[notusramone]

hi guys
Does anyone have experience of connecting PONO to an AMP using balanced output? Not the one 3.5mm to 2 RCA, but two 3.5mm to 2 XLR? I wan to buy cables for this.
My AMP has both balanced input and RCA input. I am using the RCA inputs for a DAC and a CD Player, so there is only XLR inputs left for the PONO.
many thanks.

 

[depaor]

  hi guys
Does anyone have experience of connecting PONO to an AMP using balanced output? Not the one 3.5mm to 2 RCA, but two 3.5mm to 2 XLR? I wan to buy cables for this.
My AMP has both balanced input and RCA input. I am using the RCA inputs for a DAC and a CD Player, so there is only XLR inputs left for the PONO.
many thanks.

Have you got the balanced cable diagram as drawn by Charlie Hansen from the Ponomusic site? It's a .pdf so I'm not sure if I can upload it.
https://ponomusic.force.com/069A0000001eCMz

 

[notusramone]

  Have you got the balanced cable diagram as drawn by Charlie Hansen from the Ponomusic site? It's a .pdf so I'm not sure if I can upload it.
https://ponomusic.force.com/069A0000001eCMz

thank you! I know this spec, I just want to know if I can directly buy some from the market .
It seems that we have to wait for the PONO's next move.

 

[flatmap]

  thank you! I know this spec, I just want to know if I can directly buy some from the market .
It seems that we have to wait for the PONO's next move.

Suggest that you send the spec to your preferred cable maker and I'm sure they can make the cable you need.  That may be the quickest route.

 

[hsubox]

I just received mine tonight! Pretty excited to give it a go. I must admit that half the thrill of the thing to begin with is contributing to the Kickstarter campaign and actually getting something physical in return (it's the first crowd-funded 'product' I've actually received!)
 

 
First impressions
The packaging caught me off guard. It's impressive, immaculate, and so well done!
 
I plugged the player in to charge a bit while I fiddled with the Pono World jriver software... and fiddling it required, since it decided to choke a bit on the iTunes imported files I had. Tags were all over the place, and generally not good. Probably my fault, but I'll blame it on Apple and iTunes, haha.
 
Build quality on the player is good. The casing on the signature edition is very nice. The plastic end caps are fair. Overall, it definitely looks and feels like a first edition. Better than the cheap stuff out there, but short of an iPod, or modern mobile phones. The interface is a little chintzy, but again, it's the first for the company. The touchscreen seems to work pretty well, though my fat fingers (are they even really that fat? Come on...) may have some mis-clicks in the future, methinks. The OS isn't that fast, but neither is it too clunky... kinda reminds me of Sansas.
 
After transferring some files, I loaded up my usual test tracks: Jonsi's "Go", Explosions in the Sky's "The Earth is not a Dead Cold Place" and "Take Care, Take Care, Take Care". They sounded pretty good on my RS1i's. Instrument separation is excellent, bass is what I'd expect. Mids to me are a little light to my ears. I'll give it a while before I really give it some analysis, but first impressions are good.
 
Will it be a replacement for my at-home listening rig? Not a chance. Is it the best portable player I have? So far, I'd say so.
 
Good or bad, I'm glad I am a part of it!

 

[MisterMoJo]

Hi I am looking forward to getting my sig edition Metallica Pono player today from UPS. I mainly bought it because I wanted to support pono and to get my Metallica hi res fix. What I have noticed so far is that there is a dearth of hi res tracks on the pono store. I know that will change. But it needs to change soon. ASAP actually, or this will never work. Also, I was never expecting the player itself to be the end all be all of music players. At it's price point that just isn't possible. But with the it's dac it should sound good. I will try it with some of my headphones, denons, senns, audeze and fostex. I am actually very impressed with the jriver software on my windows 8.1 machine. Lots of powerful features including DLNA streaming. I guess that is something I wouldn't have expected. At any rate, I will probably not review the player itself since I am lacking in the technical knowledge to put together a good review. But I don't think the player itself is the point. I think the store is. Actually getting the music out there was the idea behind pono. The player itself is for people who have no other way to listen to hi res. I for one am hoping for the best for pono. There are other stores to get hi res from out there, but some don't list where the music came from, where it was mastered, etc. I don't see that info on pono either, tbh, but at least I know the music on pono is actually genuine hi res and not up sampled, etc. This is because I have faith in the process and the people who put pono together.
My two cents.

 

[zorntel]

  thank you! I know this spec, I just want to know if I can directly buy some from the market .
It seems that we have to wait for the PONO's next move.

Drew Baird at moon audio ( http://www.moon-audio.com) has made all kinds of custom balanced (and unbalanced) cables for me in the past...I strongly recommend his work. 

 

[Ableza]

Just returned after my first business trip with the Pono player as my main music source. It worked great, fit into my pocket, drove my Etymotic IEMs to satisfactory levels on the plane, and sounded good. No issues with battery life or with basic operation, and after I got the hang of how to feel the buttons, no issues adjusting volume while still in my shirt pocket. Shuffle play works really well with my only gripe being there is no easy way to skip a track or to mute, you have to pull it out, look at it and use the touchscreen to do so (and I could not find a mute, you just have to pause playback.)
-edit- five minutes after posting this same comment on the Pono forum, a mod gave me this info:  Single click on the middle button pauses, double click is track forward, triple click is track back.  Cool!

 

[Sam Edwards]

Still waiting for mine. Did not arrive or even ship in 'the first half of November'.

 

[jvenzon]

I received my Beck Pono and I have to echo the other people's frustration with the PonoPlayer software for the Mac. While I do understand it's a piece of Beta software, I keep getting the "(Failed) firmware update" and trying to get music on and off the thing is an exercise in 1998 Era software UI headaches. Not only have I not been able to load songs, the software and managed to delete all the tracks that came preloaded.
 
I'm not three hours into futzing with it and haven't hear a lick of music.
 
I'll try the suggestion of going straight to the cards, but so far very frustrated.  

 

[roadrat]

I received my Beck Pono and I have to echo the other people's frustration with the PonoPlayer software for the Mac. While I do understand it's a piece of Beta software, I keep getting the "(Failed) firmware update" and trying to get music on and off the thing is an exercise in 1998 Era software UI headaches. Not only have I not been able to load songs, the software and managed to delete all the tracks that came preloaded.

I'm not three hours into futzing with it and haven't hear a lick of music.

I'll try the suggestion of going straight to the cards, but so far very frustrated.  

Agreed the software is crappola. I've been using Windows drag and drop with no issues

 

[rickhawk22]

There are videos on their website that steps through using the software and loading firmware.  Might be very helpful for you.

 

[jvenzon]

Thanks Rick - I'll do that. I took others advice and just copied the files directly on the finder level, and that took care of it.

 

[bonesetter]

Has anyone managed to compare Pono with Fiio's offerings? X5 etc

 

[turbo87]

Or dx90 also.