PonoMusic - Neil Young

[northcrunk]

Originally Posted by Inglewood Jack

95% of sound quality problems are in the mastering process, where for a couple of decades now the engineers have been butchering recordings with severely clipped, compressed dynamics. The fanciest lossless file format will only help to preserve that garbage so it hits your ears that much clearer.

Hilarious that guys like Flea are criticizing CD quality sound, when his own band is one of the worst offenders of this type of sound mutilation. While albums like What's The Story Morning Glory were pioneers, Californication took the art of crappy mastering to bold new heights.

Promise to fix the way sound engineers treat a musician's recording, and maybe the you can start looking at delivery format.

+1 so true.

It seems everyone now just cranks up the volume slaps a limiter on everything.

[troutman]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/20...uly-hear-music

Neil Young wants you to truly hear the music you listen to. Over the years, the trend in audio has prioritized convenience over quality. Last week at , I had a conversation with Neil Young about an idea he has to change that trend. In this interview, he talks about , the new audio player he's been helping develop. Just before the interview, I spent time listening to Pono. It's impressive. Pono translates from Hawaiian to mean righteous, and the intent is to honor recorded music and get it into the hands of fans without compromising the sound.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...iscovers-music

$4,243,697

[troutman]

Neil Young's Pono Kickstarter Raises Over $6 Million

More than 18,000 people back musician's high-end audio player

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...llion-20140415

[opendoor]

I've also read that Apple is considering selling high resolution music files through iTunes. Apparently most of what they get from labels is already 24 bit and 96k or 192k so they already have a catalog ready to go.

Seems kind of silly to me though. If they really want to sell better quality they should just sell lossless. I've seen several double blind studies where audio engineers and self proclaimed audiophiles were unable to tell the difference between CD quality files and higher resolution. Over thousands of samples by hundreds of participants the higher resolution file was identified something like 49.5% of the time, so basically they were completely guessing. I've tried ABX tests myself before and the only time I could tell a difference it was likely due to having different masters of the same recording so what I was hearing was the minute difference in the mastering and not the resolution.

Still, I'm sure there will be a market for it. Audiophiles love to throw money at placebos and when you have people spending thousands of dollars on speaker cables and power cords, high resolution music is a no brainer. And they'll argue until they're blue in the fact that they can absolutely hear a difference even if science disagrees.

The best thing to come out of high resolution audio (at least it was true for SACDs and whatnot) was that the masters were usually better than normal CDs. There was more focus on actually getting a great dynamic sound rather than hugely compressing the range to make it as loud as possible. If this leads to more of that, then great. But I suspect it'll just be higher resolution versions of the same master that already is out there.

[Bobblehead]

Lossless is good and an easy step, other than the additional storage and transmission bandwidth requirements. But lossless is not new. Even a decade ago iRiver was making digital players that would play flac.

But that doesn't help if the original files have already been compressed in the mixing process. From what I read, while this is being promoted as a "new" player with a better format, it really isn't.

What I think they hope this will do is allow them to release music as close to it sounds to the mastering process as possible, before tracks are compressed in subsequent steps.

This may be is an attempt to roll back the clock. They see there are a decent number of people willing to splurge on vinyl (which has physical limitations on how compressed the music can be) and they want to tap in on that market by trying to convince those consumers that they can have both the fidelity of vinyl and the convenience of digital. The player, while it sounds like a good player with good components, is simply a vehicle to promote the Pono music store.

[troutman]

Over thousands of samples by hundreds of participants the higher resolution file was identified something like 49.5% of the time, so basically they were completely guessing.

Thank you for that - I have often wondered if lay people can hear a difference.

Personally, I never was convinced that vinyl sounded better than CDs. NPR had a blog about that and I posted it in another thread one time.

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/10/146697...than-cd-or-not

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by troutman

Over thousands of samples by hundreds of participants the higher resolution file was identified something like 49.5% of the time, so basically they were completely guessing.

Thank you for that - I have often wondered if lay people can hear a difference.

Even professionals haven't been able to demonstrably tell the difference. In one study I'm familiar with a good number of the participants were audio engineers and they were only very slightly better at determining which was the higher resolution recording and even then they were still well within the realm of simply guessing (I think they were correct 51 or 52% of the time).

Interestingly though, that same study did show that using the high resolution SACD and downsampling it to CD level tended to sound better than just using the normal CD of the same recording. The reason for this is that SACDs are generally mastered to achieve the best sound possible with a wide dynamic range whereas most modern recordings are mastered to sound as loud as possible and to sound decent on crappy playback gear.

So like I said above, if these higher resolution releases creates access to better masters then it could be a good thing, but it's not the resolution that's going to improve the sound. 192khz files are like having an amp that goes to 11.

Personally, I never was convinced that vinyl sounded better than CDs. NPR had a blog about that and I posted it in another thread one time.

They usually sound different, but whether it's "better" is really just a matter of opinion. The distortion that generally accompanies vinyl can sound great in some types of music, but it's not a big difference IMO and it's nowhere near important enough for me to forgo everything else that's better about digital music.

I think part of the issue is that a lot of these things like higher bitrates are useful and can have clearly tangible benefits in music production. But when it comes to simple playback of a mixed and mastered recording, most of that doesn't really matter at all.

[troutman]

Overpay For All Your Favorite Classic Rock Records At The Pono Store

http://www.stereogum.com/1727599/ove...no-store/news/

The Pono store is live, and whaddaya know, that #### is expensive! Ever since he rolled it out on Letterman, Neil Young’s high-quality digital audio player already seemed like a product designed strictly for boomers with money to blow. The Pono player’s $400 price tag seemed to confirm that, and now that the Pono store is live, there can be no doubt. If the featured selection didn’t tip you off to the target demo — along with three Young solo releases, the front page highlights new releases by the likes of Foo Fighters, Wilco, Jack White, and Tom Petty plus ancient releases from the Doors, Led Zeppelin, and CSN — the prices will do the trick. Young’s seminal After The Goldrush will run you $21.79. White’s recent Lazaretto costs $24.99. Feel free to pay $17.99 for the self-titled Doors album you can find in any used record bin in America. Reflektor is retailing for $18.29, and it doesn’t even score well on the audio quality rating meter thingy that accompanies each release, see?

Doesn't seem that bad when you consider what people pay for vinyl.

[Bill Bumface]

This thread made me nostalgic for OiNK.cd

[Hemi-Cuda]

Everytime this thread is bumped I read it as PornoMusic and am disappointed after opening it

[To Be Quite Honest]

If people think Neil's Pono phallus is expensive then they should look at Sony's new hi-rez audio walkman handset. It's only $1200...

The 1989 Cadillac Eldorado of Music Players!

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

Everytime this thread is bumped I read it as PornoMusic and am disappointed after opening it

What is your favorite kind?

Saxophones, 70's electric guitar, 80s synths?

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by troutman

What is your favorite kind?

Saxophones, 70's electric guitar, 80s synths?

If there isn't some bass slapping to go along with all the other slapping then it's just not worth it

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by troutman

Overpay For All Your Favorite Classic Rock Records At The Pono Store

http://www.stereogum.com/1727599/ove...no-store/news/

The Pono store is live, and whaddaya know, that #### is expensive! Ever since he rolled it out on Letterman, Neil Young’s high-quality digital audio player already seemed like a product designed strictly for boomers with money to blow. The Pono player’s $400 price tag seemed to confirm that, and now that the Pono store is live, there can be no doubt. If the featured selection didn’t tip you off to the target demo — along with three Young solo releases, the front page highlights new releases by the likes of Foo Fighters, Wilco, Jack White, and Tom Petty plus ancient releases from the Doors, Led Zeppelin, and CSN — the prices will do the trick. Young’s seminal After The Goldrush will run you $21.79. White’s recent Lazaretto costs $24.99. Feel free to pay $17.99 for the self-titled Doors album you can find in any used record bin in America. Reflektor is retailing for $18.29, and it doesn’t even score well on the audio quality rating meter thingy that accompanies each release, see?

Doesn't seem that bad when you consider what people pay for vinyl.

Don't waste your money on high resolution audio files. For 99% of people they'll be indistinguishable from CD audio, or even quality mp3s.

Monty from xiph.org, who created Ogg Vorbis, explains it very well.

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

Here's some tests you can use to prove it for yourself.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/91-aud...-take-2-a.html
http://www.audiocheck.net/soundtests_headphones.php

[troutman]

Don't Buy What Neil Young Is Selling

http://gizmodo.com/dont-buy-what-nei...ing-1678446860

The rationale behind high-resolution audio is that by maximizing the sampling rate and bit depth, you also maximize audible detail and dynamic range in the music you're listening to. This sounds great on paper, but in practice it's an absolute fantasy.

The CD-quality standard—which Young and HRA proponents say isn't sufficient—wasn't adopted randomly. It's not a number plucked out of thin air. It's based on sampling theory and the actual limits of human hearing. To the human ear, audio sampled above 44.1 kHz/16-bit is inaudibly different.

I'm not calling Norah Jones and Dave Grohl liars, but I'm saying that they're succumbing to confirmation bias, that natural impulse to hear or see what it is you want to hear or see. If Neil Young thrusts a gadget in your hands and says, "Listen dude, you are not going to believe this ####," you are probably going to hear exactly what Neil Young wants you to hear.

Of course, there's a scientific way to overcome confirmation bias, called double-blind testing, whereby you are presented two alternatives randomly in such a way that you have no idea which is which. There are some problems with double-blind testing, but it's generally accepted as best practices, especially when it comes to evaluating something as elusive as audio quality.

Though Young and Pono have failed to produce double-blind studies on the benefits of high-rate audio or their music player, inquiring minds have taken the time to do it. In a 2007 paper published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Brad Meyer and David Moran outline the results of a study in which they presented a large sample of "serious" listeners with a double blind test comparing 44.1 kHz audio from "the best high resolution discs we could find." The goal was not to show which was better, but simply to find out if people could even tell the difference.

"None of these variables have shown any correlation with the results, or any difference between the answers and coin-flip results," they write in their conclusion. Later they note, "Further claims that careful 16/44.1 encoding audibly degrades high-resolution signals must be supported by properly controlled double-blind tests."

[troutman]

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

Understanding is where theory and reality meet. A matter is settled only when the two agree.

Empirical evidence from listening tests backs up the assertion that 44.1kHz/16 bit provides highest-possible fidelity playback. There are numerous controlled tests confirming this, but I'll plug a recent paper, Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Audio Playback, done by local folks here at the Boston Audio Society.

Unfortunately, downloading the full paper requires an AES membership. However it's been discussed widely in articles and on forums, with the authors joining in. Here's a few links:

• The Emperor's New Sampling Rate
• Hydrogen Audio forum discussion thread
• Supplemental information page at the Boston Audio Society, including the equipment and sample lists

This paper presented listeners with a choice between high-rate DVD-A/SACD content, chosen by high-definition audio advocates to show off high-def's superiority, and that same content resampled on the spot down to 16-bit / 44.1kHz Compact Disc rate. The listeners were challenged to identify any difference whatsoever between the two using an ABX methodology. BAS conducted the test using high-end professional equipment in noise-isolated studio listening environments with both amateur and trained professional listeners.

In 554 trials, listeners chose correctly 49.8% of the time. In other words, they were guessing. Not one listener throughout the entire test was able to identify which was 16/44.1 and which was high rate [15], and the 16-bit signal wasn't even dithered!

Another recent study [16] investigated the possibility that ultrasonics were audible, as earlier studies had suggested. The test was constructed to maximize the possibility of detection by placing the intermodulation products where they'd be most audible. It found that the ultrasonic tones were not audible... but the intermodulation distortion products introduced by the loudspeakers could be.

This paper inspired a great deal of further research, much of it with mixed results. Some of the ambiguity is explained by finding that ultrasonics can induce more intermodulation distortion than expected in power amplifiers as well. For example, David Griesinger reproduced this experiment [17] and found that his loudspeaker setup did not introduce audible intermodulation distortion from ultrasonics, but his stereo amplifier did.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by troutman

Overpay For All Your Favorite Classic Rock Records At The Pono Store

http://www.stereogum.com/1727599/ove...no-store/news/

The Pono store is live, and whaddaya know, that #### is expensive! Ever since he rolled it out on Letterman, Neil Young’s high-quality digital audio player already seemed like a product designed strictly for boomers with money to blow. The Pono player’s $400 price tag seemed to confirm that, and now that the Pono store is live, there can be no doubt. If the featured selection didn’t tip you off to the target demo — along with three Young solo releases, the front page highlights new releases by the likes of Foo Fighters, Wilco, Jack White, and Tom Petty plus ancient releases from the Doors, Led Zeppelin, and CSN — the prices will do the trick. Young’s seminal After The Goldrush will run you $21.79. White’s recent Lazaretto costs $24.99. Feel free to pay $17.99 for the self-titled Doors album you can find in any used record bin in America. Reflektor is retailing for $18.29, and it doesn’t even score well on the audio quality rating meter thingy that accompanies each release, see?

Doesn't seem that bad when you consider what people pay for vinyl.

I remember paying $20-$25 for CDs back in the day before downloading became a thing.

Honestly though, I never understood the stereo wars. I can't tell the difference most of the time between the different qualities. It's like DVD and Blue Ray or LCD vs. plasma vs. LED. It all looks/sounds relatively close enough that I don't think about it. I swear it is mostly marketing and power of suggestion.

[Red Ice Player]

Pretty much all the music I listen to in my home is MP3 or MP4, using Itunes on a computer streamed to my stereo. I have compared these formats to higher density formats like FLAC, or with CDs, and have done my own blind comparisons. Every format pretty much sounds the same, now that I've filtered out the confirmation bias. The biggest determining factor over what sounds good is the engineering of the original recording. A poorly mastered album will sound like crap in any format. Where people should be investing their money to please their ears is in quality speakers and amps. I'm through changing formats or buying new vinyl.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Red Ice Player

Pretty much all the music I listen to in my home is MP3 or MP4, using Itunes on a computer streamed to my stereo. I have compared these formats to higher density formats like FLAC, or with CDs, and have done my own blind comparisons. Every format pretty much sounds the same, now that I've filtered out the confirmation bias. The biggest determining factor over what sounds good is the engineering of the original recording. A poorly mastered album will sound like crap in any format. Where people should be investing their money to please their ears is in quality speakers and amps. I'm through changing formats or buying new vinyl.

Yep. And you could even shorten that to really just investing in speakers (or headphones). Any decent amp is pretty much transparent as long as it's being used within its limits, and even a $30-40 2-channel Class D amp can provide phenomenal sound when paired with great speakers.

[Red Ice Player]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Yep. And you could even shorten that to really just investing in speakers (or headphones). Any decent amp is pretty much transparent as long as it's being used within its limits, and even a $30-40 2-channel Class D amp can provide phenomenal sound when paired with great speakers.

True enough. Speakers are by far the most important component. And I mean real speakers or headphones, not some wimpy soundbar.