A short read - Neil Young on music quality
 

I found this worth a few minutes. My hearing has deteriorated over the years so I'm not sure how much it applies to me but his points are well made.

http://music.cbc.ca/#!/blogs/2015/11...ess-conference

Ya know, I am not a Neil Young fan, and I approached this article with a roll of my eyes thinking "oh brother....." but his quotes sounded very convincing and got me interested.

I followed a number of links and saw that the player sells for $399 on Amazon, then high def FLAC songs are more expensive. I quickly calculated that converting my entire music library to this system would cost me about $9K, then I would carry an additional bulky device around.

I read reviews of the product and learned that the interface is terrible as well and that the claimed differences are not very discernible. This probably falls into the category we often argue about ultra high end guitars. Some might pay that higher price and enjoy the audio improvement and it will be worth it for them. For me, this is way outside my "sweet spot" of diminishing returns.

I like Neil Young. He's a rock icon, and I'm glad he's still making music.

But the Pono player operates on some very broad assumptions, not the least of which is that the average human can hear the tiniest nuance between two files of the same music. Most of us can't; our ears aren't that great to begin with, and the extreme frequencies begin to drop off early in adulthood, even without damage from loud music or noises.

Then there's the physical medium between the player and the ear, i.e., the speakers or headphones. That can make a bigger difference than the compression applied to a song file.

My hearing is far from what it used to be, and I've got tinnitis to boot. I know MP3 files aren't CD quality, but I'm not sure how much difference I can hear, even with the best system. Out in the open, where small players are designed to be used, there's going to be a lot of masking noise, and that will decrease the difference one can hear even more.

I'll get along fine without the Pono player.*

*I include the word "player" because I love my Pono ukulele!

"Ain't singin' for Pepsi
Ain't singin' for Coke
I don't sing for nobody
Makes me look like a joke
This note's for you."

It's all relative. I listened to 45s in the 60s and after a few plays, the sound quality was pretty bad, but as Neil says, it moved me, regardless of quality. As I got older I bought better quality stereos, and appreciated them, but as with guitars, there is a diminishing return as you spend more money. 256k MP3s sound pretty good to me, I can discern better, but I don't get a lot more out of it.

I hope it's successful, the future deserves higher quality music files. As the cost of the hardware and the cost of the files goes down, it could well take off. He may be ahead of his time.

And, I don't think he's peddling this for the dough, but out of a passion for better music.

Definitely not for me. But I salute his passion for seeking the best tone possible.

"... It's hard to convince people they're missing something when they think they have everything." Boy -- does that sum it up! It's all about exposure, really and there are so many people today whose exposure to quality music (in any idiom) is so limited. Then, on top of that, there are the problems of technology that Neil describes in the article.

And I thought going from iPhone 6 to 6s Plus was already a lot of inconvenience. That pono thing won't make a call or run my accounting software.

:p

It's great the guy's got passion for a lot of stuff. It might be my old ears. It's probably my biological clock ticking, but I don't have time to sit in my living room listening to music. My phone, my car, and my B&W headphones sound great enough. My Santa Cruz guitar in the sun room sounds as high fidelity as I'll ever want.

:)

Tinnitus, don't listen to stuff "loud" (eardrum-hurting, room-shaking, etc).

From what I've heard from people who HAVE listened to the PONO systems, there is a discernible difference - with the right playback system, in a quiet, acoustically-designed room. Driving around in your car? There's road noise intruding (even in your $100K Mercedes) that negates any 'better' quality.

This might help . . . .

https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Great read, thanks for the link.

I didn't get all of it and skimmed some stuff, but as I read it, the gist is that the higher sample rate actually detracts from a quality sound and that properly prepared MP3s are indistinguishable. Good news.

I'll try to simplify this as much as I can. :)

With any digital audio, there is the sample rate (also known as bit rate) and the bit depth.

The sample rate determines the frequency range, or the largest possible range between two pitches. The sample rate of CD's already allows for a frequency range larger than any human can hear. A higher sample rate results in frequencies too high for us to hear. It is often referred to as ultrasonic distortion because, even though we can't hear it specifically, it does interfere with the frequencies we can hear.

The bit depth determines the dynamic range, or the largest possible range between the softest and the loudest sound. The dynamic range of a CD does fall within the range of human hearing, but no music exists that uses the full range available. Not to mention doing so could potentially result in hearing damage.

In short, CD quality audio already surpasses our needs. In blind tests, no one has ever been able to discern CD quality audio from any higher definition audio.

The real bottleneck on our audio quality is in our hardware. And there are a lot of options available, portable and otherwise, than just the Pono.