Pono’s mission is to provide the best possible listening experience of your favorite digital music. The PonoPlayer transports you to a sublime musical experience, from the most delicate passages of a string quartet to the thunderous power of a heavy metal band. This portable audio player uses circuitry taken straight from Ayre’s own top-of-the-line products, costing tens of thousands of dollars, for unparalleled sound quality and unrivaled listening pleasure. Pono supports playback of high-fidelity audio of up to 192kHz/24 bit resolution.
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I think Mag Lev is considering given us a better tonearm and cartridge for no extra money. Below is a part I copied and pasted here from Mags last update. From Mag--As you all know, we have mechanisms connected to our tonearm, but are seriously considering of giving you guys a better quality tonearm to begin with as well as a better cartridge. The specifics are yet to be determined with our suppliers.
Can't wait for the Mag Lev turntable.
My new black Pono is now all loaded and ready to go. I have just ordered some more balanced cables from surfcables.com. They are in limited supply so I thought I would just future proof my options as they won't be making any more.
It looks like our MagLev turntable will have the option of an arm and cartridge upgrade - Perfect.
I have just scored an original LP of 'Get yer ya-ya's out' - the CD was a compressed remaster & sounded terrible so the LP is the only way to go for this one.
Cheers.
I'm still using my limited edition Pono player on home unit in XLR balanced mode. Siltech
The Micro SD problem solved! 4 counterfeit disks ! What fooled me was that the computer read it as high capacity when it wasn't there.
I used a SanDisk Extreme Pro which was really fast to load.
Thanks for all your help.
Cheers
these weren't even my concerns, initially. was mainly put off by the unsecured site for c/c transaction to pay for premium d/l speed. but an unsecured P2P site is far worse. I'd say you have been very lucky. so far.
1. Have you formatted the mSD card with the official SD Association format tool? There are security features that must be retained for the card to work properly. https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ 2. Have you tried doing the sideload in smaller than 50gb steps? I usually do an album at a time.
3. Did the cards ever work properly? There are a lot of fake hi capacity cards. Counterfeits are every where. 4. You aren't using PonoMusic World, PonoMusic Vault, or any other proprietary program for side loading ? I just did a new 64gb card. Wanted one for super sound quality so all albums were hi res and in WAV. Used W7 i5 Dell laptop. Used a mSD card adapter into SD slot. Some albums came from laptop's internal hard drive. Most from external hard drives. Took less than 4 hours to make card. Could have been a little quicker if I weren't futzing around to make sure I didn't have same song on PonoPlayer's internal memory. I always leave 10% memory blank. It is supoosed to help computer and Pono work properly. If none of this works try the Pono community . Also Computer Audiophile or AudioAsylum forums. Let us know what works,
I am having real issues side loading my FLAC files onto a MicroSD card. I thought it was a Pono issue but the same happens without Pono.
I have 2 computers Mac OSX 10.11.6 & Windows 7.
128GB Micro SD Card - Format exFAT.
I adjusted both computer settings so that they never sleep.
MAC: Files on USB Stick . Insert Micro SD via adaptor & Copy & paste 50GB file - takes 12 hours.
Then I immediately copy & paste file to desktop from SD File. 50GB.
The SD file only has 30GB of data - All the albums are there but for 2/3 of them opening the album shows there are no songs. I have tried copying and pasting missing songs from 1 album and it worked. Then I remove the SD card from the computer and re-insert. Now there is 10GB of data and it will not allow me to copy & paste any more songs. Reinserting the SD card again and it is on longer recognised by the computer.
PC: Same as the Mac. I have tried cmd & chkdsk d/f but no joy. Recovery software is to recover the data to a different device, not the same one. The PC recognised the SD card in the drive but access is now denied.
I can reformat the disk .All the data is now lost. Repeat the process and same result. I have tried numerous cards ( 64 GB & 128GB )and 2 computers.
I am now totally lost . Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
( in whatever "who knew?" form that new life may take ;)
Download the Chrome extension Hola VPN . It tells Hdtracks that you are from the US and they are happy to take your money. As posted by Doug previously NY Hi Res is available to us all from the NY website much cheaper.
Cheers
Oh well...
http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-pono-neil-young-kills-off-his-digital-player-20170423
You can download from many sites, transfer to micro sd card to play on Pono. Now as Doug mentioned, service appears available, if needed. It may be a little annoying getting the music on the Pono player, but the sonics are 2nd to none. Voted and named "Product Of The Year" by Stereophile. I love Sony but doubt the sonics will be anywhere Pono player. Pono and Ayre together, make Sonic Bliss, and all the nayers no it. If your not happy and think Sony is sonically better, then why not sell your player. DOUG, YOUR THE BEST. SILTECH
Just wanted to add a couple of comments based on some of the responses. The Xstream service includes the ability to buy hi-res downloads. And service for players continues to be available by contacting me at phil@ponomusic.com. Thanks.
:)
Neil is a hippie musician. Not a businessman. sounds like PoNo was on a path to destruction all along, all by it's lonesome?
If they went bankrupt, then why would Apple buy the assets. The logical reason, was to destroy Pono site, and protect there own. Trump and Siltech
according to Jim H (JRiver): Neil is leaving out parts of the story. Omnifone went bankrupt and only then did Apple buy the assets. I suspect this happened because Pono (Ivanhoe) didn't pay their bills. We always had trouble collecting for our work, and they still owe us $28,000. They may have only paid JRiver at all because the player timed out if they didn't. Neil is an idealist, but he is not a business person. In business, you make the calculations first, operate carefully, and pay your bills. It was irresponsible of him to continue to try to build a streaming service when he still owed people money for the past work they had done. Admit your mistakes, Neil, and move on. Blaming the problems on the music business is something Trump might do, but it's not something Neil Young should be doing. The music business isn't a boys choir, but they didn't cause the failure of Pono.
Sad News, Indeed.
It is unclear but I presume they will stop production. Hence the backup purchase.
Long term if the battery fails there are clips on You Tube as to how to replace it.
I can't see a streaming source from iPad or Phone sounding better than Pono.
As I suspected - it was Apple who closed down Omniphone - so if anyone is grumpy it should be with them - inventor of the MP3 & the great leap backwards.
P.S. Thanks Neil. I have played more music in the last 3 years than ever before.
03~11~14 - 04~20~14 N.Y. statement: No More Than Pretty Black "WORDS" On A White Background. No PoNo Store. No PoNo Promise. No "Version 2". No Shit!
"I've been living the dream we had, for me it's not over".
O.F.W.
Neil Young (PonoMusic)
It’s time to talk about Pono and the initiative we all started. As you know, together we’ve been fighting a battle to bring high quality music back to the world that’s become used to mediocre, hollowed-out files. The cause seemed to be a win-win for everyone. The artists would allow their fans to hear what they hear in the studios, and the music lovers would hear the music the best it could be. This cause has been something I’ve written and talked about for over 20 years. I cared and I assumed that most of the world would care.
It’s been almost five years since we kicked off the campaign at SXSW to offer a player and download content that could fulfill my dream of bringing to you a music experience unlike any other for the cost. Thanks to our supporters on Kickstarter, the follow-on customers and some very good friends that supported the effort, we delivered on that promise. Our player won best digital portable product of the year from Stereophile Magazine, and we offered some of the best high resolution content to be found anywhere. We sold tens of thousands of players, every unit that we made. Thanks for that!
But, despite that success, I was not satisfied. I had to put up with lots of criticism for the high cost of music delivered in the way all music should be provided, at full resolution and not hollowed out. I had no control over the pricing, but I was the one that felt the criticism, because I was the face of it. And I pretty much agreed with the criticism. Music should not be priced this way.
Last year when Omnifone, our download store partner, was bought and shut down with no notice by Apple, we began work with another company to build the same download store. But the more we worked on it, the more we realized how difficult it would be to recreate what we had and how costly it was to run it: to deliver the Pono promise, meaning you’d never have to buy the same album again if was released at a higher quality; the ability to access just high res music, and not the same performances at lower quality, and the ability to do special sales. Each of these features was expensive to implement.
I also realized that just bringing back the store was not enough. While there was a dedicated audience, I could not in good conscience continue to justify the higher costs. When it comes to high res, the record industry is still broken. The industry was such that even when I wanted to remaster some of the great performances from my artist friends at high res, Pono had to pay thousands of dollars for each recording, with little expectation of getting the money back. Record companies believe they should charge a premium for high res recordings and conversely, I believe all music should cost the same, regardless of the technology used.
As you might imagine, I found it difficult to raise more money for this model: delivering quality music at a premium price to a limited audience that felt they were being taken advantage of with the high costs.
So now, sadly with Pono gone, for more than eight months I’ve been working with our small team to look for alternatives. Finding a way to deliver the quality music without the expense and to bring it to a larger audience has been our goal.
That effort has led to a technology developed by Orastream, a small company in Singapore that we’ve been working with. Together we created Xstream, the next generation of streaming, an adaptive streaming service that changes with available bandwidth. It is absolutely amazing because it is capable of complete high resolution playback. Unlike all other streaming services that are limited to playing at a single low or moderate resolution, Xstream plays at the highest quality your network condition allows at that moment and adapts as the network conditions change. It’s a single high resolution bit-perfect file that essentially compresses as needed to never stop playing. As a result, it always sounds better than the other streaming services and it never stops or buffers like other higher res services. When you play it at home with WiFi it can play all established low and high resolutions, including the highest, and thousands more levels of resolution in between. When you are in your car with poor cellular it might play better than an existing low res service, but at a location where robust wifi is available Xstream supports high resolution listening. Xstream is one file, streaming for all with 15,000 seamlessly changing levels of playback quality.
So, this is what we’ve been working on. But one of my conditions is that it should not have a premium price. I’ve insisted that there be no premium price for this service. Pono tried that with downloads and it’s not a good model for customers. And I’ve told the labels it’s not a good model for them to charge a premium for music the way it was meant to be heard. I firmly believe that music is in trouble because you can’t hear it the way it is created unless you pay a premium. No one gets to hear the real deal, so the magic of music is compromised by limited technology.
Good sounding music is not a premium. All songs should cost the same, regardless of digital resolution. Let the people decide what they want to listen to without charging them more for true quality. That way quality is not an elitist thing. If high resolution costs more, listeners will just choose the cheaper option and never hear the quality. Record companies will ultimately lose more money by not exposing the true beauty of their music to the masses. Remember, all music is created to sound great and the record labels are the one’s deciding to not offer that at the normal price. The magic of music should be presented by the stewards of that music at a normal price. Let listeners decide on the quality they want to purchase without pricing constraints.
I’ve been meeting with and speaking with the labels, potential partners such as the carriers, and other potential investors. For many it’s a difficult sell. There are already streaming services, some doing well and others not. While there’s nothing as good as Xstream, or as flexible and adaptive, it’s still proven a difficult sell for companies to invest in.
So, in my experience, today’s broken music industry continues to make major mistakes, but we are still trying. Bringing back the magic of great sound matters to the music of the world.
Thank you all very much for supporting Pono and quality audio. Thanks to everyone who is or was associated with Pono, especially the customers who supported us. Thanks to Charlie Hansen and Ayre Acoustics for the great PonoPlayer. It has been a labor of love. I want you to know that I’m still trying to make the case for bringing you the best music possible, at a reasonable price, the same message we brought to you five years ago. I don’t know whether we will succeed, but it’s still as important to us as it ever was.
Thankfully, for those of my audience who care and want to hear all the music, every recording I have ever released will soon be available in Xstream high resolution quality at my complete online archive. Check it out. We will be announcing it very soon.
Neil Young