.

To the music it doesn't matter if an algorithm decides to throw stuff away or a technical limitation. An algorithm might make smarter choices to throw away mostly things you won't hear anyway, while analog just cuts off everything it can't record.

Then again, tapes get worse with every playback.

I think you are still mixing up musical enjoyment with sound quality and detail. There is nothing natural in a technical limitation of a recording machine.

You like the sound of tapes more - that's totally ok. But they are not "better" per se.

And what the PONO does is pretty much the same as every DAP, to play as close to the real thing as possible - it seems to achieve it better than most, apparently. I think that's a good thing.

 

[SallymaeHogsby]

My Pono player will be arriving any day now.  Will my FiiO-formated microSD cards (already filled with music) work fine "as is"?

 

[subguy812]

  My Pono player will be arriving any day now.  Will my FiiO-formated microSD cards (already filled with music) work fine "as is"?

Yes..but like the Fiio make sure your tags are in order. I think it is really important with the PONO

 

[PalJoey]

 
Yes..but like the Fiio make sure your tags are in order. I think it is really important with the PONO

Getting your tags sorted out is important in any case.
 
In my last job, our promotion department ripped a lot of tracks to the server, which were used to create promo discs or performance discs. Finding the right track was a hassle every time, but when I explained what tagging/metadata was, I got a blank look and "that sounds too complicated and techy".
 
In the end, I spent most of a day's work doing the tagging myself without asking for permission. Few of the discs were commercial releases, so I couldn't use the likes of CDDB.

 

[FFBookman]

  I would guess that a lot of the artists' emotion being conveyed was frustration coming from the fact that their music was playing back through crapty cassette and cassette playback equipment back in the day.

Sorry but you have this backwards.
 
You describe now - frustration at not being able to be heard properly.  Anyone listen to an mp3 of a singer-songwriter lately?  How about a jazz ensemble?  It's a fax, it's quality is horrible compared to things professionally recorded on tape.
 
I'm aware cassette has limitations with it's 1/8" tape. I'm aware that a $100 walkman from 1985 is not high fidelity.
 
But I stand by my point -- I put well-recorded cassette played on a tape deck with a full battery ahead of the usual mp3/phone combination for musical accuracy and enjoyment.
 
 
Fahqfasse Bookman's Big List of Musical Playback Sound Quality  (best to worst)
 
1 - Live musicians in a studio - during rehearsal or tracking
 
2 - 2" analog tape playback in studio control room
 
3 - 24bit native digital file through high-end DAP
 
4 - Live musicians in a good venue mixed by their sound tech
 
5 - 16bit digital file through a high-end DAP
 
6 - Clean vinyl through good stylus and high-end amp
 
7 - Good cassette on clean tape head
 
8 - 16bit digital file through commodity DAC (laptops, most CD players)
 
9 - 320k MP3 "lossy" file through a high-end DAP
 
10 - 320k MP3 "lossy" file through any phone, iPod or laptop
 
 
 
This list ranks sound quality and musicality only. It obviously ignores portability, convenience, reliability, price, size, etc. 
It also ignores any mathematical measurements and incomplete science and cuts to the chase. What sounds best?  
Start with the real musicians playing the song and reduce playback quality from there.
 
---
 
Of course I didn't list every format I've ever heard.
I'd put 1/2" tape around #6
iPhone playing lossless is around #7.
Dirty vinyl w/worn stylus is around #8.
8-tracks around #11. 
 
Either way - what MP3 compression does is so offensive to the underlying accuracy and quality of music that it lowers the rank considerably. That's why it's called "lossy" because it's lost.

 

[Ruben123]

Wow seriously you find a dirty vinyl with all pops and clicks better than a CD player, let alone 320kbps mp3 on any device? Maybe your dirty is my clean, but even my clean ones are just up to CD quality directly after cleaning. A dirty one just sounds horrible.

 

[fiascogarcia]

 
Sorry but you have this backwards.
 
You describe now - frustration at not being able to be heard properly.  Anyone listen to an mp3 of a singer-songwriter lately?  How about a jazz ensemble?  It's a fax, it's quality is horrible compared to things professionally recorded on tape.
 
I'm aware cassette has limitations with it's 1/8" tape. I'm aware that a $100 walkman from 1985 is not high fidelity.
 
But I stand by my point -- I put well-recorded cassette played on a tape deck with a full battery ahead of the usual mp3/phone combination for musical accuracy and enjoyment.
 
 
Fahqfasse Bookman's Big List of Musical Playback Sound Quality  (best to worst)
 
1 - Live musicians in a studio - during rehearsal or tracking
 
2 - 2" analog tape playback in studio control room
 
3 - 24bit native digital file through high-end DAP
 
4 - Live musicians in a good venue mixed by their sound tech
 
5 - 16bit digital file through a high-end DAP
 
6 - Clean vinyl through good stylus and high-end amp
 
7 - Good cassette on clean tape head
 
8 - 16bit digital file through commodity DAC (laptops, most CD players)
 
9 - 320k MP3 "lossy" file through a high-end DAP
 
10 - 320k MP3 "lossy" file through any phone, iPod or laptop
 
 
 
This list ranks sound quality and musicality only. It obviously ignores portability, convenience, reliability, price, size, etc. 
It also ignores any mathematical measurements and incomplete science and cuts to the chase. What sounds best?  
Start with the real musicians playing the song and reduce playback quality from there.
 
---
 
Of course I didn't list every format I've ever heard.
I'd put 1/2" tape around #6
iPhone playing lossless is around #7.
Dirty vinyl w/worn stylus is around #8.
8-tracks around #11. 
 
Either way - what MP3 compression does is so offensive to the underlying accuracy and quality of music that it lowers the rank considerably. That's why it's called "lossy" because it's lost.

I hear your points!  A lot of MP3 recordings are not enjoyable to listen to.  In fact I'm not certain that I have any MP3 recordings left in my library.

 

[doctorjazz]

Jumping into this (not Pono related) conversation, have a Linn LP-12 turntable, good phono preamp, also Peachtree preamp/dac and a Mojo separate tube dac, both do a really nice job as DA converters. Know what? On good vinyl (there is crummy vinyl out there-I'd never claim a scratched copy of a bad reissue of a badly recorded album whips digital, but...) the Linn KILLS the CD playback on similarly, good sourced recordings, and I've surprised some non audiophiles who came with the preconception that the CD HAD to sound better when they heard the difference. Still listen more to digital (just so much easier) than to my turntable (I was never able to get into all the cleaning and care rituals, so much easier to pop a cd in or stream, or even connect the Pono-I knew I could manage to work it in somewhere to make the post relevant), but, when I'm in the mood to sit and take the time, it still sounds better.
And, as with many of these conversations (hi rez vs Red Book, etc), no one ever convinces anyone, unless they actually get a chance to hear WELL EXECUTED LP PLAYBACK for themselves.