The more I listen to my PONO, the more I feel that the PONO has become a victim of its own fanfare and eccentricity. This comes from someone who owns a PONO and has it hooked up to HD700s (and now has a balanced cable). The PONO was marketed as a means of "bringing 'music' back to the people" and was supposed to be a player that was part of a "greater musical ecosystem." The only problem is is that an ecosystem - in this case digital representations of master and various-gen tapes (both analog and digital in their own rights) - is only as good as what's placed in it, and it's only as accepted as those that roam through it, and only as used to its fullest as much as those can exploit from it with the resources / knowledge available to those within the ecosystem. I've found the PONO to be a sort of musical ecosystem that's only as enjoyable as everything it is given to work with. The way that it is built, and how it's put together, it demands more than just "ooh, a 24/192 track!" or "ooh, high-end headphones!" or even "ooh high dynamic range music that doesn't brickwall / have compression!". To me, it's like a genesis. Everything that it comes with is punching far above its price-point in terms of performance, but to make it shine, you (the end-user) must be its deity of sorts and give it everything it needs to be musical.
In a world where the vast majority of portable players are iPods and other MP3 oriented players, where the basis is already compressed and bitrate-downsampled, people have become keen to the idea that boomy and bassy equate to better, even at the expense of a fullness of sound, and at the expense of being able to build a more musically "open" ecosystem. It sounds like something, so it must be what was made in the first place. The MP3-ization process almost makes me wish there was a program that could show the ghost in all MP3s as a person goes from 24/192, or 16/44.1 down to various MP3 compressions, and show what is lost. Yet other compromises are made to make it tolerable. I loved the fact that the PONO was no-BS like this; give it a crappy dynamic range file, and it'll happily send up to your ears (in a somewhat spiteful way), a craptacular audio experience; yet with well-mastered files, gave it the potential to sing and be a reference-class DAP (yes, I will call it that, it's that good).
But I think that the biggest downfall of the PONO in terms of it not being a runaway success is that it essentially requires an overhaul of how one listens / sets up his or her headphones. iPods and the sort (ie: we're excluding Fiio, AK, etc.,) are plug-and-play, and while many of us on Head-Fi (and other audio appreciation forums) may be OK with overhauling our setups so we can enjoy the optimum listening experience, the PONO's flaunting and almost outright "you must balance your headphones to make me musical" advertising was a bit of a turnoff. It's a great idea, and definitely does work in improving audio quality, but how many lay people are realistically going to swap their apple buds for something in the vein of a Shure SE535 or SE846, recable them for balanced mode (at considerable added expense), and then figure out a slightly arcane Android 2.3 OS to enable balanced mode? Yes, the steak is amazing, but there's no sizzle of "instant gratification" that most people desire.
(And don't even get me started on things such as bluetooth and internet and streaming... which to me are frivolous and part of why I love my PONO, and why many people may hate it...)
That being said, the PONO is phenomenal if you're willing to set it up and digitally feed it right. The problem is taking the time and financial means to do so before you can fully exploit the most out of this amazing musical ecosystem that sits nicely on your desk, and terribly in your pocket.
Jason
