Neil Young's "Righteous" Pono Music Startup Raises $1 Million With Kickstarter

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Jose Pagliery reports at CNN that the 68-year-old rock star unveiled his startup, Pono, at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas raising $1.4 million in a single day. Young has developed a portable music player that stores high-resolution recordings and promises to deliver all the delicate details that get chopped out of modern-day formats, like MP3s and CDs. 'Pono' is Hawaiian for righteous. 'What righteous means to our founder Neil Young is honoring the artist's intention, and the soul of music. That's why he's been on a quest, for a few years now, to revive the magic that has been squeezed out of digital music.' With 128 GB of space, the PonoPlayer can carry about 3,200 tracks of high-resolution recordings while an MP3 player of the same size can hold maybe 10 times that many songs. Young says the MP3 files we're all listening to actually are pretty poor from an audio-quality standpoint and only contains about five percent of the audio from an original recording. But isn't FLAC already lossless? What makes Pono better?"

Comments

Title

[bragr]

Had to read that twice.

Re:Title

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, a 68-year-old rock star making some righteous porno music may do quite well on kickstarter.

Re:Title

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too! At first, i was like - he's going to be rich, oy yeah ole neal stick got it!
Then i was like - oh monster cables in a box. Hmmph.

Re:Title

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Old man, take a look at my life..."

Re:Title

[Ol Olsoc]

"Old man, take a look at my life..."

Grew up with Neil Young and his music. Grew old with Neil and his music, wit, and weirdness.

Neil Young Rocks.

Re:Title

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Once again, Slashdot fails to deliver on its promise of "Nudes for Nerds" . . .

Re:Title

[Anonymous Coward]

bow chicka wow wow

Re:Title

[coinreturn]

"Old man, take a look at my wife..."

FTFY (porno music)

Re:Title

[Anonymous Coward]

He does rock. Love his music. His mind, chasing perpetual motion and now this, might be put to better use writing more music or going fishing however.

The funny thing to me about all of this is that the original performances of much rock music never had any fidelity to begin with. Big mid range cones hooked up to various forms of electronic distortion and clipping mic'd in a saloon somewhere - and now we're supposed to think it's important to reproduce this cacophony with perfect fidelity. Ha. Sure, maybe if you're dealing with a very high quality studio recording of an orchestral ensemble with a lot of dynamic range or something, but that's not generally what Neil produces..

Re:Title

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did I think of Lemon Party when I read that lyric?

Re:Title

[Optali]

Old Man look at my life,
I'm getting rich with porno ...

Re:Title

[Optali]

Right!
And they lure us with a fake porno player :P

Re:Title

[Optali]

You aren't the only one, ROFLMAO

Re:Title

[gl4ss]

the music is good.

but pono... doesn't really much make sense and he's been hawking the company for over a year. it's hifist shit. especially when it's only as good as the dacs on the thing anyways..

how about just better mastered cd's?

Is it just me?

[eclectro]

I spent five minutes trying to figure out if Slashdot once again misspelled something, i.e. "porno."

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like snakeoil. So that means it'll be eaten up by the idiotic audiophile crowd.

Re:LOL

[georgeaperkins]

Whether it is snakeoil or not remains to be seen. However, the hardware spec featuring a well regarded ESS Sabre digital to analogue converter and seperate output stages for headphone and line-level loads looks well thought out. The prospect of an extensive high-resolution music catalogue to support the hardware capabilities shows some potential. Over hyped? Yes of course. Celebrity endorsed rip-off? Maybe not - I think this is genuinely a product spawned from an artist's vision. Final thought. Over $1M in 24 hrs, How bloody amazing is Kickstarter?

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is how the artists wanted us to listen to it... media is better when you pay for something you've already bought before.

I mean... I already own it on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD & BluRay but I cant wait to buy the Star Wars Trilogy again on this.

Re:LOL

[roca]

No, we already know it's snake oil. See for example Monty's writeup:
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmo...

Re:LOL

[lgw]

Awesome link, thanks.

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we're not going to see any actual improvement.

First, the bad news

In the past few weeks, I've had conversations with intelligent, scientifically minded individuals who believe in 24/192 downloads and want to know how anyone could possibly disagree. They asked good questions that deserve detailed answers.

I was also interested in what motivated high-rate digital audio advocacy. Responses indicate that few people understand basic signal theory or the sampling theorem, which is hardly surprising. Misunderstandings of the mathematics, technology, and physiology arose in most of the conversations, often asserted by professionals who otherwise possessed significant audio expertise. Some even argued that the sampling theorem doesn't really explain how digital audio actually works

If I had a nickel for every time an audiophile tried to explain to me that CDs can't capture "fast transients" or "20 kHz square waves", I could afford some genuine Snake Oil[tm]! Hint: the ear is mechanical, not magical, and the eardrum can only move so fast. Anything steeper than the rise rate of a 20 kHz sine wave just ain't happening.

I just want a proper DAC without audiophile markup! My home amp has 7 of them (the chip is about $25 per, not breaking the bank), but each one is a 20 watt heater so I can't use it in my bedroom in the summer. I'd love to find a nice 2-channel DAC to use with a headphone amp for <$100, with HDMI and SPDIF in - anyone seen one?

Re:LOL

[mbkennel]

It's the analog stages and clean implementation & power supply which makes a difference. And yes, 20khz is fine if implemented well.

< $100 with HDMI, SPDIF, no. 2-channel almost never has HDMI.

Schiit Modi at $100 with USB in only is quite high quality.

Used Emotiva XDA-1.

Re:LOL

[cheater512]

Define proper DAC? Just saying that makes me think you actually *do* want the audiophile markup.
That Cirrus Logic 60c Audio DAC clearly isn't very good! It's too cheap!

Reality: The DAC is *not* the limiting factor in audio. In fact there really aren't many limiting factors apart for Chinese crap.

Re:LOL

[SuprChickN]

I've been looking for something similar. Right now, the HRT MicroStreamer is at the top of my list. The Audioquest Dragonfly v1.0 can be had for $100 right now, but I'd rather not have to swap cables when switching from headphones to amp.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want a proper DAC without audiophile markup!

If you are spending your own money, you should buy the ODAC.

http://www.jdslabs.com/products/46/standalone-odac/

Also available built-in with an O2 Amp so you can use it with headphones.

http://www.jdslabs.com/products/48/o2-odac-combo/

This gear was designed by "NwAvGuy", and the audiophiles flamed him so hard he has never revealed his real name. He tested his designs against a commercially-available DAC costing over $1000 and found that they performed about the same. In double-blind tests, nobody can tell the difference, but that was to be expected given the results from the test equipment.

You also can buy a plain O2 headphone amp, or if you like to solder you can build your own. NwAvGuy released all plans and specs and gave advice on how to do the build. For the DAC, you must sign documents with the chip vendor and buy DAC chips in quantity, so the DAC isn't practical as a DIY project. But you can buy just the DAC board and build it in to your own O2 to make your own O2+ODAC.

I know someone who spent big bucks on an audiophile headphone amp. He lived on top of a hill that also had broadcast towers for local radio stations. His expensive amp picked up the radio broadcasts (not sure if its own electronics acted as an antenna, or if the AC lines in the house did and its power supply picked up the signal, but either way it was acting as a radio receiver). He bought an ODAC + O2 and despite costing much less, it offered clean audio without picking up the radio broadcast.

The ODAC only supports USB audio. NwAvGuy discussed his reasons and you can find them if you search his blog for FAQs about the DAC.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/nwavguy-the-audio-genius-who-vanished

http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/

Re:LOL

[sharknado]

Maybe. But don't forget that the analog to digital conversion is itself a lossy process, so the only REAL way to listen to music is to carry around a record player in a briefcase. That's what all the real audio hipsters are doing.

Re:LOL

[Desler]

Maybe you should actually read the entire article?

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the fucking link for fuck sake. :(

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even have three points to describe what that wave is supposed to look like; how can you possibly expect any sort of precision?

So what? If you've got very good ears, you'll be able to hear the fundamental. No person alive now or that's ever lived could hear even the first harmonic, and the filters will remove everything above 20 kHz anyway, so please, in specific terms, tell us what's wrong here?

Re:LOL

[AlphaWolf_HK]

There is definitely merit to keeping the undertones though. Although you can't hear them, you certainly CAN feel them if you have the right equipment. It wouldn't be useful for a portable player (I strongly doubt you'd get anything useful from a pair of earbuds or even some really uber expensive headphones) but audio formats shouldn't discard them.

Re:LOL

[flyingfsck]

Yah, well, obviously you are not an electronic engineer and don't understand sampling, filtering and audio signals.

Re: LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh. UBER expensive headphones are better fÃr audio than loudspeakers. You can get as good reproduction as 10000â/piece loudspeakers do with spending only about tenth of the price. I'm all for the high qualiyt brutally neutral monitoring headphones myself. The big plus is that they shut out other external nouse sources unlike loudspeakers... That part is not about technical specs.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are studies are very clinical and I don't think they're taking into account the whole picture.
I am an almost deaf person and I can hear with hearing aids but I chose not, so I would say I am deaf. I was not born deaf I had good hearing until one day I got an infection and lost most of my hearing. Now here is the thing I can feel music coming through vinyl mediums and radio and some how I can hear it too. I hear it differently not as when I used to hear, but I hear it mostly through the vivrations in my body or of it makes through objects. Digital music in the other hand I can't feel nor hear at all. I though it was a weird phenomena then I read that bethoven was a deaf person too, and he would hear music by laying on top of his piano and channeling that music through his body. Bethoven managed to compose music this way. I having experience this I would say there is something magical about analogue that digital does not have. I have not really think about it really much, but I fell that it might be the 20hz to 20khz cut off the digital has. Just because you can't hear that one frequencie does not mean you can't feel it. Maybe the brown note really does exist.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

That guy knows his stuff, but he's also seems kind of... deeply biased. He dismisses a 24-bit bitdepth as being beneficial, but acknowledges that it is necessary for good professional recordings. And he's really pulling a fast one with his explanation of ultrasonic intermodulation distortion. That ultrasonics can affect what we can hear is interesting, and important. But if undesired ultrasonics weren't produced when the musicians were performing during tracking, then they can't be reproduced on playback. So if they're there, your equipment has deeper issues. Ultrasonics aren't always detrimental, yet that's how the author describes them. The fact that people enjoy live and unreinforced (unplugged) music is evidence of this. If you want True Fidelity... if you want to reproduce the original sound as faithfully as possible, capturing and reproducing the ultrasonics is arguably necessary because the distortions they produce are part of what we like about what we are hearing.

Re:LOL

[Pushpabon]

Too bad the vinyl itself is sonically slightly inferior format to high-enough resolution (CD and above) digital audio. Not to mention being limited to 18-22 minutes per side is a ridiculous and arbitrary constrainment on the artist's creativity and vision. The digital age gives audio its true potential. Do not mistake the stupidity of the loudness war or the lack of distortion produced by tubes to mean that digital is somehow less. I guess a true purist would insist on listening to the original DAT masters or whatever instead of second or third generation vinyl copies.

Re:LOL

[PhrostyMcByte]

I just want a proper DAC without audiophile markup!

Check out the ODAC. Built to be cheap, and objectively transparent at the jack, unlike most DACs which just quote the specs of a high-end DAC chip inside of them and ignore a mess of other crap on the PCB that degrades the signal.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Teenage Kicks was a great song, but did they do anything else noteworthy?

Re:LOL

[waveman]

> do you hold

do not hold

Re: LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missunderstood that part. These distortions are not part of the music but artecfacts from the non ideality (non linear response) of the playback equipment. Therefore these will not be heard when listening to the music live and will be very different based on the audio equipment.

So if your goal is to be closest to live/recording room this noise is detrimental to your experience.

Re: LOL

[AlphaWolf_HK]

That's fine and all, except those tiny speakers simply aren't big enough to move enough air that you'd actually feel resonating in your body, which is the only benefit you'd gain in the undertones. It's just not happening. When it comes to sound, you either hear it or you feel it (or both,) and headphones aren't big enough to allow you to feel tones that you are incapable of hearing, making them worthless for that purpose.

Re: LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultrasonics and ultraharmonics are most certainly a part of the musical experience. Sound works the way it works. I don't think the author was saying high bit rates and high bit depths aren't worth the cost or effort because the equipment is defective. Two ultrasonic modulating tones can throw off distortions and harmonics that can be heard... but that isn't negative proof or evidence against capturing the ultraharmonics. Who sits around listening to pure tones modulating with one another? Engineers testing equipment, not consumers or musicians.

Re:LOL

[Maxo-Texas]

There is natural human variation tho.
Some humans can see near infra read and some can see near ultraviolet.
Some humans are super genius's. Not even really measurable on the IQ scale.

It's reasonable that some can hear a little more music.

I used to video game with a guy who could see and was bothered by 58fps vs 60fps.
For most of us 30fps felt glass smooth.

He was an incredible athlete with lightning fast reflexes and did amazing things in sports. Clearly far end of the bell curve.

However, while there are human exceptions like this- for most (the vast majority of) people- what are you saving is completely valid.

Re:LOL

[Megol]

> If I had a nickel for every time an audiophile tried to explain...

I used to share this view but eventually I concluded that "CD Quality" is not as good as it gets.

This is the classic ludic fallacy that nerds are prone to - confusing theory with reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Nyquist's theorem has some assumptions that do[not] hold in the real world and which actually impact real world sound quality.

1. It assumes there is no signal above the cutoff (1/2 the sampling rate). If this assumption is not met ie in the real world, then annoying 'aliases' appear in the sampled signal. To fix this, you have to have a low-pass filter. The low-pass filter, by its nature (physics) has to start cutting out signal well below the theoretical cut0off. So there is inevitable loss of signal well under the cutoff.

Well not really if using digital filters but even with analog filters (which are worse BTW unlike some "audiophiles" think) this isn't a problem in practice if implemented competently. And recording studios are.

Nyquist's always holds, thinking otherwise is just deluding oneself with magical thinking.

2. It assumes perfect, 100% accurate samples and reconstruction. Instead we have imperfect 16 bit resolution samples and heuristic sampling and playback. Reconstructing a good playback signal is a bit of an art. The main impact is the loss of dynamic range. Engineers are forced to limit the dynamic range of the music to avoid excessive loss of accuracy and/or clipping.

This is just more of the same delusion. Even a simple, inexpensive DAC in a reference design is capable of reproducing the signal with much higher precision than required given the destination - the very imperfect human ear.

16 bit isn't imperfect given that it scales from the lowest detectable audio level to a level that would cause hearing loss.

I am not a golden-ears person myself but I have friends who are, and gradually they have convinced me that there is a real loss from 16 bit 44kHz samples versys vinyl. I find mp3s unlistenable. Flac and also implicit higher sample rates on DVDs I find OK. I like the lack of noise on digital recordings (no tape hiss or surface noise). But I would happily replace my CDs / flac with higher resolution sound.

Why? Do you like to waste bytes? Neither you nor your "golden eared" friends could ever detect any difference anyway.

The problem is a generation brought up on mp3s expects more of the same.

More of the same? Do you mean high quality sound?

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

It assumes there is no signal above the cutoff (1/2 the sampling rate). If this assumption is not met ie in the real world, then annoying 'aliases' appear in the sampled signal. To fix this, you have to have a low-pass filter. The low-pass filter, by its nature (physics) has to start cutting out signal well below the theoretical cut0off. So there is inevitable loss of signal well under the cutoff.

Oversampling. This is a solved problem.

It assumes perfect, 100% accurate samples and reconstruction. Instead we have imperfect 16 bit resolution samples and heuristic sampling and playback. Reconstructing a good playback signal is a bit of an art. The main impact is the loss of dynamic range. Engineers are forced to limit the dynamic range of the music to avoid excessive loss of accuracy and/or clipping.

Watch Monty's Digital Show & Tell and you'll see why this is not a problem. At all.

I am not a golden-ears person myself but I have friends who are, and gradually they have convinced me that there is a real loss from 16 bit 44kHz samples versys vinyl.

Do a double-blind listening test with them, using a 16/44.1 recording of the vinyl vs. actual vinyl. I would be very surprised if they can do better than chance at telling them apart.

Re:LOL

[inasity_rules]

1. It assumes there is no signal above the cutoff (1/2 the sampling rate). If this assumption is not met ie in the real world, then annoying 'aliases' appear in the sampled signal. To fix this, you have to have a low-pass filter. The low-pass filter, by its nature (physics) has to start cutting out signal well below the theoretical cut0off. So there is inevitable loss of signal well under the cutoff.

Nope. It assumes there is no interesting signal above half the sampling rate(i.e. anything above that should be filtered out prior to sampling. Generally sampling above Nyquist is a good idea in practice because there does not exist a practical perfect linear low pass filter outside of a digital system.

Re:LOL

[inasity_rules]

scratch that. I just repeated what you said. My apologies sir.

Re:LOL

[loufoque]

Take a look at FiiO's products.
They make high quality DACs and amplifiers at a cheap price, some of them portable, like the E7 or E17.

Re:LOL

[AmiMoJo]

This guy doesn't understand what 24/192 is for. He thinks it is simply a question of sampling audio at that rate, but that isn't why it is used in a lot of high end audio gear and as such all of his arguments are irrelevant.

High end DACs often resample 16/44.1 CD to higher frequencies and bit depths in order to add dithering. Dithering reduces the amount of aliasing. Normally the DAC does it automatically during the conversion process, but what 24/192 audio formats do is give the sound engineer control over it. If they want a slightly harsher sound they can disable dithering completely, if they want a smoother more natural sound they can enable it. The parameters can be tuned endlessly.

The other reason for going to 24 bit is dynamic range. It is especially popular for action movies where they seem to want the actors to only talk in whispters and then slam you with massive explosions and crashing sounds. The giant super-loud horn seems to be popular at the moment when something large appears on screen. For music it is less useful perhaps, but still the limits of 16 bit audio are an issue for producers.

Maybe if this Monty guy understood what they were trying to do he could see why it made sense.

Re:LOL

[AmiMoJo]

Good DACs convert the incoming 16/44.1 to some higher bit depth and sample rate, then add dithering before converting to analogue. Dithering is a well understood mathematical process for reducing aliasing due to sampling, and is easy to hear in ABX testing. It's mainstream and well accepting.

All these guys are trying to do by moving to 24/192 is put the up-conversion and dithering process under the control of the music producer rather than the DAC designer.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand what a word like 'undertones' should actually mean.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

"You don't even have three points to describe what that wave is supposed to look like; how can you possibly expect any sort of precision?"

And you, my friend, are completely clueless how sampling works. How can you expect not to make an ass out of your self claiming stuff about points etc when you don't even understand why sampling works in the first place?
Do you realise, for instance, that the first harmonic of a 16kHz waveform would be at 32khZ? That's more than 10.000Hz above human perception.

Re: LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean subsonic or infrasonic sound.
The word 'undertones' expressed as a complement to overtones, if such a word would actually exist, would mean something completely different.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Proper DAC = not Chinese crap. See, the two of you agree!

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

... My home amp has 7 of them (the chip is about $25 per, not breaking the bank), but each one is a 20 watt heater so I can't use it in my bedroom in the summer. ...

Perhaps you can build a simple device to store that heat underground, and use it during winter to heat your home?

Re:LOL

[ciderbrew]

Is this for real? 1 metre USB cable £20? sounds like Schiit to me.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

The main impact is the loss of dynamic range. Engineers are forced to limit the dynamic range of the music to avoid excessive loss of accuracy and/or clipping.

This is just wrong. CDs have much better dynamic range than LPs, 8-tracks, cassettes, or any other prior mass-market delivery medium.

CDs may have limitations that impact the sound quality, but lack of dynamic range is NOT one of them!

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the fixation on the ear being a purely mechanical thing, and the ear being the only part of the human person that perceives sound.

I get that there are many people on slashdot that think they're so smart and objective, but this audiophile issue keeps rearing it's head here, and the same tired posters keep repeating the same tired fallacies.

Casual listening is one thing, an audiophile is another animal entirely, and a professional person that deals with audio is in another realm.

I've read the studies people have posted references to, and what is clear to me is that the mechanics of the ear are only part of the story of perception of audio. If you can't figure out what I'm talking about and how on earth anything else could impact the perception of audio, then you're not an audiophile, and shouldn't even be opining here at all.

For those without an agenda and bias based on their own self imposed and childish limitations, the skull resonated, the bones in you body resonate, the various fluids you're body is composed of are affected by sound, and not all that sound range is falling within the known range of demonstrable audio perceived by the mechanical ear. There are several studies that have born out this fact, and there are many people who work professionally with sound that have been aware of this fact for a very long time.

Is what the general public uses good enough ? Sure. For them, and the anti-audiophiles it certainly is, because they don't really care.

For people who do care, however, it does matter. So who care what you think about it, really ?

Re:LOL

[NulDevice]

The fact that People Who Should Know Better keep pushing this idea drives me bonkers. I saw a talk by George fricken Massenburg where he went on and on about how we should all be downloading 24/96 audio and I'm thinking two things: 1) Are you nuts? and 2) geez what sort of data plan do you have for your phone?

And just yesterday I read an article by some highly regarded pro mastering engineers who started spouting about how 384khz (!) audio was the only useful format because "your brain doesn't need to interpolate." That's some hardcore misunderstanding of digital audio AND physiology. And while I can see that maybe there's a place in mastering engineering for higher sampling rates when using some sort of digital processing that doesn't oversample well or is somehow lossy near the nyquist, there's generally the problems that virtually no commercial sample rate converter is perfect enough to not introduce more noise going back down to 44.1 than you would eliminate with hi-res audio, and any of the ultrasonic frequencies you'd be preserving are like 10x beyond the hearing range of porpoises and bats. That's like worrying about whether your camera is properly processing all the interactions from gamma rays.

Re:LOL

[NulDevice]

Some humans maybe can see near infrared and ultraviolet. MAYBE. But assuming those...six people can also hear 22khz...well, CD is still plenty good. 48khz audio would be like a human being able to see deep ultraviolet. 96khz would be akin to looking at xrays. I'm pretty sure there's not that much human variation.

Unless your mastering engineer is Superman. Or maybe Krypto, the Superdog.

Re:LOL

[NulDevice]

Monty's talking about playback. And so is Neil Young. So it's relevant.

Some movies do have a high dynamic range. But unless you want it to *actually injure* members of the audience, it's still less than what 16bit audio can hypothetically reproduce - there's only about 100db between the quietest whisper and the threshold of human pain, likely far less than that between "loud onscreen noise" and "stage whisper."

What you get from 24bit is just an extremely low noise floor. Great for processing, since noise you add probably never exceeds the level of human hearing. Unnecessary for playback, though.

Technically speaking, dithering doesn't remove the aliasing, it just masks it with specially designed noise. Most DACs oversample to ensure that aliasing and jitter noise are above the range of human hearing. Most professional ITB audio processing does the same thing.

Re:LOL

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Well, I am, or at least I have a EE degree.

24-bit @ 192kHz beats 16-bit @ 44.1kHz. You're sampling more frequently, and each sample is of greater precision. I'm not sure how you could argue the opposite.

Whether or not there's an audible differrence, well, that's another story. I don't suffer from audiophilia because I go to concerts, shoot guns, and otherwise damage my hearing regularly. I highly recommend this approach; it's a lot cheaper than solid gold digital audio cables.

Also, Nyquist and Shannon suggest that a 44.1kHz sampling rate is more than sufficient to faithfully reproduce a 16kHz signal with no aliasing, as your sampling rate need only be strictly greater than 32kHz. Any sampling rate above this threshhold will reproduce the sampled signal the same: perfectly.

Re:LOL

[lgw]

Look at cables. A $0.50 patch cord is a mistake (especially if the center pin breaks off in your gear, as has happened to me). A $2.50-$5.00 patch cord gives all the practically useful quality (often e.g. $5 Dayton Audio cables obviously came from the same factory line as $50 Monster cables). The difference is worthwhile.

For DACs, there is a similar quality difference about the cheapest possible crap. TI (IIRC) makes a nice one for about $20/channel (I'm sure it would be cheaper if they sold more), but they're not mainstream because they're very power hungry. Paying $1000 for a 2-channel DAC is as absurd as Monster cables, but paying $50-100 (depending on how much work the digital section does - SPDIF is easy - and if they were more common they could be half that price) is worthwhile.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Nyquist and Shannon [wikipedia.org] suggest that a 44.1kHz sampling rate is more than sufficient to faithfully reproduce a 16kHz signal with no aliasing, as your sampling rate need only be strictly greater than 32kHz. Any sampling rate above this threshhold will reproduce the sampled signal the same: perfectly.

Yes, but that's for a sinusoid. What the GP is saying (it's either a sockpuppet for McGrew or a clone of McGrew) is that you can't tell the shape of that 16kHz wave with sampling at 44.1kHz. He doesn't understand that it's the higher harmonics that give the wave its shape, and those are filtered out before sampling, so a 16kHz square wave or sawtooth wave will look like a sinusoid to the ADC anyway.

Re:LOL

[lgw]

I'm not familiar with USB audio - I assume that means it won't work with my gear because there won't be a driver for the OS (because that's what I assume about everything). Is that a stupid assumption?

Re:LOL

[lgw]

Seriously, read that link. This is engineering; you can learn it.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole thing is talking about formats for distributing audio to consumers, not for production work. So, it sounds like you're arguing with a non-existent opponent.

Maybe if this Monty guy understood...

Here's a hint - when confronted with 2 sides, one of which has pages of information which fits together in a seemingly logical manner, and links to videos explaining exactly what is happening in a a/d/a demo, and links to double blind test programs and other trials; and the other side is a video showing some rad dudes with long hair talking about the "warmth" of 24/192, you should probably stick with the first side for the technical stuff.

Yeah, yeah, appeal to authority fallacy, yadda yadda yadda, but then again, fallacy fallacy, suck it!

Re:LOL

[NoImNotNineVolt]

A 16kHz signal is sinusoidal. That's what "16kHz signal" means.

A 16kHz square wave consists of infinitely many harmonics of infinitely high frequency. I didn't say a 32kHz sampling rate was sufficient to capture the a signal of infinitely many infinitely high frequencies.

Re:LOL

[lgw]

Undertones doesn't mean what you want it to mean.

The bottom octave (20-40 Hz) is mostly felt, not heard, but high power subwoofers are cheap as high-end audio gear goes. It's really easy to be accurate within human discrimination for that octave, you just need a whacking great amp built into most of em) and neighbors who don't live close.

You really, really don't want subsonics reproduced. While the "brown note" may not be real, subsonics can do similarly messed-up stuff to you.

Re:LOL

[lgw]

Read the link. Seriously.

A good ADC will sample at a much higher frequency, do a very steep digital band pass filter, not limited by coils and capacitors, then compress.

Sure, you can't just naively sample at 44 kHz, which is why it's not done that way. But 16 x 44 kHz at the end of the process, after ADC and mastering and mixing, really is perfect.

Re:LOL

[lgw]

The variation in hearing, much like in the frequencies our eyes can see, is minimal before our ears get damaged by city living, because it naturally pushes the limits of the physics involved.

CD is good enough for someone with good hearing, which realistically is far about what anyone over 20, or anyone who has lived in a city, will ever need. (There's some arguments for 48 kHz vs 44, but almost everyone who thinks they can hear that difference is fooling themselves - the overlap between e.g., teenaged Bushmen who have never seen a city and audiophile buyers is probably 0).

Re:LOL

[AmiMoJo]

it's still less than what 16bit audio can hypothetically reproduce

Sure, but that is the absolute difference based on a 1 LSB square wave and a 16 LSB square wave. At 1 LSB you obviously only have 1 bit audio so everything sounds like a ZX Spectrum. More to the point if you want high dynamic range on a CD you sacrifice a lot of bits of resolution for the majority of your recording, where as with 24 bit you can avoid that.

Re:LOL

[lgw]

Wow, you have such admiration for the Emperor's clothes - very perceptive and loyal of you! How wise to ignore the fools who can't see his wonderful new clothes.

Re:LOL

[lgw]

Second recommendation for that -thanks. But I don't understand USB audio - am I going to be blocked by driver issues on say a old android tablet, or a Windows phone, or some other obscure platform?

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's what I'm saying. You know that, and I know that, but GP doesn't get it, no matter how many times he has it explained to him! He thinks a "16kHz sawtooth wave" is just one frequency that sampling at 44.1kHz can't reconstruct.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me, when I say "16kHz square wave" what I mean is - to be precise - a square wave with a 16kHz fundamental.

Re:LOL

[cheater512]

A quick search with my local Australian electronics parts distributor shows up a nice $4.50 CS42L52 (in single quantities)
AC97, 8 input channels, 4 output channels, 24bit, 96k samples/sec. Oooh and it is even low power!

http://www.cirrus.com/en/produ...

Show me one thing your favourite $20/channel DAC does better that can be perceived by the human ear.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

> So there is inevitable loss of signal well under the cutoff.

It doesn't work that way with modern DACs (made in the last 10 years). Most '24 bit' DACs are 4 bit converters that upsample the input to above 1Mhz. The low pass filter is a simple RC one pole circuit that starts rolling off around 35Khz. That the 'real world' situation at the moment.

Re:LOL

[lgw]

I can tell the difference between the DACs built into my (similarly-priced) amps. Too many variables to control for, of course, but something was certainly better, and I doubt is was the amp section since that's so easy to get right these days.

That being said, chips get better, and I can believe the price just came down (the ones I have are high power because they're "class A" (constant power) in the way they build the analog out, but I suspect that was just the easiest approach at the time).

Re:LOL

[cheater512]

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/f...

Re:LOL

[lgw]

All I'm talking about here is what sounds better to me, for my personal purchase. I've heard DACs bad enough to matter, just as I've used patch cables bad enough to matter. Avoiding that without audiophile pricing is my goal.

Re:LOL

[countach74]

Indeed, I am wrong. Clearly what I learned in school was wrong (not EE, obviously).

Re:LOL

[vandamme]

Well, I am. And we've been through this before.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/41536...
What Neil Young "discovered":
Basically, don't run your music through crappy mixing boards, filter the good parts out, or compress the shit out of it, or use lossy compression,and it will sound better. You don't need gold plated cables or vacuum tubes.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't your numerical analysis based on one voice? Is such an analytical scheme even appropriate for comparing reproduction of say 200 voices? I think your analysis is much too simple.

Re:LOL

[waveman]

> No it assumes there is no interesting signal above half the sampling rate

The **theorem** assumes **no signal at all** above the cutoff.

To ensure that there is no signal above the cutoff you have to filter out signal above the cutoff. And any filter has a slope, it is not a cliff face. You are going to lose some signal in the audible range from the filter.

This is in the ADC phase. All the talk about oversampling etc in the DAC phase is beside the point. The signal has been lost in the ADC phase, the DAC can do nothing about that. The oversampling in the DAC is to remove artifacts from the DAC process. I have actually implemented these algorithms myself.

Re:LOL

[waveman]

Citation required.

This a a chronic problem with music such as classical music which has extremes of dynamic range.

Re:LOL

[waveman]

> This is just more of the same delusion. Even a simple, inexpensive DAC

The oversampling that DACs use is to avoid artifacts from the reconstruction process. I have implemented these algorithms myself. But the DAC cannot reconstruct what is not there. And there are inevitable losses in the digitization process with a limited number of bits.

> 16 bit isn't imperfect given that it scales from the lowest detectable audio level to a level that would cause hearing loss.

You are confusing two things here. The 16 bits has to suffice both for the dynamic range of the music and for the structure of the wave form.

The dynamic range of the human ear is ~100db. 10db is worth about 3.32 bits. So 100db is about 33 bits, or twice the entire space we have already.

On top of this you need room for the wave form. Realistically if you want a pathetic 8 bits for the wave form, you are left with 8 bits for dynamic range or less than 30db.

So much bro science in this thread.

Re:LOL

[inasity_rules]

You are correct. I had misread your post.

Re:LOL

[waveman]

Sorry I can't upvote you as I have insufficient karma..

Re:LOL

[mrclevesque]

"It's the analog stages and clean implementation & power supply which makes a difference"

That certainly helps. But I'm not convinced it's the whole story.

Monty's write up is interesting, what I'd like to see next is a similar setup but with two high frequency sine waves: the first sinewave has a fixed frequency and the second sinewave varies in frequency around the first.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read Monty's article? As he put it:

...16 bit audio can go considerably deeper than 96dB. With use of shaped dither, which moves quantization noise energy into frequencies where it's harder to hear, the effective dynamic range of 16 bit audio reaches 120dB in practice [13], more than fifteen times deeper than the 96dB claim.

120dB is greater than the difference between a mosquito somewhere in the same room and a jackhammer a foot away.... or the difference between a deserted 'soundproof' room and a sound loud enough to cause hearing damage in seconds.

16 bits is enough to store all we can hear, and will be enough forever.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

> Citation required.

Digital Audio Essentials (2005), Bruce Fries

"Digital audio at 16-bit resolution has a theoretical dynamic range of 96dB, but the actual dynamic range is usually lower because of overhead from filters that are built into most audio systems. The dynamic range of vinyl records and cassette tapes is much lower than that of CDs and varies depending on the quality of the recording and playback equipment."

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the first post on this thread by Gregorio:

http://www.head-fi.org/t/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded

It explains in detail why there is no need to go beyond 16 bits. I also encourage you to read the replies and arguments that follow, which destroy the argument that 16 bits isn't enough because of quantization error.

Re: LOL

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Well if you want to get that technical, I don't think subsonic works either as that is referring to the speed of an object in relation to the sound barrier.

However I am indeed referring to tones that exist below the range of what you can sense with your cochlea (unless you're an elephant and you can hear down to 5hz.)

Re:LOL

[zentigger]

What you really need is one of these:

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/S0hRzEi...

Re:LOL

[PhrostyMcByte]

It's a USB Audio Class 1 device, which means it works out of the box on just about anything, no special drivers required. Even Android!

Re: LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd go with 'ultra-low frequency' or 'sub-audible range' myself.

It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

If the submitter/editor had bothered to do even the slighted research into "Pono", they'd have found that it's just a branded FLAC.

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

Pono music is an ecosystem to sell music in FLAC audio file format: 1) production of FLAC files from existing recordings, 2) a dedicated player, and 3) a web store to sell FLAC files.

The problem with FLAC is how does one get FLAC? you could use your own encoder to record a CD in FLAC. But then you just have CD quality Why not reach back to the studio quality if you are going the FLAC route?. Cause you don't have access to that. But now you do-- the PONO ecosystem does that. And if you wanted to play that FLAC file, well your mp3 player might not play it and if it does it probably has a lot less memory than you would like. soe PONO players are chubbier in memory. And finally what if you are one of those people who likes to roll there own and prefers to just buy it pre recorded. Well agains the PONO ecosystem is there for you.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Wdomburg]

HDtracks, eClassical, Linn, Bandcamp. All carry 24-bit, high resolution audio.

This expands the ecosystem; it doesn't create it.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Swampash]

I've already got a bunch of devices that play lossless audio: my iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

Re:It IS FLAC

[gnoshi]

Sure, but they don't play 24/96 audio without downsampling.
(Note: I'm not saying someone could necessarily tell the difference, but there is a difference)

Re:It IS FLAC

[ratnerstar]

The problem with FLAC is how does one get FLAC?

Shit, I get FLAC all the time for my music. Especially if I play it really loud.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

But bro, if studio quality is now consumer quality studios will have to bump up their sampling rate and bit depth to be above that... the reason "studio quality" audio files are such high rates is so they have room for mixing and mastering down to listening quality, it's never intended to be listened to at that rate. this has to be one of the most bogus things i have seen in my life, Neil Young should be ashamed of himself, seriously.

Re:It IS FLAC

[wvmarle]

Those were never meant to produce high quality audio. There is more to an audio player than the decoding of a digital sound recording.

The Pono player presumably is much better on that front. Otherwise, what's the point of focussing on high-quality recordings, if you can't play it in high quality?

Re:It IS FLAC

[gerardrj]

Except that in every objective test the iOS devices show a near 0 THD, nearly flat recency response and a nearly perfect dynamic range. While perhaps "technically better" is the case with the Pono, the simple, physical, physiological and demonstrable fact that 100% of humans can not hear the differences you are taking about in any testing case means the different and "bitterness" is simply snake oil. Right up there with Monster 'monitor interconnects' and speaker isolation stands.

Re:It IS FLAC

[asliarun]

HDtracks, eClassical, Linn, Bandcamp. All carry 24-bit, high resolution audio.

This expands the ecosystem; it doesn't create it.

Most of these online shops are not really an ecosystem. And that is really the problem.

Everyone keeps getting into the endless audiophile debates. You have one camp that disses everything that has the audiophile and calls it snake oil. Then you have the audiophiles that go into objective vs subjectives debates, and what not. Then you have the tech folks (and we have plenty) who want to correct everyone else and go into Nyquist/Shannon, signal processing, even harmonics, DAC internals, ESS Sabre chips, oversampling, and what not.

The real tragedy in all this is that we *still* don't have a good "ecosystem" that lets people download or stream studio quality music *with enough choice*, and be able to play back the music with sufficient fidelity that respects the quality of the source music.

This doesn't exist. Period. Instead you have this massively screwed up system where you either have esoteric knowledge of audio playback, audio components, internal workings, be able to differentiate between various capacitor types, analog circuitry, DAC chips, speaker drivers. Then be able to differentiate bullshit from fact, spend a ton of money with failed experiments swapping out audio components. Even then, the main battle remains. Hunt around or ask around for source music that is well mastered or well recorded. And guess what - most of the music will not even be in the genre you like or artists you like. Then figure out how/where you can legally download or purchase this music.

So all power to Pono and Neil Young's initiative if they are truly able to pull off this ecosystem. If they can let people access and listen to studio quality music and listen to it "at near studio quality" - that is nothing short of a revolution.

Re:It IS FLAC

[asliarun]

Except that in every objective test the iOS devices show a near 0 THD, nearly flat recency response and a nearly perfect dynamic range. While perhaps "technically better" is the case with the Pono, the simple, physical, physiological and demonstrable fact that 100% of humans can not hear the differences you are taking about in any testing case means the different and "bitterness" is simply snake oil. Right up there with Monster 'monitor interconnects' and speaker isolation stands.

The question to ask is - if what you say is true, then why do studios record in these higher bitrate and higher bit depth formats? If they record in analog, they will again record the music in a high bandwidth medium like reel tape.

Then the second question is - if studios record in these high bandwidth formats, why can we not listen to music in the same format as well?

A decade ago, record companies would compress the music because storage and bandwidth was expensive.
However, with current tech and internet speeds, that should not be an excuse.

Heck, video content providers are able to stream high quality videos that consume a magnitude higher levels of bandwidth and storage space. There is absolutely no excuse why audio fidelity of source music should be needlessly compressed or butchered nowadays. And I really don't care if it is needless data. All I am asking is to give me the same file that the studio uses.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

One possible reason for a studio to record at greater resolution than is necessary for playback is so as to avoid unwanted audible artifacts generated by the editing process.

Re:It IS FLAC

[amaurea]

Apparently this link hasn't been posted enough times yet. It addresses both your first question (partially) and your second question (in huge detail).

The video you're comparing to is being treated no better than audio. It's simply that human eyes are much better than human ears, so to give a comparable experience much higher bitrates are needed for video than audio.

Re:It IS FLAC

[residents_parking]

Out of interest I DLed some of these "high resolution" products, then analyzed them in Adobe Audition. Some were indeed from the analog master, I could tell by the extended top end going to ~30kHz. So perhaps there is some justification going to 96 (not losing anything), but not 192. These also had a noise floor around -70dB, making a mockery of 24 bits. Others turned out to be nothing more than the 44.1 digital master resampled to 24/192.

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

Apparently this link hasn't been posted enough times yet. It addresses both your first question (partially) and your second question (in huge detail).

The video you're comparing to is being treated no better than audio. It's simply that human eyes are much better than human ears, so to give a comparable experience much higher bitrates are needed for video than audio.

What all these linear analyses assume is that hearing is a linear process. If its non linear then these analyses are incorrect.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with FLAC is how does one get FLAC?

Shit, I get FLAC all the time for my music. Especially if I play it really loud.

Reminds me of this.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Wdomburg]

Oh, don't doubt that there are plenty of repackaged masters out there, though hopefully some are taken from SACD or DVD-A masters instead. :)

I haven't put much energy into a comparison myself, but I haven't seen anything that suggests even a theoretical benefit beyond 24/96, and frankly much benefit beyond 16/44. But I appreciate the push for lossless, at least.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Wdomburg]

The ecosystem is small, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And it may never get appreciably larger. Much like audiophile level equipment and vinyl, high resolution audio is a niche market.

It strikes me as highly unlikely that the Pono music store will do much better than SACD or DVDA did in convincing people they should pay $20-30 for an albums they probably already own and paid $5-15 for, or that the Pono music player will become any more mainstream than existing hi-fi portables, like the HiFiMAN HM-602 or Fiio X3.

If anything, I think the market for dedicated music players will continue to diminish as people increasingly opt for the "good enough" quality of listening to streaming services through general purpose devices.

Re:It IS FLAC

[NulDevice]

Well, speaker isolation isn't a terrible idea. They keep the desk from making that whoomph whoomph noise when your bass is loud. :)

But really you can accomplish that with like a few pieces of packing foam or something like that.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Jawnn]

Except that in every objective test the iOS devices show a near 0 THD, nearly flat recency response and a nearly perfect dynamic range. While perhaps "technically better" is the case with the Pono, the simple, physical, physiological and demonstrable fact that 100% of humans can not hear the differences

[citation needed]
I'll save you some time. It isn't there. My hearing is not the best but on gear that is capable of reproducing those differences even I can hear them. No, your iThing and Beats headphones do not fall into that category.

Re:It IS FLAC

[amaurea]

Could you elaborate on this? In what way do they assume that hearing is linear? I have never heard anybody claim hearing is linear before.

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

The whole analysis at the list site assumed fourier spectral analysis, nysquat limits, etc.... Thats assuming linearity in the way they used them.

Re:It IS FLAC

[gerardrj]

http://www.kenrockwell.com/app...

Re:It IS FLAC

[amaurea]

It's not easy to follow you when you are so terse. I don't understand what you mean by fourier analysis etc. assuming linearity. The fourier transform is just a change of basis. The transform itself is linear, but that doesn't mean that it assumes that the signal it's applied to is linear - it is general and can be applied to anything.

That hearing is a non-linear function means that the function hearing(sound1+sound2) != hearing(sound1)+hearing(sound2). Nobody disputes that (see below). But that doesn't mean that I can't say freqs=fourier_transform(sound), which implies that sound = inverse_fourier_transform(freqs). So hearing(sound) = hearing(inverse_fourier_transform(freqs)) = freq_hearing(freqs). freq_hearing would be a new non-linear function which describes the ear's response in terms of the fourier representation of the sound rather than in terms of the time representation of the sound. Nothing magical has happened here, and nothing has been assumed. It's just like saying kinetic_energy(speed_in_miles_per_hour) = kinetic_energy(convert_from_km_to_miles(speed_in_km_per_hour)) = kinetic_energy_from_km(speed_in_km_per_hour). kinetic energy is also nonlinear in terms of speed, but that nonlinearity doesn't enter into it at all.

Assuming linearity would instead be saying that hearing(inverse_fourier_transform(freqs)) = inverse_fourier_transform(hearing(freqs)), which is false. But nobody is doing that.

Llet me give some evidence that mainstream sound/hearing science does not assume that the ear's response is linear. 1. Sound strenghts are given in dB, a logarithmic scale, because our experience of sound is more closely approximated as logarithmic than linear. 2. Lossy audio compression relies on the phenomenon of masking, where one sound becomes inaudible when played together with another one. This is a textbook example of nonlinearity.

If I misunderstood what you meant, then please explain what you mean in detail.

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

The greatest time in that articel is spent claiming that 192Khz is overkill because everything above 20Khz is unhearable. He shows how a square looking waveform has all the right spectral components in the 20Khz range and so therefore it it is not missing anything. This is fourier and nyquist type argument that assumes linearity.

as you put it F( a+b) = F(a) + F(b). When this is true then it's as he said. But if F(a+b) != F(a) + F(b) then you need more than 20Khz to describe the spectrum.

I'm not saying 192Khz is the right thing. I'm just say the entire argument in the article is assuming linearity to draw the conclusions that the 0-20Khz spectrum contains all the information you can hear.

In fact we already know that ears are not linear. This is in fact how some compression algorithms function. They know that as it gets loud that you can't hear quieter frequencies as efficiently so they are removed. This is an example that actually works in the opposite direction-- that there's less information needed. However it supports the notion that describing everything by spectral analysis is wrong when things are linear.

You said, well it's just a change of basis. Sort of. How tightly you want to sample has th be determined first. This is what actually sets the bases that the analysis is going to be changing between. A given point spacing in time for a given lenght of time forces the interval over which the fourier transform exists. Conversely if you insist that the highes frequency is 20K (or 40K for nyquist) then you have fixed the time interval of the sampling. You are then blind to any point in the intervals between which is where the non-linear effects could, conceivebly, hide.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying 192Khz is the right thing. I'm just say the entire argument in the article is assuming linearity to draw the conclusions that the 0-20Khz spectrum contains all the information you can hear.

No, it is not an assumption. This is empirical data; you determine that people can't hear over 20kHz by actually testing their hearing.

Besides, it's long been known that human hearing response is not linear. Audio researchers account for this in designing gear. You're just blowing smoke.

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

I don't think you understand non-linearity and how it can mix down a high frequency signal into an audio range. Another thing you dont understand is what happens when a frequencys period is not an integral multiple of the sample rate. In short are smokeless

Re:It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

By all means, educate me on how non-linearity can make hair cells responsive to frequencies > 20kHz.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

> Another thing you dont understand is what happens when a frequencys period is not an integral multiple of the sample rate.

What happens? According to Nyquist theorem, if you have more than 2 samples per cycle, you can reconstruct the frequency perfectly. That means you shouldn't have any frequencies higher than 1/2 the sample rate, so any "integral multiple" of the sample rate will be above the limit, and should be filtered out before sampling anyway.

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

Add to the list of things you don't understand: Nyquists theorem.

Educational exercise 1: create 128 random Y values uniformly spaced along the X axis. Delete every other one and fourier transform it. Now pad this out to 2x the frequency and inverse fourier transform it. You get 128 Y values with the original spacing. But they are not the same points you started with.

Educational exercise 2: Create a sine wave at 3.14159 oscilations per second. Sample this at 16 samples per second for 1 second. throw away the second half so you have 8 samples. Fourier transform this. First observe there is no peak at 3.1459 hz because there's no discrete frequency there. Now inverse FT this. You dont get the original 16 points.

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

oops ill chosen values. use 16 samples per second for 2 seconds instead.

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

By all means, educate me on how non-linearity can make hair cells responsive to frequencies > 20kHz.

Okay.

1) you have two frequencies at 23Khz and 25khz. Say they mix vith a quadratic non-linearity then you get a frequency at 2Khz

2) this is not simply aliasing

3) The case of 2 frequencies is degenerate but if I have multiple simultaeous frequencies mixing down below 20Khz then I can reconstruct the original spectrum under commonly true assumptions (such as sparsity).

There can also be non-linearities in time and phase as well. A trivial example is that a loud sound a moment before can block hearing a quiet sound a moment later.

Finally imagine how the ear actually works. It's not just a comb spectrum analyzer. It's actually sensitive at frequencies in between discrete values. Moreover in order for sound to reach the folicles the furthest in it has to pass by the folicals at the front, Therefore there is a great deal of mixing in time and frequency that can occur from this design.

I'm not saying this matters or that 192 K solves it if it does matter. I'm just saying the linear analyses assume their own conclusion and parade out Nyquists theorem as though it applied.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, okay, so you're saying ultrasonic frequencies can present audible artifacts in the range of hearing, and if you filter them out before sampling, those colorations disappear?

Re:It IS FLAC

[goombah99]

Ah, okay, so you're saying ultrasonic frequencies can present audible artifacts in the range of hearing, and if you filter them out before sampling, those colorations disappear?

Not exactly, that's linear thinking again. Consider how a frequency like 23.123456Kz is represented when the sampling rate is not an integral multiple. The ear can hear that frequency as a pure tone. That is, in principle there is enough information there to infer that it is a pure tone. But the digitized version doesn't play that tone, it plays a mixture of tones with different phases and amplitudes (the convolution of Sin(x)/x with a pure frequency, and only frequencies that happen to be at integral multiples of the sampling rate. The ear can infer it's not a pure tone.

Beyond some sampling rate the ear won't be able to do that trick. But I don't know what that rate is. It might even be less than 20Khz or it might be more.

The nyquist theorem applies when the frequency basis set that generated the time series of equally spaced intervals, was drawn from equally spaced frequencies separated by 1/T. But it doesn't apply if the basis set includes off latice frequencies.

Now a person thinking linearly will say to resolve those off lattice frequencies is equivalent to hearing ultrasonics. It isn't. What it means is to reproduce those off lattice frequency generated time series with on-lattice points you would need to have more frequency components.

Y'know personally, I doubt there's anything I myself could hear at higher sampling rates. I'm just being a pest because people keep insisting that the nyquist theorem applies and therefore there's no possibility that there isn't something being lost by the sampling at constant intervals. That's not true but it also doesn't mean Mr. Young is right either.

Re:It IS FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

But the digitized version doesn't play that tone, it plays a mixture of tones with different phases and amplitudes (the convolution of Sin(x)/x with a pure frequency, and only frequencies that happen to be at integral multiples of the sampling rate. The ear can infer it's not a pure tone.

I don't know what you're going on about, but Nyquist certainly doesn't require a frequency to be at any multiple or fraction of the sampling rate to be reconstructed exactly. For any frequency lower than 1/2 the sampling rate, there is one and only one frequency that fits the sample data.

The ear can infer it's not a pure tone.

All tones coming from a DAC are "pure" analog tones. Sound is analog, and electrical waveforms are analog. Did you read Monty's article? The ear reconstructs "in-between" frequencies from overlapping hair cell responses. What's more, the air impacting the ear drum at oscillating pressures doesn't give a shit whether the original recording was analog or digital. You must be just confused about how sound works.

Five percent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt compression is anywhere near that good/bad, but by the time the original tracks have been levelled, gain adjusted, FX'd, compressed etc you've probably lost a large percentage of 'info' even before you export it for whatever medium you've chosen.

Re:Five percent?

[mythosaz]

Yup.

The Loudness Wars rendered most of this moot. :(

Re:Five percent?

[Anonymous Coward]

If ponomusic is going to sell stuff that hasn't been cranked to 11 ala the loudness wars, we might have something. However if it's the same crappy mastering that is on CDs there is no point. The damage is done, just a higher resolution copy of the damaged music, because, as this video shows, CD audio already has enough resolution to accurately reproduce our music:
http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

Re:Five percent?

[zugmeister]

Yup.

The Loudness Wars rendered most of this moot. :(

The lack of dynamic range in "remastered" music was the first thing I thought of. Never mind style, 80s music just sounds better. If there was a place to get current FLAC format music that wasn't ruined as demonstrated by the parent above, I'd be happy to pay a bit more for it. Anyone know of such a thing?

Re:Five percent?

[noh8rz10]

at the very least I bet Niel Young understands what you mean by loudness wars and remastered but not really. I think he's on our side here.

Re:Five percent?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's really on our side, why is he fighting against fantastically awesome compression and for useless "HD" formats rather than fighting for actual dynamic range in mastering?

Hey Neil, get your ass out of the car you listen to music in and give us a straight answer!

Re:Five percent?

[AK Marc]

I like the loudness wars. When watching TV (loudness war-victims) I can set the volume and watch a show. The dialogue is understandable and the expolsions are loud. When I watch a movie (non-broadcast) the loudness wars don't seem to have touched it. If I put the volume up to where I can hear the dialogue, then when the explosions start, it's loud enough that I'm worried the neighbors will call the cops on me. So I have to sit there with the volume in my hands, turning up the quiet parts, and turning down the loud parts. If the loudness wars had touched movies, then it'd be easier to casually consume recorded movies. Though it would be different from the theater experience.

Re:Five percent?

[spitzak]

There are TV's and Amps that will do that adjustment for you (check for a button marked "loudness"). No need to unreversably process the input signal when your equipment could do it for you.

Re:Five percent?

[Sarten-X]

As an audio technician, I recommend a compressor with a fast attack and very slow release. Basically, when the volume goes above a certain threshold, any additional volume rise will be cut by a set ratio. Ideally, you'd set the threshold to the dialogue volume or just below, and set the ratio as low as you're comfortable with - more compression means flatter sound, but you'll be dulling the punch of music and emotion as well as the perceived loudness.

It's a bit pricey (and ridiculous) to start putting pro audio gear into your TV system, but there's something to be said for maintaining that perfect comfortable volume automatically.

Re:Five percent?

[AK Marc]

I run it all through a receiver, so I'll take a look at what my options are for it. It's just one of those things that it seems funny that the "lower-quality" report is "better" (subjectively) to most people. And only the philes think otherwise, and do so with great enthusiasm.

Re:Five percent?

[AK Marc]

Can you use a compressor in my setup? Player (TV-DVR, DVD, Blu-Ray), HDMI to receiver, receiver to speakers. There's no place where the audio is analog in the chain, other than after the last amplification on the way to the speakers. I'd expect it would prefer line-level, as opposed to post-amped, but maybe they do work better after amps. I read the specs on the one you linked to, and didn't see anything that seemed to answer. And it's only 2-channel. So what do I do with 8 speakers?

Re:Five percent?

[Sarten-X]

Ditch the crappy receiver.

More seriously, it is a rather distressing problem that there's all too often this one magic self-contained box that is expected to do everything perfectly with no ability to modify anything. Much like the adoption of DRM, it's a problem that no amount of edge-case (read: my) whining has had any effect on. It'd be nicer if the receiver had a low-level output (which some do, usually in the form of RCA jacks).

The proper (and again, I fully realize this goes well into the "pricey and ridiculous" territory) way is to turn down the receiver's amp pretty low, then use an 8-channel DI box to cut down the power your receiver is pushing out. Then you're into the signal level used for decent audio gear, and your options are far more flexible. You could add 4 of the aforementioned compressor units to compress all 8 channels, or you could just compress some of the channels for the preferred effect. You could leave your distant speakers uncompressed to preserve some of the punch without worrying about having the signal be too loud from nearby speakers.

Working entirely at low level, you have other options, too. If you have a big home theater, where the distance between main speakers (subwoofers don't really count) varies by more than about 5 feet, you might benefit from a properly-configured delay unit, so the sound arrives at your ears at the proper time, according to its spacial location in the source. If you prefer to take the sound fully into your own hands, you could add 8 channels of equalizers to set the frequency curves to match your room and listening preference. With a patch panel, mixer, and a multitrack recorder, you could also hook up your band for an in-house recording session, because if you're actually considering this level of production for a home system, you very likely have more money than sense.

Anyway, since you had to waste the earlier amplification to get down to that usable signal, you'll need 8 channels of amplification again to take your fully-customized signal and run it up to audible levels.

Life is easier and cheaper with just a 2-channel stereo system.

Re:Five percent?

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you jesus someone actually understands the reason for the "loudness wars"! i don't want to have my hearing damaged because the shit i'm listening to has a bazillion db of dynamic range...

Re:Five percent?

[AK Marc]

Working entirely at low level, you have other options, too. If you have a big home theater, where the distance between main speakers (subwoofers don't really count) varies by more than about 5 feet, you might benefit from a properly-configured delay unit, so the sound arrives at your ears at the proper time, according to its spacial location in the source.

My "crappy receiver" does that already. Perhaps you should look at what a $600 receiver gets you these days.

Re:Five percent?

[zugmeister]

Ah, but you're talking about movies. I sincerely want to listen to my Disturbed and later Metallica at a high volume for more than a song or two. Any more than 10 minutes tops and it's like my ears start hurting 'cause the music degenerates into noise. Good phrase I just ran across to describe this is "fatiguing distortion". Put on the old stuff that that doesn't happen.
In the TV world, I think you want to turn on TruVolume, Dynamic volume or Dolby volume. If you have them, these features on your TV will even out the sound in the way you describe.

Re:Five percent?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what about when the "music" is noise? Will the Noise degenerate into Music? Or is that just my ears ringing which sounds better than your "music?"

Re:Five percent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run it all through a receiver, so I'll take a look at what my options are for it. It's just one of those things that it seems funny that the "lower-quality" report is "better" (subjectively) to most people. And only the philes think otherwise, and do so with great enthusiasm.

On some receivers it's called night time mode or something similar.

Re:Five percent?

[Sarten-X]

If it doesn't get you a low-level output, I stand by what I (sarcastically) said.

If your receiver has an effects processor in it already, it might even have compression under a name relating to "dynamics". It probably won't support the full control a standalone compressor will do, but it might work.

Unfortunately, I don't have a part number for a non-crappy receiver handy, but a while back I worked with a system that was 5.1-channel surround and offered both digital output and 6 analog RCA jacks on the back with low-level output. Those jacks came with preinstalled plugs that would bridge over to 6 corresponding analog inputs that went right to the amplifier. That amp then had the usual binding posts for the speakers. From a wiring perspective, it was really two separate components: the AV switch, and a 5.1-channel amplifier. I could connect all of my other requisite gear in between the two, supporting my processing and splitting needs.

Re:Five percent?

[Stuarticus]

You're recommending a compressor to counter the over-compression of the TV signal to generate loudness?

Re:Five percent?

[Sarten-X]

No, I'm recommending a compressor to tame the wide dynamic range left over when a movie is mastered for theatrical release, but then actually shown in a home.

Compression itself is not bad. Bad compression is bad. Ideally the compression, along with the equalization, mixing, spacial image, et cetera, are all set to comfortable levels for the playback environment. In a movie theatre, a loud explosion is acceptable because it adds to the show. In a home environment, a loud explosion makes the viewers worry that the kids woke up, detracting from the show.

From what I can tell, TV shows usually aren't actually compressed for loudness. The exceptions are action-heavy shows like police procedurals, where people often start shouting without warning. Rather, most TV shows are explicitly mixed carefully. The theme music is mixed quietly, and the dialogue is mixed louder, but the volume level of any particular track never changes.

Re:Five percent?

[BlackHawk-666]

If you're using a half decent receiver then it likely has a setting called 'Dynamics' or 'Dynamic Range' or similar. Just switch this down from full range to something a little more appropriate for your house. It does the same job as all the expensive external compressors that people are saying you should buy; you just don't get the same level of control. That said, you don't really need it either, you're not mastering an album - just trying to watch some TV.

Re:Five percent?

[AK Marc]

I've done that before with a similar-level receiver in the '90s. To keep costs down, it looks like the current "crappy" receivers have dropped most of those functions, assuming HDMI being the dominating connection.

My "crappy" receiver is a TX-NR609 http://www.intl.onkyo.com/prod...

My old JVC had the ability to take in 5.1 analog and output 5.1 pre-amp or post-amp. You could pump in 5.1 in separate RCA jacks, equalize, then output for another amp, or internal amp, and out to speakers, or take in inputs equalized by an external device, and output to speakers. It cost more than the Onkyo, but was 20 years older, so higher in the "quality/features" scale at the time.

Doesn't solve the big problem

[Jamu]

The big problem with music on MP3s and CDs isn't the sample rate, or even the bits used to sample. To sell CDs and MP3s the recording is made as loud as possible and this causes distortion in the sample values. There's no point having 16-bits or 24-bits if the recording doesn't make good use of the full range of values.

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[Charliemopps]

It very much depends on what you're listening to.
If you're listing to Michael Buble, this is probably not something you want on your album.
If you're listening to Xerath, the album would sound like crap without it.

The problem is when you got people bitching about the way you record rather than getting off their ass to come see you in person.

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[StripedCow]

No, the real problem is that all the tracks are pre-mixed into a single stereo track, leaving us customers with only a single volume knob to turn.

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's Michael Buble I'd prefer it if it was so distorted as to be unrecognizable.

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[Ardyvee]

There is compressing, distorting, and cranking up to 11... and then there is brickwalls (which is the previous, except over 9000).

See, there is nothing wrong with compressing, distorting and cranking your guitar(or some other instrument) up to eleven. It's all right. However, you probably don't want to do that to all tracks. If you do, you are exposing yourself to ending with a dull, flat, boring result (I've heard a few. Sure, there was guitars and drums and stuff.. but it all sounded so dead and flat it sounded bad regardless of what was actually playing).

Now, I do agree that live is (or should be) better than a recording.

A quick listen to a something I found on Xerath resulted in this: I hear clipping (could be from where I found it, or could also be present on the CD). It's also loud, but it's not uncomfortable to listen to. Different instruments feel like distinct, and the audio doesn't sound like an indistinct mass. Which is quite nice. And it doesn't all exactly sound like it's at the same volume all the time.

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, you think the consumer wants to mix their own audio? That's laughable, you would end up with 10's of tracks. Mixing is a pain if you don't know what you're doing. Even if you bounced stems of all the tracks and busses. So that would be crazy. And that's without mastering, how will you manage live output compression(DR,not audio)? Will the conusumer do that too?
You have no idea how much a mixing or mastering changes the sound of a song.
What you're suggesting is like saying that cars would be better if you could steer each wheel independently with a different steering when for each wheel.
-an audio engineer.

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[Krishnoid]

So you're suggesting:

• a whole new portable audio player and audio distribution format
• allowing you to store all tracks from a song, and
• tweak emphasis of various instruments depending on your listening environment or mood
• with some default emphasis profiles and saveable presets?

  • It sounds like you're saying that something like that would be better than what we have available to us now.

    That's ridicu ... anyone have Neil Young's phone number?

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Phil Spector prefers mono and certainly frowns at the kind of heresy you're proposing. It's not up to the listener to mix the song! Start your own band if you think you can do better than them.

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[coofercat]

Actually, it could be a really cool thing to do. Audio engineers such as yourself set the 'preferences' for the song, so a player would play that unless told otherwise. That means the average shmo hears is as you intended (and presumably how it got signed off by the record company/artist or whatever). I guess there'd be some limit to the number of constituent tracks though, so I guess a few would end up getting permanently blended together.

However, other musicians, or audio folk could adjust levels or perhaps even extract the separate tracks. From that any number of derivatives could be created, leading to all sorts of new innovations and art.

Chances of any of the major labels ever letting any of this happen? Yeah, zero. Shame though :-(

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

I predict a wave of irrelevant, snarky comments regarding the band I'm about to mention. Please, save it; I'm helping to illustrate parent's point.

This problem is abundantly evident on Metallica's "Death Magnetic" album. The first time I listened to it, I thought my speakers were blown out. Then I learned about waveform compression and how the the wave was "brick walled".

As it turns out, Death Magnetic was mastered separately for Guitar Hero, and the difference is mindboggling. For anyone who'd like an illustration of the problem using direct comparisons of the same songs, head to YouTube and search for something along the lines of "death magnetic retail vs guitar hero".

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[arth1]

I don't think he wants to get rid of mastering, but to actually have all the tracks, so the user can> adjust the mix, however subtly or hard he wants to.
If would have a great benefit for karaoke and jamming use if you could completely take out a track.
It would also allow for dynamics to change automatically based on the playback equipment and user preferences. There would no longer be a need to hard limit the mix to the crappiest common platform - OEM car stereos.
But most of all, there would be more freedom in how the music should sound. Which is what recording engineers fear the most.

In my practice room, there's a sign on the wall:
God doesn't believe he's a recording engineer.

Re:Doesn't solve the big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It very much depends on what you're listening to.
If you're listing to Michael Buble, this is probably not something you want on your album.
If you're listening to Xerath, the album would sound like crap without it.

The problem is when you got people bitching about the way you record rather than getting off their ass to come see you in person.

The problem is that when you go see an artist live, there are other people there, many, if not most, of whom are assholes, including the artist you are paying to see.

Reality check

[jaffray]

Monty (of Ogg and Vorbis fame) on 24/192 Music Downloads, and why they make no sense.

Re:Reality check

[clockwise_music]

I can't believe that $2,000,000 has already been pledged. I assume by "audiophiles".

Hey guys, 99% of mastering these days has been brickwalled. The recordings that you're buying and downloading before encoding, at the mastering stage has already had all "the nuances, the soft touches, and the ends on the echo" removed. You can't get that back. In fact, all this device will do is make these artifacts more obvious.

Getting a 30 gazillion kbps FLAC file is utterly pointless when the same data can be represented in a 320kbs mp3 file.

I can personally guarantee* (*worth nothing, not redeemable for anything) that sound studios will not start producing multiple mixes just for the audiophiles. It's just not going to happen. People do not care about this stuff and are happy with their iphones/androids, so the sound studios are not going to bother.

Re:Reality check

[Megane]

tl;dr: the only useful purpose for 24/96 or 24/192 is extra bit depth for mastering and mixing. Otherwise the ultrasonic frequencies that you can't hear anyhow can actually interfere with each other and cause audible distortion.

Re:Reality check

[gnoshi]

Thanks. That's the best read I've ever seen on the subject.

Re:Reality check

[CRCulver]

I can personally guarantee* (*worth nothing, not redeemable for anything) that sound studios will not start producing multiple mixes just for the audiophiles.

They already have started, in fact. It's very common for the vinyl edition of an album to be less of a loudness wars catastrophe than the CD or MP3 digital downloads because vinyl customers tend to overlap with audiophiles. Two albums I can name off the top of my head where this was done are R.E.M.'s Accelerate and Rush's Clockwork Angels. After buying the CDs and hearing how they were brickwalled, I was happy to have supported the artist by buying at least something, but then I went to a torrent site, downloaded a vinyl rip and now play that exclusively on my home stereo.

Re:Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

You can add The White Stripes' Icky Thump to the list. It suffered a loudness war mix on CD/digital download, but the vinyl is great.

However, here's Jack White showing he doesn't really understand this whole issue.

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

Actually, labels like Linn and Naim (sister companies of very good hifi producers) and a few make recordings available at different quality levels. You won't find typical hit music there, but a lot of interesting jazz for example.

In demos with very good gear and very good speakers I do notice that a lossless source sounds at CD quality level a bit better than a 320 kbps mp3. It is not a difference in detail level but a bit of a feeling of depth in the music (assuming it is well recorded of course), the mp3 sounds a bit more flat. If you don't listen closely then the 320kbps mp3 is perfectly acceptable of course.
Comparing then to the same recording at studio master quality level (24/192), well it is difficult for me, I have the impression that the three dimensionality of a good acoustic recording is still a bit better at the top quality level, but the difference is subtle at best to my ears.

Re:Reality check

[jellomizer]

The Audiophiles never really had a good market.

We have records, with good speakers. That is the best we got. However if you play the records over an over again their sound will degrade and they require a lot of Work to keep in good condition.

Then we had Magnetic Tape, Quality had dropped a bit, however they lasted longer and worked on portable devices.

Then we had CD's quality is better then tape, but not quite up to the record. However with a little bit of drop in portability it was still useful. But the CDs were more fragile and needed more care.

Then we went to Digital Music. To gain portability we lowered the quality below CD but above Magnetic Tape. Easier to maintain, and extremely portable.

Now all that said, most Audiophiles in a blind listen wouldn't tell the difference between a CD and most modern Digital Music formats. They may be able to tell the difference between a good record and a Cassette tape. Now most people are not audiophiles, and really do not care that much. and are going to plug in Dollar store earbuds to their devices and be rather happy, just as long as they don't get buzzing.

Re:Reality check

[zippy590]

With current technology the incremental cost of going to 24/192 is next to nothing, so why not do it? All of these effort to produce "better sounding" formats have all failed in the past because they double the price of the recordings despite that fact there are no real increases in manufacturing and distribution cost. People are basically cheap and that is why this will fail, like all of the enhanced audio formats that have proceeded it.

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Linn and Naim (... very good hifi producers)

More like "purveyors of bullshit". One of their shared key design parameters is "Pace, Rhythm and Timing" (abbreviated "PRaT") and they apply this to amplifiers, DACs, digital music storage etc. etc.

If you think your amplifier influences the "Pace, Rhythm and Timing" of your music, you need a straightjacket.

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Then we had CD's quality is better then tape, but not quite up to the record.

That is bullshit on a huge scale.

The CD can do everything that even a pristine record can do, and more. You can perfectly replicate the sound of a record using a CD, but you cannot perfectly replicate the sound of CD using a record. That makes CD the clearly superior format. CDs are cheaper to produce, more portable, do not degrade with repeated playback, can replicate any frequency from 0-22kHz with instant impulse response and more than enough dynamic range to reach from 0dB to the threshold of pain on the same track.

Records have only one advantage, and that is more space for artwork on the cover. On every single parameter apart from that, the record is an inferior and useless format. Just let it die, already.

Re:Reality check

[xorsyst]

CDs ARE Digital Music. And there's nothing stopping the files on my PC being a perfect audio copy of the CD.

Re:Reality check

[teg]

Monty (of Ogg and Vorbis fame) on 24/192 Music Downloads, and why they make no sense.

Most of the point would be to go from MP3 or AAC to lossless. While a 320 kbps mp3 made today will sound far better than a 128 kbps mp3 made fifteen years ago, it still a lossy algorithm that tries to remove sound most people will miss the least. That doesn't mean it's not gone.

Going from CD quality to 24/96 would be another matter, and not likely to bring much, if any, benefit.

Re:Reality check

[meustrus]

A vinyl rip. That's just great. Why not just download a 320kbps MP3 and resample it to 256kbps? Then resample it again a few times? Maybe convert it to FLAC at the end so it's "lossless"? Not to belittle the gain you get from a superior mix. It's just that you shouldn't have to do that.

Re:Reality check

[meustrus]

Monty (of Ogg and Vorbis fame) on 24/192 Music Downloads, and why they make no sense.

Read that, or at least accept for a moment that 24/192 is pointless and that a well-encoded MP3 is audibly indistinguishable from a lossless recording in double blind tests.

The whole "confirmation bias" thing is actually terrible for music. It's what makes audiophiles. Somebody tells you music is better with X audiophile feature, and plays it for you. It sounds better. Probably because it's your friend, or the equipment is obviously really nice, or you're used to listening to 128kbps muzak on your earbuds. Once you start believing, there's no limit to the set-ups that can be ruined by not having X feature. Can you ever listen to music again without a $20,000 system?

Audiophilia is like Scientology. The more you believe in it, the more money you have to spend just to be happy again. Demand scientific proof.

Re:Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

That is bullshit on a huge scale.

The CD can do everything that even a pristine record can do, and more..

Um, not quite. A pristine vinyl record can reproduce frequencies well over 50 KHz. No, you can't hear that, but it means that you can't reproduce a discrete quad (CD-4) album on CD. The (front - rear) information is modulated on a carrier around 52KHz.

Other than that technicality, I agree with you. CD is the superior format for 2-channel audio, if they would just go back to the old ways of mastering them. I have original CDs that I purchased back in 1983-85 that sound fabulous. I also have copies of the SAME CDs, but "Remastered" in the 2000's that sound like over-driven shit... (Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms", and Phil Collins "No Jacket Required" in particular)

Re:Reality check

[Jawnn]

I can personally guarantee* (*worth nothing, not redeemable for anything) that sound studios will not start producing multiple mixes just for the audiophiles.

They already have started, in fact. It's very common for the vinyl edition of an album to be less of a loudness wars catastrophe than the CD or MP3 digital downloads because vinyl customers tend to overlap with audiophiles. Two albums I can name off the top of my head where this was done are R.E.M.'s Accelerate and Rush's Clockwork Angels. After buying the CDs and hearing how they were brickwalled, I was happy to have supported the artist by buying at least something, but then I went to a torrent site, downloaded a vinyl rip and now play that exclusively on my home stereo.

And this sad state of affairs is what's driving Mr. Young to come up with a commercially supported medium to deliver that quality to users who would pay to have it. I would. I'm tired of ripping vinyl.

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

>> If you think your amplifier influences the "Pace, Rhythm and Timing" of your music, you need a straightjacket.

I never claimed that, I am not that interested in the marketing, but fact is that their products are sounding very good indeed.

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

They sound every bit the same as any other competent preamp or power amp.

I will concede that there may be a slight sonic difference in the performance of their DACs, but most likely one that is completely inaudible compared to something like a $30 FiiO D3.

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

Indeed well conceived amps are very close. But in fact I recently heard the Naim Uniti and the Linn Majik DSM. Both are very good, and there is a small difference in character between them, which might be down on their DA conversion process. A bigger difference is audible between listening to affordable AV amps and well executed stereo amps. I wonder if it's the signal processing chips in the AV amps that, even played direct, sound less good for music than a proper stereo amp (say a NAD for example).

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Would you be able to back up your perception of this difference with a double blind ABX test?

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

Yes. Just try it yourself when you have the opportunity, you will notice that affordable multichannel AV amps are really not that good for well recorded music compared to a traditional well designed stereo amp. Both driving good speakers. You will notice it immediately, no need to be an audiophile with perception issues. The DA chips and other components in these affordable AV amps are very basic, I think that is where the difference comes from. I am interested in good musical rendering, I am not a hifi snake oil believer. There is indeed a lot of crap going on in that little world.

I have currently a specific interest in the topic as my current vintage amps: preamp Quad 44 has problems, and previously already refurbished Quad 405-2 power amp has a bit of a buzz now but that is repairable. Both were reference grade in de 1970s and 1980s and are still very good. No real need to change the power amp after repair. But for the preamp I want to be able to connect a number of digital sources (hdmi, optical, coax), yet it should still sound good for music - which is not that easy to find. A Classé CP-800 would fit for practicality but I don't want to pay crazy money. This afternoon I will check out the Nuforce AVP-18 which seems both practical, minimal and really quite focused on good audio quality (according to all reports so far) and a reasonable price that still has relation to the expected performance. It is in essence a rather flexible multichannel dac. I would use it only for stereo. More after I can hear it, should you be interested :-)

Re:Reality check

[RespekMyAthorati]

KozmoStevnNaut wrote:

Would you be able to back up your perception of this difference with a double blind ABX test?

and you replied:

Yes. Just try it yourself when you have the opportunity

He didn't mean "do you imagine you could back up your perception of this difference with a double blind ABX test",
he meant "have you actually done it?".

Because if you haven't, then you are just making shit up.

Re:Reality check

[RespekMyAthorati]

Well said!

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

I am critical enough, and not swayed by hifi marketing. Why don't you try it yourself. Go to a decent hifi dealer, ask to compare a cheap AV amp, say an entry level Denon, and a reasonable traditional stereo amp, say a NAD, both driving the same good speakers. Bring a well recorded cd, preferably acoustical with voice. They should use a good cd player as well. Take a blindfold if you will. You will hear the difference immediately, it is not subtle. Whether you can reliably hear the difference between 2 decent analogue amps, that is another matter entirely.

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Your premise is flawed, there is no such thing as a decent hifi dealer. They all push ridiculously priced cables and bullshit audiophilia.

Regardless, what you're describing is not a double blind test. The salesperson knows which amplifier is playing, and has a vested interest in selling you a new piece of equipment. I have personally seen salespeople adjust the volume slightly when changing between two different piece of equipment in a listening test. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, as we tend to hear a slight (less than 1dB) increase in volume as an increase in sound quality. When challenged, they either vehemently deny doing it, or claim that they were "matching the levels", as if that was possible by ear only.

Please define "a good CD player", as even my old Pioneer PD-306 sounded absolutely 100% identical when playing through the analog output and when switched to the TOSLINK output through an external DAC. And that was a pretty standard black-with-gold-lettering mid-90s consumer CD player, nothing special at all.

Your talk of finding a "good for music" preamp is similarly silly. As long as the preamp is linear 20Hz-20kHz and has low distortion plus a decent SNR, you're golden. I'll admit that I'm guilty of overspending a bit for my preamp, a NAD C165BEE. Unfortunately preamps seems to be ridiculously priced everywhere, even more expensive than the integrated amps from the same manufacturers, probably for stupid audiophile reasons. But since I'm using active speakers and I figure I'll never have to buy another preamp ever, I can live with that.

Besides, all this amplifier talk is irrelevant, the time has passed for passive speakers. My current setup each speaker has an active crossover and 2x50W of amplification, tailored specifically for the cabinets and driver units, and it sounds better than any amp+passive speaker setup I have ever heard. Nothing else has come even close for vocals and detail.

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Well ok yeah, theoretically a record can have frequency response up to and over 50kHz, but in practice it's extremely wear-sensitive and even a pristine record is nowhere near linear above even 12-15kHz. To replicate a quadraphonic record on a CD, the best solution would be to do some tricks with matrix encoding and phase shifting to pack a surround sound signal into two audio channels. This is in fact exactly how Dolby Pro Logic works.

And I agree 100% that mastering is generally shit these days. I am actually listening to Post Orgasmic Chill by Skunk Anansie right now, and even though the music is loud and angry and peaks near 0dBFS on a couple of tracks, there are plenty of dynamics and no clipping at all. Even just looking as the waveform shows that it it not brickwalled in any way, you can see the dynamics! Everything sounds good at low volumes and bloody amazing when played loud, and Skin's voice is so goddamned amazing, both in her singing ability, but also in the quality of the recording. Comparing it to basically any similar rock record released in the last couple of years shows just how shitty mastering has gotten since 1999.

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

Oh I know about the tricks with volume. You can also check with friends, I think you would then agree with me that cheap AV amps sound less good for music than dedicated stereo amps.

Anyway I agree with your remark on speakers. In general the biggest sound difference happens at the speakers, also in passive mode. Bigger than any digital source change.
I also agree that the way forward is towards active bi/tri-amped speakers, ideally with dsp processing both the speaker response and doing proper room adjustment. Genelec is one of the brands that offer this, at a hefty price. I use bi-amped KRK monitors in my computer room. Fun to do occasional home movie edits on, and a true pleasure for listening.

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I also agree that the way forward is towards active bi/tri-amped speakers, ideally with dsp processing both the speaker response and doing proper room adjustment. Genelec is one of the brands that offer this, at a hefty price. I use bi-amped KRK monitors in my computer room. Fun to do occasional home movie edits on, and a true pleasure for listening.

Mine are Adam A5Xs supported by a decent active hifi sub. Best setup I've ever had. Genelecs are very nice, I know that one of the national TV stations in my country use Genelecs exclusively everywhere in their production chain. I've heard that EVE makes awesome monitors as well, with built-in DSP (they're former Adam people, hence the name).

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

Yes Adams are great, excellent tweeters and general engineering. I recommended the Artist 5 to a colleague, he loves them. My KRKs are from their affordable series, hence likely a level below your Adams, yet still pretty good. They also have a higher end series but at a price level that was overkill for my hobby computer room. My friend is a mastering sound technician and he uses the best monitors I have heard so far. Unfortunately the name escapes me now, but they look peculiar. The speaker part is not big but rather wide, with the top drivers from SEAS in it, but speaker blok is put at ear level, connected at the left and right of the box to with 2 metal pillars in which the dsp and amplification is located. Seriously good stuff, horribly expensive but remarkably uncoloured sounding.

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The highend monitor setup you mention sounds a lot like maybe an ATC or PMC setup. Seriously nice stuff.

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

I found it back. It is the Grimm Audio LS1. Really impressive, at the price of a small car sadly... Check it out.

Re:Reality check

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Looking at their website, they certainly pile on the audiophile bullshit claims. They also make fancy-pants cables, which sell for €375 for a set of 1 meter balanced XLR cables! If that's not a major red flag, I don't know what is.

I think I'll stick with companies like Adam, EVE, KRK, M-Audio, Behringer, ATC, PMC, Genelec and a host of other real audiophilia-free pro audio companies.

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

Agree about the cable. But as for the speakers, I heard many speakers over the years and these are amongst the most neutral I have experienced so far.

Re:Reality check

[Camembert]

As an aside the best sound that I ever experienced was from these 3 systems:

- Big Proac speakers driven by nagra electronics
- Enormous magneplanar panels driven by mcintosh electronics
and, refreshingly so,
- vintage deepfreezer-sized coxial Tannoys (Westminster model, or similar) driven by some kind of truly vintage tube amp.

In all cases except perhaps the last example the speakers will have made the biggest difference in the end result of course.
I experienced other systems at shows that irritated me so much that I could not stay in the room with them.

Oh audiophiles

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh audiophiles, please never change! It is so easy to laugh at your pseudoscience!

Re:Oh audiophiles

[Camembert]

Yeah well, there is a lot of crap in audiophilia but there is equally a lot of crap rejecting it blindly. In theory a dirt cheap cd or blu ray player and an expensive one have very similar paper specifications for audio. That is what scientific measurements would tell you.
However if you listen on a good system the sound quality difference between the cheap and the expensive player is immediately obvious, without needing to be an audiophile maniac. Similarly I compared a few D/A convertors, as I had a few sources with only optical out (such as an Apple TV, and a blu-ray player with only hdmi and optical) and an old but good analogue-only amp. Well, there was a subtle difference between the models up to say $800. I could always pick the same one which was a bit better than the other 2 I compared against. Not much difference but it was there.

Re:Oh audiophiles

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Yeah well, there is a lot of crap in audiophilia but there is equally a lot of crap rejecting it blindly.
In theory a dirt cheap cd or blu ray player and an expensive one have very similar paper specifications for audio. That is what scientific measurements would tell you.

However if you listen on a good system the sound quality difference between the cheap and the expensive player is immediately obvious, without needing to be an audiophile maniac.

Similarly I compared a few D/A convertors, as I had a few sources with only optical out (such as an Apple TV, and a blu-ray player with only hdmi and optical) and an old but good analogue-only amp. Well, there was a subtle difference between the models up to say $800. I could always pick the same one which was a bit better than the other 2 I compared against. Not much difference but it was there.

The only reason you could pick between them was because you already knew which one was playing. Try a true double blind ABX test, you will be surprised at the results.

Here's an example: http://matrixhifi.com/ENG_ppec...

A high-class hifi system set up against a cheap Sony DVD player (boo!) and a Behringer amplifier (hiss!), using cheap-ass cables (the horror!), all placed on a rickety chair (madness!). And yet, even seasoned audiophiles were not able to hear a lick of difference.

Audiophilia is bullshit, pure and simple. If fidelity truly was the only goal, everyone would be using a set of Adam A7X or S1X monitors and a digital source. But audiophilia is a rich man's disease where the only objective is to outspend the other suckers.

Re:Oh audiophiles

[Camembert]

You know, I am not really disagreeing with you.
In this comparison I don't have an issue with the Behringer - I agree that there is not so much, if any, sound quality difference between well designed amplifiers driving speakers that are a normal load. And don't get me started about the cable myth.
However!
At least in my system the difference between the separate DAC (a DACMagic Plus, a decently engineered product but not crazily expensive) and the analog out of an affordable older CD player is immediately obvious even when switching blindly.
My wife likes music but is not at all into hifi, and she also noticed it immediately. So did a friend who admittedly is into the subject.
Longer ago I had originally one of the earlier cd players,a TEAC with a traditional multibit DAC and then a Harman Kardon with the then newfangled 1-bit DAC - the Harman had presumably better audio components as well. There was also a bit of immediately recognisable difference between the 2. Mind, the TEAC was ok, but esp. with well recored acoustic music there was a bit of difference.

Re:Oh audiophiles

[Camembert]

As an aside I loved all Adam speakers that I heard so far.

Too pricey, odd shape?

[DigitAl56K]

I read the other day that these units are going to go for about $400 a piece. While I myself am an audiophile at heart, I just can't see the use cases for this that makes it worth the money.

For a start, when I'm on the go, unless I'm in a plane (which I'm not very often), I can't use noise-cancelling headphones or I have little situational awareness, and the benefit of this higher fidelity is lost. If I'm sitting at my computer, I'd rather access my library through the computer via a nicer interface and still be able to hear the audio for videos I play etc., and I don't have to worry about plugging in or running down batteries.

So I'm left wondering where are the occasions when I'd really benefit from the higher quality on the go, how frequently do they arise, and is it worth the money for more pristine sound in just those cases?

Also, the damn thing is triangular. Where am I supposed to be putting this? It's not going in a pocket alongside my smartphone...

For me, it's nice that someone is trying to produce a product with a higher audio quality, but I don't see myself buying one.

Re:Too pricey, odd shape?

[asmkm22]

I think the idea is to create demand which will bring the pricing down over time. What will start out as a niche device could easily become the new standard. The problem, like others have pointed out, is that music created today is generally too crappy to benefit from the wider range of sound during recording. It's all about volume and bass, not range.

Also, Neil Young have never given a fuck about what other people think. He's created a career out of, in fact.

Re:Too pricey, odd shape?

[Zeromous]

I think this is appropriate here:

http://i2.wp.com/allthingsd.co...

Re:Too pricey, odd shape?

[DigitAl56K]

I think the idea is to create demand which will bring the pricing down over time. What will start out as a niche device could easily become the new standard.

Well, it has some other challenges in that regard too:
* If MP3/AAC/AAC+ is "good enough" those devices will always have cheaper storage and will undercut the Pono, even if its price does come down. And my phone already supports all those formats out of the box, and can pull the content from the cloud with album art.
* I wonder how the battery life is, becauseas an enthusiast I've used devices that support FLAC before, and without hardware support like most products have for MP3 I found that they tend to run hotter and battery life is shorter.
* All major online stores deliver music in lossy formats. Most people have libraries of MP3s. Those libraries don't swallow their hard drive.

Again, don't get me wrong, a lossless world would be nice, but I think lossless has to at least arrive in the online stores first, and I doubt this device will be what drives that, given its initial price point and zero market share.

Also, Neil Young have never given a fuck about what other people think.

Well, he has to care about what his target market are actually willing to fork out for in sufficient numbers. I guess we'll see.

Re:Too pricey, odd shape?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the damn thing is triangular.

Actually, no. The Pono's shape would be properly described as prismatic .

Re:Too pricey, odd shape?

[ColdWetDog]

Also, the damn thing is triangular.

Actually, no. The Pono's shape would be properly described as prismatic .

Great. A geometry Nazi.

Re:Too pricey, odd shape?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Neil Young have never given a fuck about what other people think. He's created a career out of, in fact.

If you think Neil Young's never given a fuck about what other people think then I'd say you've completely misunderstood pretty much everything he's ever done. And I say this as a massive Neil Young fan.

Re:Too pricey, odd shape?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

While I myself am an audiophile at heart, I just can't see the use cases for this that makes it worth the money.

... what?

Well

[The Cat]

In other news, Kickstarter is now submerged in billionaire cash and has been well and truly been co-opted by the establishment.

One thing we know about capitalism: it makes capital scarce, and keeps it that way.

Re:Well

[HornWumpus]

Have you ever tried to raise capital in a socialist system? Capitalism makes capital common and available. One of the best things about it.

Re:Well

[Mr. Slippery]

Have you ever tried to raise capital in a socialist system? Capitalism makes capital common and available.

Capitalism keeps capital in the hands of the capitalist class, that's it's whole reason for being. The idea behind socialism is to make capital -- not to be confused with money, but the actual "means of production", and so not something that has to be "raised" -- available to workers without having to get some parasitic aristocrats involved. Unfortunately, Marx was not an empiricist and his version of socialism lends itself to abuse by authoritarians; but even his fscked-up version took an agrarian nation barely out of feudalism (Russia still had legal serfdom until 1861!) and turned it into a space-faring nuclear superpower -- and that in spite of bearing the brunt of the cost of stopping the Nazis. Stalin sucked and Marxism has serious flaws, but the whole "OMG socialism failed!!1!" meme doesn't hold up to serious examination.

What makes Pono better than FLAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM, obviously.

Re:What makes Pono better than FLAC?

[Richy_T]

It comes pre-green-markered.

Re:What makes Pono better than FLAC?

[RDW]

Apparently DRM was part of the plan originally, but has now (reportedly) been dropped:

http://www.computeraudiophile....

The press release also says "The Pono desktop media management application allows customers to download, manage and sync their music to their PonoPlayer and other high-resolution digital music devices."

"other devices" sounds like they won't have proprietary lock in either, though how this will work in practice remains to be seen. Can you output, say, a FLAC at full quality, or only a lower quality file for non-Pono players?

Monster Cable Pono Edition

[Dareth]

With diamond dust (*May or may not actually contain dust from real diamonds) glazed gold connectors.

Re:Monster Cable Pono Edition

[AK Marc]

Neil Young sellling Diamond dust? Can't we just call him Neil Diamond instead?

Re:Monster Cable Pono Edition

[Trogre]

Wrong Neil.

Re:Monster Cable Pono Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

recordings made from fair trade, 100% first cold pressed extra virgin vinyl, from sustainably grown vinyl trees.

Obligatory Dan's Data link

[Anonymous Coward]

Dan is a lot smarter than me, and he says this:

http://www.dansdata.com/gz143.htm

Re: you've got to be kidding me

[Anonymous Coward]

Hawaiian is a language, you insensitive clod. I've known a couple people that speak it despite having never been to those islands.

Neil's Pono Goes up to 11

[retroworks]

I read the article a few days ago, and thought lookout mama there's a white boat comin' up the river at Spotify. If Neil doesn't get in front and interfere, the bandwidth can support his increased quality, and the price point is cool.

Just add vinyl pop

[Anonymous Coward]

and call it a day.

So much marketing, so little fact

[PhrostyMcByte]

Caveat: self-identifying audiophile here, happy to admit I've spent way too much money for very little gain.

What's the output voltage and impedance? Crosstalk? Noise? THD? Dynamic range? If I plug to charge via USB while I'm playing it, will it isolate the noisy power line? You're trying to sell something "audiophile" without mentioning any of this? Really?

He makes a big deal about 192kHz audio. If you're targeting human ears, this is just a waste of space. I'd say the perfect format would be 48kHz/24bit. 48kHz to have plenty of room for a nice frequency cutoff, and 24-bit for music with a high dynamic range, like film scores and orchestral.

How about some features anyone can enjoy, like support for ReplayGain and gapless playback? Maybe make your store highlight music with a high dynamic range instead of offering a 24-bit copy of something with 8 bits of range and frequencies we can't hear?

I would absolutely love to have a compact, objectively transparent player that I can bring with me to the office or anywhere else. I just can't help feeling this won't be it. Too jaded?

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[CRCulver]

The product in question uses FLAC, so that pretty much means that there will be gapless playback.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[PhrostyMcByte]

FLAC has native support for gapless playback, but the player still needs to explicitly take advantage of it by not waiting until your current song finishes to start decoding the next one.

Gapless is more common among FLAC players, I guess simply because if you care enough to support FLAC you've probably got a higher chance of caring about the rest of the feature set, but it's far from guaranteed.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[Anonymous Coward]

He makes a big deal about 192kHz audio. If you're targeting human ears, this is just a waste of space. I'd say the perfect format would be 48kHz/24bit. 48kHz to have plenty of room for a nice frequency cutoff, and 24-bit for music with a high dynamic range, like film scores and orchestral.

A 24-bit sample size is a waste of space too - you only need the higher resolution for processing during recording and mixing. Plus, what kind of headphones are involved in the average use case? A set of earbuds can't come close to reproducing plain old 44.1/16 CD audio faithfully.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[Anonymous Coward]

The best IEMs are verrrry good and give you -23dB isolation! They are the size of earbuds and when you use them in a very quiet room are as close to achieving 16-bits as you can get without a specially constructed room buried under 40 meters of bedrock.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[Technician]

Reality check. Use Audacity or other program and make a voice recording. Use Amplify to set the peaks at 0 DB. Duplicate the track and shift it several seconds later. Apply Amplify on the new track. Math test, how many DB do you need to attenuate the new track to make it only 8 bits of a 24 bit recording. Each bit is 6 DB. 24 bits to 8 bits is cutting 16 bits at 6 DB per bit. Set the peaks at the new level. Take a listen without changing volume. You will need more than a 16 bit sound card and better ears than I have to hear the echo.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[tlhIngan]

What's the output voltage and impedance? Crosstalk? Noise? THD? Dynamic range? If I plug to charge via USB while I'm playing it, will it isolate the noisy power line? You're trying to sell something "audiophile" without mentioning any of this? Really?

He makes a big deal about 192kHz audio. If you're targeting human ears, this is just a waste of space. I'd say the perfect format would be 48kHz/24bit. 48kHz to have plenty of room for a nice frequency cutoff, and 24-bit for music with a high dynamic range, like film scores and orchestral.

Not to mention, 3.5mm TRS jacks.

Good sets of headphones from the big audiophile companies (e.g., Grado) have 1/4" TRS jacks. The "consumer" level Grados (SR-60i, SR-80i) have 3.5mm TRS jacks, and a 1/4"-to-3.5mm adapter (and we're still talking about headphones costing less than the Beats crap you can get at any store). The next step up, the SR-125i, is still below the price of the Beats crap, but only 1/4" TRS. (Great, did I just mention audiophile class headphones costing less than consumer level crap? Sure you can get $2000 Grados, but damn the low end is well priced).

Next - it has line level analog outputs. But again, 3.5mm TRS?! At a minimum, you'd want traditional RCA jacks for linelevel (better channel isolation than TRS).

And above all, you'd think it would have true audiophile features like XLR balanced (differential) outputs - less noise than line level.

USB isolation is interesting, because well, USB chargers are crap. They can emit tons of noise - so much so that poor quality ones disable touchscreens on phones from all the noise.

And some other problems - they don't have a list of what music they have - I mean, there's a few soundtracks I'd love to have in higher quality, but I can't browse what they have because their site isn't up yet. So far, all I see is a bunch of music that I'm honestly not interested in.

And face it - the music audiophiles listen to is classical (or for me, soundtrack scores, which are orchestral). I better expect some dynamic range to the thing. Classical music is hard to reproduce - you've got delicate sounds of instruments mixed in with others. A common place rock or pop song well, high res audio doesn't really improve things at all.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[wonkey_monkey]

Caveat: self-identifying audiophile here

192kHz audio [...] is just a waste of space.

No true audiophile would admit to such heresy!

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[Anonymous Coward]

I have very good hearing and would like more than a 48khz sample rate since that only allows an upper frequency rage of 24khz.

However, when you approach the upper limit of the nyquist frequency you start to lose the accuracy of the waveform reproduction.

Still, 48khz @ 24bit is good.

In my opinion a 64khz sample rate @ 24 bit would be ideal.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[Threni]

Also, make the headphone socket durable, and fixable, so I don't have to throw away an unfixable expensive device because a component costing 20p hasn't been attached to the motherboard in a way which will withstand the thousands of connections and disconnections it's going to be subjected to over the number of years I expect a device this expensive to last. (Apple failed at this).

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I'd say the perfect format would be 48kHz/24bit. 48kHz to have plenty of room for a nice frequency cutoff, and 24-bit for music with a high dynamic range, like film scores and orchestral.

44.1kHz leaves plenty of room for a decent frequency cutoff, especially with modern active and digital low pass filters. However, I will concede that 48kHz is a "nicer" ratio and makes it easier to work together with pro audio, which always works in 48, 96, 192kHz instead of 44.1, 88.2, 176.4kHz. The CD should have been 48kHz from the beginning, like DAT, which the pros used back then.

And where would you ever need even the base 144dB dynamic range of 24bit audio for playback? Keep in mind that the threshold of pain is somewhere around 120dB, so a 24bit recording could potentially capture both the sound of a lightbulb humming and a gunshot that would literally tear your eardrum, in the same track. But you've never heard a lightbulb hum, because even the softest ambient noise drowns it out.

16bit audio has a base dynamic range of 96dB. This increases to over 110dB when using proper noise shaped dither. You really, honestly, truthfully will never need more than that for audio playback. Even extremely well-mastered orchestral music "only" has a dynamic range of 40-50dB.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[loufoque]

And some other problems - they don't have a list of what music they have - I mean, there's a few soundtracks I'd love to have in higher quality, but I can't browse what they have because their site isn't up yet. So far, all I see is a bunch of music that I'm honestly not interested in.

They were very precise in what they have: the universal, sony and warner music catalogs.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[PhrostyMcByte]

You don't need the best IEMs to get 23dB of isolation. Etymotic's range, even their cheaper ones, all claim 35dB or better, without having a custom mold.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[PhrostyMcByte]

You appear to be at least as knowledgable as me, so please correct me if my technical understanding is wrong here.

I doubt I'd even be able to perceive the lower amplitudes in a 96dB dynamic range. The reason for wanting 24-bit samples is that some music has low passages and high passages (HTTYD comes to mind) that allow your ears time to adjust to the volume. I'd like music to be able to do this and still have fine detail in each section.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[tlhIngan]

They were very precise in what they have: the universal, sony and warner music catalogs.

But is it their entire catalog? Sony has various subdivisions, e.g., Sony Classical, which handle specific type of music (Sony Classical handles orchestral, classical, and soundtrack scores, for example).

And how much of that catalog is available in higher quality audio? At best, I see they may be able to get 48kHz masters in FLAC vs. having them as AAC or MP3. Very little of that catalog would be in 192/24, especially the older ones.

The old back catalog with original masters tapes may be available in 192/24, but more modern stuff is typically only mastered in 48kHz, 24 bit if you're lucky, 16 otherwise. Very little is available in 96kHz.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[Anonymous Coward]

Caveat: self-identifying audiophile here, happy to admit I've spent way too much money for very little gain.

You know, quality amplifiers aren't that hard to come by.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[NulDevice]

Admit it, you're a porpoise who has somehow figured out how to post to /.

That's the only way I can account for you being able to hear "only 24khz."

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[KozmoStevnNaut]

24bit doesn't provide that. Or to put it another way, 16bit provides that exactly as well as 24bit does.

All 24bit buys your is more range between the quietest possible sound and the loudest possible sound that can be recorded, it doesn't add anything "between" the levels, if that's what you're seeking. In fact, there is nothing "lost between the levels" as some people claim, because the sound output is a mathematical recreation with pretty much infinite possible levels within the sample rate and dynamic range the format allows. http://xiph.org/video/vid2.sht... explains all this extremely well.

24bit (and 32bit float) only matter during the recording and mastering process, where you want as much headroom as possible to prevent clipped samples. Once everything is nice and properly mixed and mastered, even the most dynamic soundtracks and music fit easily within the 16bit.

Re:So much marketing, so little fact

[loufoque]

Even if it's mostly only 48kHz/24-bit in FLAC, it's enough to be interesting IMHO.

Re:you've got to be kidding me

[Anonymous Coward]

> In Hawaiian, it would be "righteous" since they speak English there.

Yep. Just like "wiki" is Hawaiian for "wiki."

The MP3 files are just fine

[Overzeetop]

except for that last 1/10% who think they can hear a difference, or the 1/10000% who actually can.

Honestly, it's music we don't need. This is like arguing over whether x264 is sufficient to carry all of the visual information in a motion picture. It's not even close - the best BluRay throws close to 99.9% of the information away, but Neal's reckoning. Thing is, you can't tell. You can't tell in a good set up in a controlled environment, much less in a room where the visual/acoustic treatments aren't designed solely for the experience.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Ecuador]

Hehe, I am close to the 1/10000% you say in some aspects. Well, at least in one aspect. Interesting story: I had an inverter installed for a solar panel array and when they switched it on, I stepped back "whoa, what is that loud whistling noise?" the installers were looking at me like I was crazy. Well, I told them, granted, it is very high pitch, a bit higher than, say, the whistling noise a CRT usually makes, I'd say over 15kHz, but it is really really loud, don't you feel anything - I can't even get close to the thing! The response was "what whistling noise the CRT makes???". I had to pull out my phone and download a spectrum analyzer. Sure enough, even the phone mic picked up a huge spike at 16.1kHz... But, I certainly can't tell compressed audio if it is over say 192kbps. I probably can't afford the playback equipment that can actually demonstrate the difference before even getting into the debate of whether it is perceivable by humans or not...

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[kamapuaa]

I listen to MP3s plenty, or even Pandora, so I don't want to come off like a snob. But even with a shitty turntable and shitty speakers, it's very obvious that LPs sound better than CDs/MP3s. I get surprised comments on it all the time.

Also, the hook of this player isn't higher bitrates (any player can do FLAC or at least 320 kbps MP3) but the higher quality electronics, output levels, S/N ratios, etc.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

The MP3s are mostly fine. The Pono player claims to do a good job of blatting out good quality sound -- this isn't trivial. Maybe it'll be good, maybe not. That's really its only innovative feature. Still, if it is a good player, hey, that's something.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

No you are not. You are simply younger than the installers. Most youth can hear those higher frequencies but that ability degrades as you age.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

But even with a shitty turntable and shitty speakers, it's very obvious that LPs sound better than CDs/MP3s.

That just means you've fallen in love with the warm distortion of an LP. There's no reason you can't add that same distortion digitally to your CDs. You can even add pops and clicks if that enhances your listening experience. Personally, I find live music sounds nothing like an LP.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Sarten-X]

You're probably in about the 50th percentile, actually. Hearing 16 kHz puts you at somewhere under age 40, or you've taken pretty good care of your ears.

The hair cells in your ears that resonate with high frequencies up to 20 kHz sit right at the start of the cochlea. They're the first to be hit with sound, so the sound is at its highest energy. As the wave progresses to lower-frequency cells, it's progressively losing energy, so they don't get damaged as soon. By the time you get damage in the 2 kHz range, you'll start losing the parts of sound that make intelligible speech - the beginning and ending sounds of syllables. That's why older folks have a more difficult time understanding speech. They can hear you talking, but they literally can't hear what you're saying.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Ecuador]

I am 35. The installers ranged from 25-45, they couldn't hear it. One said he might be hearing something, but he couldn't really tell because of the sound of the fan. My wife couldn't hear it. Neither has anyone else since then (they replaced it, it is no longer loud, but I can still hear it). Trust me, it is not the 50th percentile, it has happened to me way too often to hear things like laptop chargers at annoying volumes when no-one else can hear a thing, or have to stick their ear on it. It is not only whether you can perceive a 16 or 17kHz sound or not, it is how sensitive you are at that frequency and that is what is abnormal with me, I am way too sensitive for some very high frequencies to the point of e.g. some chargers or TVs being really annoying for me to be in the same room with. I know that in the army when they gave us an audible spectrum test only about 10% passed the entire range (I don't know how high they tested), so at 31 I was at least at that percentile, but as I said from experience I haven't actually found anyone as sensitive. For that test they did not release results, the reason I know it is another funny story. Supposedly if you did not pass the minimum range set you had ear damage and you were disqualified from the fire range. The trainees who processed the results mixed the minimum range with the maximum range and only qualified those who passed the latter, announcing that over 100 of the 120 people tested were quite deaf according to the tests. At least the higher ups figured out relatively quickly that something had gone wrong and everybody got to go to the fire range a day later... on foot... through a muddy "road".. 15 km away... boots, helmets, G3 battle rifles, flasks and all... most guys thought back to the good days when they were deaf and did not have to go shooting...

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised I have to be the pedantic one on /..

1/10% = 1/.1 = 10 = 1,000% = 10x the number of people on the planet.

1/10,000% is better. It equals 1/100 = .01 = 1%. Still pretty high for the unicorns of hearing ability.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

But even with a shitty turntable and shitty speakers, it's very obvious that LPs sound better than CDs/MP3s.

Fucking hilarious piece of bullshit.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, sorry to break this to you, but you like the specific distortions that the LP introduces to the sound. The reason you (and many others) like it is entirely psychological. If you prefer a "polaroid" filter over your images, you can't claim it is better due to higher fidelity - it is a distortion that you personally enjoy.

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

16kHz should be pretty hearable for an average person. Absolutely nothing weird or supernatural about that.

I was driving with someone from work and i noticed his stereo shounded like complete shit with a peaking super-high frequency piercing my ears.
The guy tells me he can't hear it so i pull out my phone and run a spectrum analyzer.
Lo and behold, a loud peak at around 18kHz...

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[kamapuaa]

To paraphrase the Marx Brothers: who am I going to believe? You, or my own ears?

Re:The MP3 files are just fine

[Overzeetop]

Which is fine. When you're listening in a perfect environment. But unless you've built a listening room, or listen in a quiet environment on good headphones, you won't. The only time I use headphones is in the studio, or when I'm editing tracks.

There's nothing magical about LPs; I grew up on them. I do not, in any way, miss their poor fidelity.

So what makes Pono better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to look it up on Wikipedia to learn that the file format he calls Pono is just FLAC. AFAIK Neil Young didn't invent FLAC.
So what makes Pono better? The name? That it's a walled garden around an open standard?

Re:you've got to be kidding me

[ChunderDownunder]

'Polynesian' is language family spoken in various Pacific countries such as New Zealand (Maori), USA (Hawaiian) and Chile(Rapa Nui).

Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[Bob9113]

Young says the MP3 files we're all listening to actually are pretty poor from an audio-quality standpoint and only contains about five percent of the audio from an original recording.

Obviously Young doesn't understand The Coastline Paradox. At a sufficiently high resolution of measurement, a wave contains infinite information. Any finitely sized digital recording actually contains 0.00000% of the information in the original signal.

Of course, that's only if you include all the information that our brains are incapable of distinguishing. The interpretation of waves by our brains is an inherently fuzzy process, and beyond a certain resolution there is no perceptible difference between a flawed and a perfect recording (even if you had the equipment and sound room to produce a sufficiently high quality set of vibrations in the air to reliably communicate that tiny difference to your tympanic membrane (you don't)).

Or, more succinctly: Extreme audiophilia is bunk.

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[the eric conspiracy]

Low sampling rate MP3s can be obviously and audibly pretty bad on a good pair of headphones. Once you get to higher sampling rates you are generally in pretty good shape.

The comment in the story about CDs is really ridiculous. A properly mastered CD is really about as good as you need even on a very high end music system in a purpose built room with carefully designed acoustics.

There is no need for a new format. The idea that LPs are better is hogwash. The only time LPs sound better is when they are mastered with more dynamic range than whatever you are comparing them to is.

Now if he were talking about fixing the mastering process that would be a different kettle of fish. What is done to popular music in mastering, especially with dynamic range compression should be a crime. It has destroyed the value of music produced during the last 30 years.

Neil Young is selling bullshit. This is a complete scam he's trying to pull off.

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[Swampash]

I think you are confusing "sampling rate" with "bit rate".

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[Anonymous Coward]

>At a sufficiently high resolution of measurement, a wave contains infinite information. Any finitely sized digital recording actually contains 0.00000% of the information in the original signal.

You fail at pedantry. The constituent molecules of air are not infinitely small and their behavior places upper limits on what can meaningfully be called sound, let alone sound perceptible by humans.

Interesting tidbits:
Highest possible ultrasound frequency: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/23418/is-there-an-upper-frequency-limit-to-ultrasound
Highest known hearing frequency in a living creature: http://www.nature.com/news/moth-smashes-ultrasound-hearing-records-1.12941

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[SydShamino]

LPs sound better when they remind you of how the music sounded when you were listening to it as a child, with your mom or dad, when they're cleaning or reading the newspaper. Its nostalgia, or iterating over good audio memories, or whatever you want to call that.

People who are too young for that experience and claim to prefer LPs just decided to develop a taste for the noise, in the same way a determined cigarette smoker might fight through the initial coughing fits to get "hooked on the flavor".

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[Hamsterdan]

No. LPs sound better because they aren't mastered with everything at 11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

When CDs go back to having some dynamic range, they will outperform vinyl

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[Hamsterdan]

"The idea that LPs are better is hogwash. The only time LPs sound better is when they are mastered with more dynamic range than whatever you are comparing them to is."

That includes almost everything sold since early '90s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[Registered Coward v2]

Or, more succinctly: Extreme audiophilia is bunk.

As well as extremely profitable.

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[teg]

There is no need for a new format. The idea that LPs are better is hogwash. The only time LPs sound better is when they are mastered with more dynamic range than whatever you are comparing them to is.

That statement requires you to define "better". An LP, with all its limitations (a CD can contain all the information on the LP, and more), can still sound better to someone who likes that particular distortion. Or has a deeper experience because of the entire ritual of listening to an LP, caused by other limitations - cleaning it before playing, listening to the entire record in the sequence the artist/producer wanted it, look at the cover etc.

Re:Coastline Paradox & Audiophilia

[SydShamino]

That might be your reason to prefer LPs, but that's not at all the reason that I prefer LPs. I have a record player sitting next to me at my desk here at work, and I listen to records because they remind me of music as it sounded in my youth.

And I readily argue that hipsters will continue to prefer LPs over even high-dynamic-range CDs because they will have trained themselves to prefer the distortion.

Pono Player Hardware?

[Vegan Cyclist]

Am not seeing much discussion of the hardware itself...? Seems like it's not a terribly great device.. A 1/8" 'headphone' output - does that make sense given all the fuss over sound quality? Is the 1/8" jack the golden standard? What about the 8hr battery life? Would like to see more discussion around this..

Really silly

[jmv]

Now only is 192 kHz/24 bit silly in general, it's even more silly for a portable music player, that's usually used in places with a higher background noise than your living room. Listening to music above 100 dB SPL in a cafe with noise at 50 dB SPL means you only need an SNR of 50 dB, just slightly more than 8 bits.

Re:Really silly

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure triple driver sound isolation earbuds are the solution for this. I've been using them since 2007. Longest lasting pair of earbuds I've ever had and well worth every cent of the money IMHO.

Re:Really silly

[jmv]

Good, then you can make use of almost 16 bits!

Re:Really silly

[meustrus]

But what if you want to use your 128gb music player as your actual portable music library? Something that you can hook up to a much larger and more expensive system in an otherwise quiet environment?

Does it come with...

[Swampash]

a Monster cable?

Re: you've got to be kidding me

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo brah don bother come my islands, you to ignorant, the ohana don take kindly to ignorance.

We talk story in pidgin and Hawaiian here in addition to English, Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Thai, Vietnamese and many others.

Polynesian isn't any language I've ever heard of.

And the deaf will deny

[msobkow]

And the deaf will deny that anyone else can hear the difference between 192 and 44.1 kHz sampling because they can't.

I pity the deaf.

Re:And the deaf will deny

[gmf]

And the dumb will deny that anyone can understand the sampling theorem and the anatomy of the human ear because they can't.

I pity the dumb.

Re:And the deaf will deny

[msobkow]

Yep. I knew a troll would respond to that in no time.

Re:And the deaf will deny

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the ol' slashdot switcharoo

Re:And the deaf will deny

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not a troll, just speaking the truth. You're full of shit if you really believe you can hear the difference on an uncompressed signal that's otherwise identical except for sample rate.

Re:And the deaf will deny

[Anonymous Coward]

You might hear the difference between something recorded at 192kHz and 44.1kHz, because the former doesn't need such aggressive analogue filtering before sampling. Once it's in the digital domain, it's much easier to apply a (almost) brick-wall filter and downsample to 44.1kHz. Therefore, recording at 192kHz can give a better 44.1kHz result than recording directly at 44.1kHz.

After mastering, you CANNOT hear the difference between a 192kHz track and the same track that's been correctly downsampled to 44.1kHz. If you think you can, then get in touch with James Randi because he's got a million dollars for you. He's also confirmed a number of times that many of the audiophile claims would qualify.

Re:And the deaf will deny

[msobkow]

Ah yes. I'm going to believe somebody's theories and "research" instead of my own ears.

More about storage

[canadiannomad]

My biggest complaint about the mp3 music player industry is: Why are they still over selling 1/2/4GB devices!?!?!?!?!?
Honestly, I can't even imagine why Apple, Sony, Philips and other large brands that I find in my average tech store even bother to have/sell, but actively promote these minuscule devices. At least 128GB approaches a reasonable size for today's music collections.
To me it is similar to Linus' rant about laptop monitors.

Re:More about storage

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen brother.
And Linus is right.

My home audio system is a netbook with an outboard DAC, connected to an NAS.

Why are portable devices so internally small ?

Re:More about storage

[Anonymous Coward]

Price? Apple's 2gb is sold at $49 and has no screen. People just want something cheap, easy, and small, for jogging.

Re:More about storage

[mapuche]

I don't have 128 GB in music, it's a lot of money. But I like to run and my shuffle is convenient for the 40 minute training; no movable parts and lightweight. .

Re:More about storage

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a 16Gb Cowon Iaudio-7 since ~2007. 16Gb, no HDD and quite small (for the time, not as small as a nano etc). Still runs perfectly and holds 900 of my favorite songs at 320kb flat bitrate MP3.

Re:More about storage

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint, your local library probably has many cd's on loan...

Re:More about storage

[u38cg]

Get a Sansa Clip. Cheap and it takes MicroSD cards.

Re:More about storage

[coinreturn]

My biggest complaint about the mp3 music player industry is: Why are they still over selling 1/2/4GB devices!?!?!?!?!? Honestly, I can't even imagine why Apple, Sony, Philips and other large brands that I find in my average tech store even bother to have/sell, but actively promote these minuscule devices. At least 128GB approaches a reasonable size for today's music collections. To me it is similar to Linus' rant about laptop monitors.

Except if you pack it with 192KHz samples instead of 44.1KHz, your capacity effectively goes down to 128/3 = 42 GB. Apple still offers the iPad Classic with 160 GB for $249.

Re:More about storage

[canadiannomad]

But why bother? Better a microSD system like others have mentioned. The form factor is good, but the disk space is really unacceptable 8 years after the first 2GB iPod Shuffle came out. Memory prices have actually come down since then... You can buy a 2GB SanDisk microSD card on Amazon for 10 cents plus $5 shipping and handling... If you go to the HC varieties you can get 16GB for $4 ... Look I'm not saying I have a problem with form factor, I'm saying they should splurge a little to update their device to the times.

Yoko Ono here

[Anonymous Coward]

Pono!

Yoko Ono

Well, I hope he does remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

A southern man don't need him around anyhow.

Re:Well, I hope he does remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Alabama. Can I see you and shake your hand. Make friends down in Alabama.
I'm from a new land I come to you and see all this ruin
What are you doing Alabama? You got the rest of the union to help you along
What's going wrong?

Alabama, you got the weight on your shoulders that's breaking your back.
Your Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track

Re:Well, I hope he does remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh mod points, why do you abandon me when I really need you?

Once you go FLAC you never go back

[Anonymous Coward]

Gave up mp3 when I tried flac, all CD's I buy are transcoded to flac now. Don't have any problems with capacity on a 2gb player.

Re:Once you go FLAC you never go back

[keltickal]

You must have a pretty small music collection!

Re:you've got to be kidding me

[ChunderDownunder]

Didn't I write "language family"?

Something tells me....

[Dareth]

Something tells me....he is going to catch a ton of flac over this.

Re:Something tells me....

[russryan]

The first rule of FLAC is, don't explain FLAC.

Bats and Rats

[jayrtfm]

This could be a boon for biologists and other researchers, in that it could capture the ultrasonic sounds animals make. The currently available equipment is very expensive.

Re:Bats and Rats

[Sledgy]

The expensive part is the microphone capable of picking up those frequencies and amps/converters designed for those frequencies. Equipment to record outside our hearing range isn't really in great demand and hence the high cost.

Storage of the data however has never been a problem.

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

an audio format my dog can enjoy

What has Neil been smoking

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with today's recordings ISN'T lossy compression, it's audio compression done when the music is arranged. This can't be fixed by software because the information is gone before the recording distributed.

Google "the loudness war" to understand this problem.

why does this need a title or subject?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I miss from recordings is dynamics, and with today's music being digital there should be a way to dynamically adjust the dynamics with the volume. Basically turn the volume into a peak-limiter/compression unit but leave the dynamics in the recording and end the loudness war. I stopped buying and caring about newer recordings because they can't be turned up anymore. They are already loud, and at higher volumes it just becomes obnoxious and boring.

Re:why does this need a title or subject?

[Pushpabon]

This is indeed because of the loudness war. It is not a defect or limitation of the CD or digital medium but rather due to a record label's marketing department's decision to alter (read: fuck up) the mastering process. Google 'death magnetic compression'.

Re: you've got to be kidding me

[Anonymous Coward]

'Pono' in Hawaiian means more then simply righteous. Naming a music player 'pono' is a disservice to the word. Maybe Neil should have thought of that before hand, instead this is just another example of cultural appropriation. Sad.

you can smell the communism...

[Anonymous Coward]

if he took a bath between the bootleg wooden nickel and today I'd be amazed!

Probably mastering

[Anonymous Coward]

There is probably a difference if it's actually mastered to a lossless 48bit/192khz 8 channel and the playback hardware (decoder/speakers) actually decides to turn that into 16bit 48khz stereo or a full theatrical performance. FLAC doesn't quite do this (most of the meta data is lost, along with stuff like CD+G from cd rips.) So straight "FLAC as a codec" works better than simply "flac as a format" which is what Pono is trying to be.

In theory, one could save a bunch of cd masters (for example I have a 10-disc set of music for a popular anime) at 192khz 24bit 8-channel flac, and be able to do your own voice-over dubs of the series because the entire original audio for the show exists. I wouldn't because it would be a colossal waste of time, but being able to create your own fan episode with your friends becomes completely doable. You can do this with the CD quality audio, but you lose mixing precision when the input format and output format are the same.

i used to be indifferent to Neil Young...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I actively dislike him. This kind of audiophoolery is the height of shysterism.

The same company that is making pono also makes these myrtle blocks. yes, that's right they sell very expensive pieces of wood for you to put your cables on. Taking advantages of the easily suggestible and gullible fools known as "audiophiles" is a real unethical move. Maybe the old "a fool and his money" is true but it's still just shady.

Re:i used to be indifferent to Neil Young...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt Neil Young is trying to fool anyone, I think he really believe it is good. Being a good musician and having success doesn't make you good at science.

Re:i used to be indifferent to Neil Young...

[u38cg]

You missed the CD that "functions by demagnetizing residual fields that build up in your components over time".

Wow, So Douchey

[Anonymous Coward]

So there is no difference in audio then. You should go to the studio and sit where I sit, at a mixing board with 40 grand in outboard and listen to it on the Genelecs. There is surely a fuck of a lot of music that gets lost at the conversion to MP3 and even before that at mastering, and mixing sometimes.

I am no audiophile. I am a professional. We get the best mix we can to translate to whatever sorrowful playback medium of the average customer. You are out of your mind if you think that the dac and audio representation coming out of your phone and into your white ear buds or 'beats' sounds as good as it does at the mixing board.

You do what you can with the time and money you are given by the label or the artists.

Digital technology didn't make anything sound better, but it did make stealing music much easier. It used to take balls to steal a piece of music. Now it just takes a dork and the internet.

Re:Wow, So Douchey

[Anonymous Coward]

since you're obviously an aging and bitter baby boomer it's unlikely your ears can still hear the frequencies this pono shit is supposed to be recreating anyways, kicks dicks grandpa.

Re:Wow, So Douchey

[gerardrj]

Yes. I don't just think that; the science, physical objective testing and blind subjective testing all bear that out. Take the experience of sitting at the console out of the mix and play you a purely analog version of that same recording vs AAC/256 and 99% of people will not know any difference. The remaining 1% will be split 50/50 as to which recording sounds better.

Re:Wow, So Douchey

[meustrus]

You're certainly right about the AAC/256 part (at least if it's properly encoded). But there are a lot of other things mentioned that cause the sound "at the mixing board" to be superior. In fact, most of them are the mixing itself. Perhaps in the quest to make "the best mix we can to translate to whatever sorrowful playback medium of the average customer" you have actually mixed a brick wall soulless mockery of what you were listening to.

But I understand there's no going back now. It's probably for the best if recording studios start releasing lossless 24/192 audiophile versions, because they might actually be better mixes. I'd buy that for the mix and immediately down-sample to 16/44 so I can have 4.5x as much music.

Re:you've got to be kidding me

[rossdee]

Yep. Just like "wiki" is Hawaiian for "wiki."

And in Maori (another polynesian language) Wiki is a girls name. (short for Wikitoria)

Double blind tests?

[flyingfsck]

I challenge any 68 year old rocker to a double blind test to hear the difference between MP3 and Pono.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do any of you guys have ears? If you have heard live music vs an mp3, the loss of audio info is very obvious. Many mp3 files--especially rock music--are horrible. Neil is not in this to make money. He's got plenty. He's passionate about music.

Re:Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

Young has a good point, but so do you.

I somewhat agree with both of you. imho, mp3 at less than 512kbps is not high fidelity (the bad can be heard in the upper range, like the oscillations of the cymbols that tend to sound like breaking glass rather than what they are),, and, what I gather is your point, that the vast majority of aging adults lose any possibility of ever hearing any frequencies above 14kHz again.

I see there's no mention of amplifiers/speakers/etc. and the importance of the quality of them which really does make a big difference: spend more money, get better sound, really does work up to a point. Also, if you listen to music excusively through ear buds, you will not really notice what Young is complaining about... which is odd because most portable digital music players don't come with a decent amplifier and decent speakers

Re:Double blind tests?

[flyingfsck]

14kHz? I'm rather much younger than Young and I can't hear the diff between MP3, CD or vinyl on my old fashioned high power hifi anymore. HiFi is for young whipper snappers only...

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 is not inherently bad. A lot of early MP3s are crap. Encoded in CBR at 128 kbps or less. Even using VBR at the same bitrate yields a far superior sound and typically slightly smaller size. Sadly, I didn't discover that in college until I'd nearly ripped all of my CDs (quite a labor intensive process back then). Most music, humans won't notice a difference between 44khz and 48khz sampling, either. To notice the differences, you need "noisy" music. Music that has a large variance of frequency ranges and volumes that changes often. That is where you really see improvements from increased sampling and bitrates. Much how you see far less pixelation and artifacting in an action movie comparing a bluray to a dvd.

Re:Double blind tests?

[QRDeNameland]

mp3 at less than 512kbps

The maximum bitrate for mp3 is 320 kbps.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Gunboat_Diplomat]

Do any of you guys have ears? If you have heard live music vs an mp3, the loss of audio info is very obvious. Many mp3 files--especially rock music--are horrible. Neil is not in this to make money. He's got plenty. He's passionate about music.

A number of double blind tests show that almost no one are able to hear the difference between properly encoded 320kbps and original, including those that are absolutely convinced that they do. The mind is a beautiful thing.

The main problem with Neil is that he is mixing up different issues. Is overly dynamically compressed music a real problem? Absolutely. But that is the mixing and mastering, not related to format. Are there bad low-bitrate MP3 encodings out there? Absolutely, but with higher bitrate and better encoders being the norm it is a problem going away on its own. Are there any reasons at all to go lossless? there is one; if you want to keep the ability to re-compress to different formats/bitrate, then you can avoid compounding of compression artefacts across multiple generations (sort of like how you shouldn't jpeg a jpeg).

And don't get me started on the various snake oil attempts to describe why higher bitrate and higher samplingrates are needed, actually, just read this: http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmo...

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

The MP3 format is not necessarily bad, but all the decent-quality MP3s I've encountered use LAME's encoding algorithms rather than the proper MP3. But that's nitpicking - you're absolutely right about your facts and reasoning.

The big complaints against MP3 were from a time 96kbps CBR were thrust upon you wherever you went. 192kbps MP3 is pretty close to original quality most of the time, but 128kbps Vorbis was better than that, and so complaining about MP3 ensued from those who were aware of the situation and wanted it to change. The advent of LAME and feasibility of going up to 320kbps VBR meant that it didn't make that much of a difference anymore.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Joce640k]

Do any of you guys have ears?

128kbs MP3 (which used to be the "standard") is crap, yes.

320kbs MP3? I doubt many people can hear the difference.

After I got tired of clicking through the links to "What makes pono better" I eventually googled it on Wikipedia and found out it's FLAC. Aren't we already using FLAC? I know I am.

Bottom line: He's comparing 128kbs MP3 to FLAC. Nothing to see here, keep moving...

If you have heard live music vs an mp3, the loss of audio info is very obvious.

Who's talking about live music? Of course live music is different.

Re:Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am 56 and I can tell the difference between a CD and a MP3 encoded at 256kbs.

I can also hear many ultrasonic motion detectors, it is not really a sound but feels more like a pressure increase in my ear.

Some old people can hear very well.

Re:Double blind tests?

[pspahn]

See, the problem I have with music is that there always seems to be a conflict between it and whatever other noises are happening at the time.

I go with some friends to the bar to have some drinks and chat and have a good time. The music is so damn loud that I generally can't understand people well enought to have a conversation. Other times, I'll go to a show where I intend to hear music. That goes pretty well until all the people around me keep talking and I have a difficult time hearing the music.

This kind of product seems perfect for me. This way I can listen to music without all the annoying people around. Or, should I prefer, I can listen to people without all the annoying music around.

Re: Double blind tests?

[JaredOfEuropa]

This. It's pointless to go for a Pono if the audio files for this thing will come from the master intended for CD and radio, instead of the one for vinyl. If Neil Young is concerned with the quality of music on modern media, he ought to first address the horrible mastering process applied to recordings.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Thavilden]

Vinyl masters may still suffer from dynamic compression.

Re:Double blind tests?

[Jawnn]

I challenge any 68 year old rocker to a double blind test to hear the difference between MP3 and Pono.

On gear capable of actually rendering the differences the differences are stark. I bet even you could hear them.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can guarantee that you can't tell the difference between vinyl and a properly encoded MP3 file. The only reason you think you can is that the vinyl has popping and a bit of a grinding sound to it that allows you to recognize the sound. But, if you're encoding the MP3 to 192kbps variable with lame preset standard it's basically impossible to tell from the original without a computer to do the analysis. And no number of monster cables will change that. And you can always go lame preset extreme and go with 220kbps and I guarantee you that no human can tell the difference between that and the original.

People keep claiming that there's a difference, but the truth is that the only difference is psychological, there isn't actually any additional benefit from vinyl over digital. In fact, when properly mixed, a CD has a much larger dynamic range than vinyl does and degrades more slowly as well.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

128kbs MP3 (which used to be the "standard") is crap, yes.

Even so, ~15 years ago I did a test with my pretty darn good CD player (had one of the better DACs for the time), clean amp and the best headphones I had around. I couldn't tell the difference between a well ripped and compressed 128kbs mp3 and the CDs I tried. Now granted, I misspent my youth in way too loud clubs with no hearing protection, and it wasn't double blind, but really for most people I'd say even 128kbs isn't crap, given the improvements to LAME etc.

Re: Double blind tests?

[chihowa]

If you don't mind spending a little (but not much) money, you can launder your mp3s through a service like iTunes Match or Amazon Prime.

Instead of storing duplicate copies of everybody's collection, they match as much of your collection as possible and just keep their own well-encoded copies. You can sign up for a month (or year or whatever), find matches for your music, and then redownload better copies. After that, there's no need to keep paying for their service (if you don't otherwise have any use for it).

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

You make good points, but I find people who ask and answer their own questions annoying. Make statements. Q&As are stupid.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried a blind test with a friend once. 320kbps MP3s vs FLAC (mp3s were encoded from the FLAC files). Some old cheap computer speakers (Harmon Kardon if I recall correctly). He/I was able to pick the FLAC out every time.

I seem to recall hearing most of the difference in the higher frequencies, the rest all seemed the same.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Optali]

If you hear Death and Black Metal you will notice a lot of difference between CD and MP3 even at 320kbps, specially the drums.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

googled it on Wikipedia

1 - Google isn't a verb.

2 - Even if it were, you used it incorrectly. "Googling" only applies to google.com. The word you are looking for, even for google searches, is "searched".

3 - Otherwise, I agree with your point.

Re: Double blind tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't listen to any music that has low end movement. Try some tabla drums in your shitty mp3s on an actual soundsystem (your ipod dock doesn't count).

Re:you've got to be kidding me

[H0p313ss]

I'm so confused!

Dick Hole

[Anonymous Coward]

What a dick hole. A millionaire using kickstarter to crowd-source financing for his company.

Re:Dick Hole

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously know nothing about financing or investing in a business.

Bow chicka bow wow wow chicka bow....

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't the porno music you were looking for?

Double blind test

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to see Neil Young perform a double blind ABX between a V0 MP3 and a 24/192 FLAC (where the MP3 is a downsampled version of the FLAC) to prove there's an audible and appreciable difference. I'm all for lossless, and prefer to buy FLAC over MP3 if I can, but there's a point of diminishing returns.

If anything there needs to be a shift in studio production values. Turn down the damned gain knob and ease up on the compressors. Clipping on a 16-bit waveform sounds just as bad as a 24-bit waveform.

Why a player?

[future assassin]

Why not use your fame to start a proper distribution website and a business that treats the customer as a golden egg and not a thief. Yah yah iTunes now fuck off and give me something I'm not tired to and just want to pay and download a full corss platform DRM free file. Charge me $.25 per track or say $4-5 per album.

Oh oh and how about getting music by musicians that dont feel they are entitled to make $1000000's for eternity because they think their product is some magic thing that is above all priceless in perpetuity. Better yet how about license that say that after 5 years the album is release to the public royalty free.

Re:Why a player?

[future assassin]

Oh and if Ektoplazm http://www.eltoplazm.com/ can do it and pirates can do it WHY THE FUCK CAN"T YOU?

Re:Why a player?

[future assassin]

Damn wrong url http://www.ektoplazm.com/

Neil Young's old hat

[bukowski90210]

Early on, back in the 'dotcom bomb' days, (remember the site dotcombombs.com?) 24k and 32k mP3 files were commonly available to stream or to download because of their smaller size and lower/limited bandwidth capacities. I worked for an internet radio station between 99 and 2001 and we stored 24k, 32k, 56k, and 128k versions of each song on our servers in order to give the users the choice depending on their connection speed and storage capacities etc. . While Neil's argument used to bear weight, in today's world the reality is explicit: yes the smaller sized mP3's sound terrible and are missing a lot of the aural spectrum that we are used to hearing, but nobody even bothers with those 24k, 321k, 56k mP3 files these days.... EVERYONE KNOWS that the quality of those smaller files sucks and for good reason they've been pretty near obsolete for over a decade. ( good luck finding a 24k version of anything these days.)...Neil is making an argument that may have been valid 15 years ago, but now is no longer even a consideration

  Here is a great test that you can do at home..... A B test: Create a playlist containing 2 tracks of the same song, one is the 256k mP3 track and one is the WAV or FLAC track...be sure to randomize the track order but keep the tracks paired together. Then you choose which one the WAV OR FLAC track is. Do this 16 times and if your answer around 50% right, you cant tell which is which. I got 7 right out of 16 for 44%......SO I cant tell the difference, and I have pro speakers, pro headphones, etc......I'm a professional musician.

Besides performing music that hasn't been relevent for over 40 years, writing an album of love songs to a car, and turning his back on his country in order to make a buck, Neil Young is once again just proving to the world how out of touch he is.

It's snakeoil, and this is why:

[Ralph Spoilsport]

1. It's FLAC. nothing special.
2. If you're listening to it on $100 computer speakers, you might as well listen to 320kbps MP3s because you're not going to hear the difference on those crap speakers
. 3. Where do you listen to music? At your computer? Are you using the above mentioned speakers? Fail. If its charging via USB how is Pono going to isolate the noise in the USB Bus? If you are listening in your car - fuck off. You are NOT going to hear the difference over he road noise and attention distractions breaking your focus. AND I doubt the speakers or the amps in you car are much better than the junk attached to your computer.
4. Even if you have good speakers - what amp are you using? Your Preamp? Or is it going through some silver faced 1970s Pioneer reciever you got at Hipster Haven for $50?
What this is is very simple: It's a cranky old man who misses the old days of Rock and Roll business model, where music was impressed in spiraled disks - first vinyl, then polycarbonate. Those days are gone, so he's trying to open up some scarcity to create profit. He will fail.

Re:It's snakeoil, and this is why:

[strikethree]

You are NOT going to hear the difference over he road noise and attention distractions breaking your focus.

Hm. I disagree. It is true that you will not be aware of the entire range of audio, but there still will be a noticeable difference. For example, the cymbals will likely have a different quality.

In other words, you may not be appreciating the full range of audio while driving, but the portions you are able to pay attention to will still be affected by the overall quality.

The benefit if this is flac rips from the source

[assemblerex]

Yes, you can have FLAC files of songs, but the benefit of this is FLAC rips from the MASTERS.

I am surprised the studios will allow this as it means you'd never need to buy another version
of the music again, you would have a 99.9% as good version of the master.

FLAC rips from vinyl come close, but FLAC rips from the analog master tape? It's worth rebuying
all the music again as you will have without a doubt the best version possible short of a time
machine to the studio during recording time.

What I was always taught at uni about 'sampling'

[Anonymous Coward]

What I was always taught at uni about audio digital 'sampling' including with mp3's is that you get to a bit rate where the number of samples approximates the original wave and there is no other wave that could actually 'fit' and that this is encode/decode process is as accurate as the original. My professor told me this was 128kbps, and that anyone who wants more is an imbecile. And it really only matters at frequencies above 10k which we cant even hear.

PonoPlayer is a triangle

[HalAtWork]

I wish they'd make something easier to hold or put in your pocket, the triangle shape of PonoPlayer is horrible. I don't like the buttons either. It doesn't look like it'll be useful for other things like a WiFi web browser, which is disappointing as well, I don't want to have to carry multiple devices around, and I do want a WiFi web browser device with me at all times. Nice idea though, good luck with it.

Re:PonoPlayer is a triangle

[Bustogesmajes]

Yeah exactly! That's what I am thinking too! Its form is triangle. Though Yeah it's unique at first to look at it! but the shape of PonoPlayer doesn't interest me that much. I tried to figure it out i bought a chocolate (tobleron) a form that looks like (Pono) I cut it into a regular size of an mp3 that I have, I really feel bulge in my pocket! It's something that I am not used to. Anyways, they'd better have some improvements soon. Good Luck

Never Outsell

[Anonymous Coward]

"The PonoPlayer will never outsell the iPod?" It said...

http://goo.gl/wzF1Gu

iPod Shuffle?

[rsborg]

My biggest complaint about the mp3 music player industry is: Why are they still over selling 1/2/4GB devices!?!?!?!?!?
Honestly, I can't even imagine why Apple, Sony, Philips and other large brands that I find in my average tech store even bother to have/sell, but actively promote these minuscule devices. At least 128GB approaches a reasonable size for today's music collections.
To me it is similar to Linus' rant about laptop monitors.

A nano/shuffle's entire purpose is to support your workout (shuffle = music, nano adds radio, podcast, and recently BT headphones). It's for folks who have a decent but not large selection of music that just want to use it for a specific purpose.

Nowadays, with streaming radio and decent data plans, the smartphone is definitely better and doesn't even need more than 32 much less 128GB.

Re:The benefit if this is flac rips from the sourc

[Sledgy]

A rip from the MASTERS (I assume you mean final mix) is only sometimes a good thing, after hearing my own bands recordings before and after mastering I want a mastered version please. Mastering is an important step in the recording process, of course we master for quality ensuring there is no clipping or un-necessary compression, however some compression can be necessary to get a good result.

FLAC rips from vinyl do not come close. When a track has been mixed it is mastered for the different media that it will be delivered for. A vinyl master has a shelving filter to remove low frequencies (leaving them in will cause the needle to skip or bounce on the LP), vinyl also has a much smaller dynamic range than a CD and a high noise floor. Next the sound of vinyl is actually very tinny and lacks bass (put your ear near the needle to hear this), this is made up by boosting base frequencies either in the player (or via an LP input that some older stereo's included), so the sound has already been heavily messed with before it's even gotten to your A to D converters.

the Biggest loser

[kmf]

I think the biggest loser is the Xiph Foundation ... and maybe .FLAC as a filetype ... the PonoPeople ... making out that Pono is the new awesome and not recognizing FLAC will do more harm than good. Rather promote the FLAC standard, and donate some money to Xiph.

Re:you've got to be kidding me

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't speak only English there. You can hear some news & weather in Hawaiian on the public radio station. I'd call it 'Olelo Hawai'i, but I speak English.

Separate mastering might be interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be interesting if there was an audio player format that supplied the original audio data along with a separate set of information analogous to a Photoshop adjustment layer to be applied during playback. Then different customers could each purchase the sort of mastering they prefer.

Already Won

[undulato]

The fact that the Kickstarter is now already over $2m after two days suggest that Mr Young or his business has hit on something. Obviously getting a load of big name stars to endorse the product helps not only Pono but themselves.

So a few facts:

• Neil Young has always been about the sound (if he's not feeling grumpy) - if you see him play live you can find out how live is supposed to sound
• Everyone in the music business knows this and that's why they are on his video (aside from the fact they are going to get a slice of pie)
• Using an open format for the store and having the player alongside is a great move - you're not locking anyone into anything
• The PonoPlayer may be a pocket sized audiophile slab of genius however even if it doesn't work out it's going to start a hi-def sound revolution - equate it with the Rio PMP 300

Pono wins either way - they have have access to the hi-def source and they start a hi-def revolution with the backing of all the big names. The fact that it's taken so long to get to market but has finally (almost) arrived with this kind of offering also suggests some serious thought has gone into the business and the business model - and now a couple of days in they are already justifying this. I'm impressed although I suspect that the apparent freedom and slickness of the marketing hides a deeper truth which will probably only come to light after the kickstarter finishes i.e. there are tentative deals in place to fold this in with more traditional offerings. Basically if you were iTunes would you like it if a lot of 'your' artists heavily promoting a rival service?

Porno Music

[jlebrech]

a porno music start up sounds like a pretty good idea :)

Re:Porno Music

[neminem]

Glad I wasn't the only one who clicked on this article expecting to make fun of a mispelling in the title.

What a load...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neil young has a net worth of over 65 million bucks.

And he couldn't just put a couple million into his 'great idea'? Has to go begging on kickstarter like the average nobody?

What the fuck... It's crap like this that is totally ruining kickstarter. Those with means using it as just another marketing venue.

Only young people...

[Alejux]

Who never had LP's and good sound systems back in the day, don't realise how much CD's took away sound fidelity with it's 16 bit 44khz digital encodings. It's about time someone made a push towards increasing quality. Specially now that storage space is so cheap.

digtial analog converter

[Anonymous Coward]

this is affordable and gets the best reviews if u are into a high quality digital analog converter.
The thing is a little box for roudn $100 (I think) which 'eats' USB
Search for ODAC or Objective DAC
http://www.headnhifi.com/

Utter tosh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is what this is. No one can actually tell the difference between decently-encoded mp3s and supposedly 'better' formats - although plenty of people *think* they can. People *think* all kinds of things. The science has been done. Can people stop being silly about this now?

FYI, the only sensible use of higher sampling rates and bit depths is when you're a music producer, and the recordings are going to be subject to a bunch of extra processing before you get to the finished product. Same as how it (sometimes) makes sense to process photos starting from 16-bit files in Photoshop, even thought the finished product can be represented perfectly well using 8 bits per colour channel.

It misses an H

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, for phono. And in that case, it has surface noise and isn't perfect, just like life. And it loses fidelity with time, just like memories. It also takes some effort and patience, like cooking a good meal with good gear. It's called a record and has been there all along. If I want to listen to audio on the go, I don't care whether it's mp3, flac. Casette tapes where better. The only format that could maybe, just maybe come close to the truth of vinyl.
Any representation that messes with the time factor is suspect. That means every digital mode. Time should flow continuous and thus phase relationships. It will take a long time for this to be understood.

The right shape

[Anonymous Coward]

For a corner. Where it would eventually end up.

Explain to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not very good at this, so I have a question.

OK, I get Shannon's theorem. Let's suppose you have a 20kHz sine wave and you sample it at 40kHz. Depending on where the sampling is happening one the wave (the phase between the two frequencies), you could get a resulting digitized wave with the amplitude from 0 to full amplitude. So you will reproduce the frequency in most of the cases, but you will not the full wave (the amplitude will be normally less than the original one).

Now let's presume that the sampling frequency is not exactly double of the original frequency - a more realistic case. Let's say the sampling frequency is 41 kHz. Now you will get a variable amplitude wave, which is again not a good reproduction of the original wave.

So yes, you get the 20kHz frequency, but not the original amplitude of the wave - in other words, a distorted wave. Where do I go wrong here?

What make it better?

[Anonymous Coward]

What make it better?
Simply put, a captive market and a viable business model (at least out of the gates)

Encoding vs. amplifier

[Anonymous Coward]

I may have been mistaking encoding quality with reproduction quality for a long time.

Ten years ago I did months of encoding and listening tests to decide on a coding scheme for my entire CD collection. 256 Mbps MP3 won out (at the time) for sound quality, compatibility (most web browsers couldn't play AAC), and size.

I was so focused on my device, a 3G iPod, that I did all my listening tests on the iPod. Big mistake, I realize suddenly.

  I settled on 256 MP3 at the time, as having the least artifacts. I have maintained since then, that I can hear the difference between 256-320 Mbps MP3s and uncompressed CD quality audio. In particular, during listening through headphones of all types, with a portable music device, usually an iPod, there were tell-tale differences in high-frequency transients. I leave the identity of said transients, quite common in 20 and 21st Century music, to your quite capable imagination.

Those sound artifacts may have been due to the reproduction chain of the portable device all along. I never did listening tests with a high quality signal path.

Conclusion #1: It's probably time to redo those months of listening tests.
Conclusion #2: Graaa-aagggch!

Unambitious.

[sloth jr]

To propose a new high quality format that doesn't add anything significantly new to our music options seems a little short sighted. Imagine a format that presents each recorded master track as a separate component, along with as-released mixing settings. You'd gain the ability to not only listen to what the sound engineer came up with, you'd be able to make your own mixes. It'd also make creative mashups much, much easier. That's what I want - not this.

Re:What I was always taught at uni about 'sampling

[Overzeetop]

If you think MP3s are about sampling, you're already too far gone to save.

It's a matter of the fine print ( of course )

[Anonymous Coward]

All you hipsters and clueless wonders listening to your favorite crush-of-the-moment, in anything other than a high-quality, physically local, duplication-friendly file, are *renting* the music.
You don't own it.
  Thats the longstanding joke, in the boardroom of every major label; "The majority of the public doesn't even realize it".

Learn what the word means

[Anonymous Coward]

"What righteous means to our founder Neil Young is honoring the artist's intention, and the soul of music"

Then it's time to buy a dictionary.

How is this innovative...

[echen1024]

Little ARM SoC + Linux + Massive amount of flash memory = Pono Not much going on here.

Neil Young

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, now we can listen to Neil young in all his annoying whiny majesty without loss.

He has to be the single worst overrated solo performer ever.

there already is one / compression

[Anonymous Coward]

just get a Fiio X3 Mastering Quality Music Player: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9O6C96

Why the need to reinvent the wheel? it's already only $200

my $.02 on compression... in the early days of the internet I could see the need to compress audio in a lossy fashion. even single songs could take an hour to download at a few K/s. but now?? most folks aren't on dial-up anymore, and hard drive and flash storage is literally an order of magnitude cheaper. mp3s were a step BACKWARD in quality - somewhat (but not really) equivalent to ditching your cd's and going back to tape. someone should explain why we shouldn't go to a lossless format like flac - even if it's just 44.1/16bit - at least you're not losing information. Do you really need to download a song in 4.5 seconds instead of 20 seconds for a better sounding file? Maybe some users can't tell the difference, but is that a reason for the standard to be lossy? Thankfully at least Crapple has introduced ALAC, so most consumers at least have the option to have decent fidelity.

As a musician, i would certainly prefer consumers hear music as it was intended by the artist. Musicians and engineers create their final mix and master in a lossless, high resolution (24bit+) environment. Being someone with quite a lot of studio experience, Neil Young thinks it already sounds worse dropped to 44.1/16bit for cd, then you're going to drop it even lower in quality - all for convenience sake?

Hey "Forrest"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> Face the music (you trolling piece of shit)... apk

Bit Rates Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Bit rates, CD's, vinyl, these are all a small part of the listening experience.

In a recording studio, especially the mixing and mastering rooms, even with everything digital, there's usually a ton of money spent on the room itself. Usually more than the playback monitors. Much more.

Very few people mix on headphones, no one at the pro level. We mix on studio monitors with flat response rates that cost more than most people's car and they still color the sound

Then test the mix on everything, including in our cars and iPhones, and the final mix is usually tested on the cheapest, shittiest grot box we can find, because 95% of people listen on shitty systems.

Go into even the most high end studio and somewhere you'll probably find an old beat to shit boom box or some Auratones.

That's after we EQ and apply compression and whatever else to get each track to sit in the mix, sometimes a little tweaking, sometimes a lot.

Where you listen and on what matters more than bit rates or the medium, spend the money on room treatments and good speakers. If you want to listen while you're out on your bike you'll still get better sound from higher bit rates, within reason, and better earbuds, but it's really your personal choice.

I prefer higher bit rates, for older music the vinyl version usually sounds better, nowadays the CD's and downloads are just as good most of the time.

If you want to spend a grand on interconnects and five hundred on a power cable for your home system, go for it, but 50% of what you hear is in your head.

I'm a big fan of good audio gear, but you can spend 100 grand on your system and still not hear what I heard in the room while I was tracking.

Thanks troll

[Anonymous Coward]

For doing your usual "Run, Forrest: RUN" troll crap vs. this http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> It really gives me great pleasure seeing a worthless piece of trolling SHIT like you run like the cowardly little bitch YOU are... apk

Hi you trolling piece of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep running "forrest"-> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Keep running "Forrest", lol...

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Face the music troll (seriously)

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of utter shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Hey you STUPID troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Why'd ya run from this you trolling piece of shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817 ?

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

STFU you fucking wannabe

[Anonymous Coward]

Why'd ya run from this ya trolling piece of shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817 ?

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Re:What I was always taught at uni about 'sampling

[Anonymous Coward]

You and your processor are the imbeciles. 128 kbps is horrid, and the top freq. for the average human is 20 khz, not 10.

sometimes loss is good

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes loss is good.

Like in the case of Neil Young's music where a loss of 100% would be perfect.

"Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of useless undereducated shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Quit talking... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of undereducated shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

"Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of undereducated USELESS shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone here that you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Don't talk Forrest

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of useless undereducated shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone here that you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Don't talk scumbag

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of useless undereducated shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone here you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Re:Don't talk scumbag

[lgw]

I love you too, APK. But my heart is promised to another.

Keep running, troll (lmao)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of undereducated useless shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone that you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk

Why RUN from this, loser?

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolling piece of undereducated useless shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817 ???

APK

P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone that you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk