Neil Young's PonoMusic player (1 Viewer)

pete

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March 10, 2014 – (Santa Monica, CA.) - PonoMusic is a revolutionary movement conceived and founded by Neil Young with a mission to restore the soul of music - bringing the highest-quality digital music to discerning, passionate consumers, who hunger to hear music the way its creators intended, with the emotion, detail, and power intact. "It's about the music, real music. We want to move digital music into the 21st century and PonoMusic does that. We couldn't be more excited - not for ourselves, but for those that are moved by what music means in their lives," said Neil Young, founder and chairman of PonoMusic.

PonoMusic is a full system that includes both an online music store (PonoMusic.com) and a playback device (The PonoPlayer). The PonoPlayer offers a digital-music listening experience that transcends the limitations of a multi-function smart phone. The PonoPlayer will bring this experience to you in your home, car, or through your headphones. PonoMusic.com will offer the finest quality, highest-resolution digital music from both major labels and prominent independent labels, curated and archived for discriminating PonoMusic customers. The Pono desktop media management application allows customers to download, manage and sync their music to theirPonoPlayer and other high-resolution digital music devices.

"Our goal was to offer the highest quality digital music available from all the major labels and build the world’s best sounding, easy-to-use portable music player. We’ve achieved our goal and we are excited to launch our Kickstarter campaign this week to invite music lovers everywhere to join the PonoMusic community and reserve a PonoPlayer for their own enjoyment," said John Hamm, CEO of PonoMusic.

The PonoPlayer is a purpose-built, portable, high-resolution digital-music player designed and engineered in a "no-compromise" fashion to allow consumers to experience studio master-quality digital music at the highest audio fidelity possible, bringing to life the true emotion and detail of the music, the way the artist recorded it. It also features a convenient and simple LCD touch screen interface that is totally intuitive. The audio technology in the PonoPlayer was developed in conjunction with the engineering team at Ayre, in Boulder Colorado, a leader in digital audio technology.

PonoMusic and Ayre have collaborated to achieve a lofty goal -- to make the power and majesty of music available to everybody. “We are absolutely thrilled to be a part of this project. We will always be grateful to Neil Young for changing the landscape of recorded music," said Charlie Hansen, CEO of Ayre Acoustics. (Ayre Acoustics

The PonoPlayer has 128GB of memory and can store from about 100 to 500 high-resolution digital-music albums, depending on the resolution and length of the original recording. Memory cards can be used to store and play different playlists and additional collections of music. The PonoPlayer will be sold atPonoMusic.com for $399 MSRP and is available for pre-order at a discount on Kickstarter.com as of March 12th.

I think the register nails it:

Ayre Acoustics has partnered with Young to develop a “minimum phase” digital filter to eliminate “pre-ringing” (presumably distinct from the more constant ringing of tinnitus, which Young has admitted to suffering). “Zero feedback” electronics, a high-quality DAC, and low output impedance all contribute to a veritable orgy of audiophile-speak surrounding the player.


Neil Young touts MP3 player that's no Piece of Crap • The Register

hmm
 
pono-players-yellow-blue[1].png look at the playlist - dire straits, bob dylan... i do believe that's neil young on the black one

there's your target market right there
 
Having read his book, Neil Young, genius though he is, seems less interested in working with people then finding people who'll do what he wants.

That yoke looks like a rejected 1st Gen iPod mini design.
 
Unless you have amazing headphones, and you only bring your portable music player into places where there's little or no background noise, you're not going to notice the extra quality though, right? I suppose it'd make a nice portable stereo unit if you had some decent little speakers to go with it.
 
Lefsetz is straight out MEAN about this:

Bob Lefsetz said:
Selling files in a streaming world is like asking me to give up my Tesla for a bicycle. A bigger bicycle that doesn't exist that you want me to pay for on spec.

Can everybody stop begging? Crowdfunding is so two years ago. Know anybody with a Pebble watch? What a disappointment. Oh, they keep on improving the product, but the early adopters, the ones who pledged on Kickstarter, they got screwed, and Samsung's product is superior, and also recently upgraded, so if you want me to lay my money down so you can get the support no VC will give you, I'll pass.

There are no unsigned bands who got screwed by the major label system. That was the fallacy that was supposed to be eradicated by the Internet. You know, a plethora of badasses who the major labels just couldn't understand were gonna rise like a phoenix and revolutionize not only the business, but our ears. But it turns out Lorde was signed before adolescence and Jason Flom flew to New Zealand for American rights and if you don't think the majors are scouring the world for anything good, and signing it up if it has commercial potential, you don't have an Internet connection and believe everybody deserves a chance.

So here we've got alta-kacher Neil Young wanting us to believe he's a tech king. I'm not sure WME and CAA can figure out tech investment, but artist Young has got it mainlined. Why does everybody think they can do everything? What next, is Neil Young gonna join the NBA? Are sixty year olds gonna dominate at Wimbledon? Face it, you're lucky if you can be world-class at one thing.

And now I've got a single device that lets me play music, surf the web, talk, text, stream music and files...and Neil says I've got it all wrong, I've got to go back ten years and get a single player, that looks chunky in the pics, so I can get higher quality audio. Why don't you just lobby for a faster Internet connection, so I can get hi-res streams? Isn't Google Fiber gonna wipe you out? Do you really want me to go back in time fifteen years when MP3s were cool? What next, a return to BlackBerry, because it had a keyboard and it was such a good e-mail device?

But you can't even show me a finished product. And even though you're a rich rock star (aren't they all?) you can't pay for it, I have to. And that means very few people will, and I'll end up with a paperweight.

No thanks.

But every media outlet in the world is covering this story, as if it has meaning. But it doesn't.

Oh, they'll review Neil Young's new record too, but no one will buy that either. Oh, a few might stream it, but then move on, because he hasn't made memorable music since "Greendale," and that's cutting him a break.

Do I want high quality music on the run?

Of course!

But portable turntables never broke through.

And neither will Pono.
 
Lefsetz is straight out MEAN about this:

Oh, they'll review Neil Young's new record too, but no one will buy that either. Oh, a few might stream it, but then move on, because he hasn't made memorable music since "Greendale," and that's cutting him a break.

hes right about that bit though
 
So you convert them to flacs?
Yeah if that's what you're into. There's probably a market of people out there who already only use flacs and have resisted buying mp3 players because of the quality.

You've got a point though:
Neil Young's Pono Hits Kickstarter, Audiophiles Clamor to Get on Board | Digital Trends
According to the PonoMusic Kickstarter page, the PonoPlayer can handle any kind of music file, including high-resolution music available from already well-established services like HDtracks. But Young and the Pono team hope you’ll want to buy music it has secured in as high-resolution as 96 kHz/24 bit and 192 kHz/24 bit FLAC (fully lossless audio codec) format from its PonoMusic app and online store.

I've seen some lads who go mad for the stuff on HDtracks.com. Will they be willing to shell out AGAIN? I can't imagine they would.



I do like the fact that it's big enough to use as a pretend microphone to sing along to whatever you're listening to on the move.

It looks like it could double as a joypad for a NES
 
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The promo video that's online for this claims that the files sound better than CDs. So unlike other players where you rip your CDs at whatever quality suits you, for this one your CDs just aren't good enough. Don't think I'll be investing, for a portable player I don't need super super HD sound given that I'm usually surrounded by traffic or people or other noise.
 
Yeah the big selling point seems to be high quality audio while "on the move". Who needs that? Shitty quality audio is grand while I'm in the car or on the bus or out walking. I'd still like to hear one though ...
 

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