The videos reviews begin...

Pono review

a new entry in then ridiculous Pono comments sweepstakes.  From none other than Mikey Fremer

http://www.analogplanet.com/content/gizmod...sting-them-here

and oh, the fail  in the comments, it burns

What they don't tell ya these ABexers (and it is because they don't know) is that everyone will fail a blind test. It's a stacked deck. The only way to pass a blind test is to practice blind testing. Who the hell is going to do that? Blind teating has nothing to do with listening to audio... Zilch. It is like everything else the more you practice it the better you get. Hell you can even practice going to people houses sitting down and drinking their scotch and blind testing away.
Another thing that seems to evade the logic of blind testing. Everyone has biases, but what is never mentioned people can over-come these pyscholigical barriers. They think you sit in front of your same system for years and never get better at hearing it. They truly are ignorant at audio.

My conclusion is: If you get a STUPID result from a double blind, the double blind is STUPID.

But here's a quote from one Robert Ludwig, you may have heard of him... from the current issue of Tape Op magazine, and apologies if I'm infringing:

" I think the higher resolution sounds reveal themselves not in A/B testing, but in long periods of time. Play an entire album in a relaxed atmosphere at 96 kHz/24-bit, then, at the end, listen to it at 44.1 kHz/16-bit, and you'll get it right away. A/B testing, while the only scientific method we have, does not reveal too much with short-term back-and-forth comparisons due to the anxiety the brain is under doing such a test. The brain becomes very left-brain-technical, rather than right-brain creative and musical. "

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What they don't tell ya these ABexers (and it is because they don't know) is that everyone will fail a blind test. It's a stacked deck. The only way to pass a blind test is to practice blind testing. Who the hell is going to do that? Blind teating has nothing to do with listening to audio... Zilch. It is like everything else the more you practice it the better you get. Hell you can even practice going to people houses sitting down and drinking their scotch and blind testing away.
Another thing that seems to evade the logic of blind testing. Everyone has biases, but what is never mentioned people can over-come these pyscholigical barriers. They think you sit in front of your same system for years and never get better at hearing it. They truly are ignorant at audio.

So... To get better at distinguishing minor differences in blind testing, you have to practice listening for those differences and develop 'an ear' for the kinds of differences that can pop up? Isn't that exactly the same thing as when they claim to be "trained listeners"?

The mind boggles!

So he claims he spotted the differenc on 3 out of 4 tracks, but doesn't identify the tracks or show any concrete data from an ABX test.  All he does is name drop some digital engineer.

Then he goes on to talk about Phillips and how he has FACTS about the compromises made that make CDs inferior to hi-res music, but he doesn't back his "facts" up with any kind of references.  He does not provide the names of any Phillips engineers he spoke with, nor does he provide quotes from any publications or even his own emails.

As for the reason why music is background noise is because most of today's music sucks.  The lyrics are shallow.  The musical arrangements are simple.  It's very easy to put it in the background, because it doesn't make you think.  How many people today even bother to read the lyrics that come with their music?  Most of them hum the refrain and ignore the rest.

And all his drivel about some yet to be publshed Japanese study...  Does he even understand any human anatomy?  If your ears can't hear it, it's not getting to your brain.  End of story.

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My conclusion is: If you get a STUPID result from a double blind, the double blind is STUPID.

There is another possibility, Michael.

Quote from: apastuszak on 2015-01-27 05:05:04

So he claims he spotted the differenc on 3 out of 4 tracks, but doesn't identify the tracks or show any concrete data from an ABX test.  All he does is name drop some digital engineer.

If memory serves there was a set of Mark Waldrep tracks that had easily avoidable audible imperfections that were not inherent in the test itself.  Lots of people heard the difference in ABX tests and some of them even figured out what the exact technical error was.  The details are on AVS.

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Then he goes on to talk about Phillips and how he has FACTS about the compromises made that make CDs inferior to hi-res music, but he doesn't back his "facts" up with any kind of references.  He does not provide the names of any Phillips engineers he spoke with, nor does he provide quotes from any publications or even his own emails.

Both the Audio CD and ABX were developed by very different groups of people in about the same time frame, so they were developed independently. That means that the standards for the CD were developed in the world of sighted evaluations and vague, inherently flawed and piecemeal information about audibility.  Zwicker and Fastle's book about perceptual models was not out, and the work that went into it was not well-known.  I think that Fremer's comments on the state of mind of the Philips engeineers are probably representative of the facts, but that does not mean that their state of mind was infallible or the be-all or end-all related to the topic.

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As for the reason why music is background noise is because most of today's music sucks.  The lyrics are shallow.  The musical arrangements are simple.  It's very easy to put it in the background, because it doesn't make you think.  How many people today even bother to read the lyrics that come with their music?  Most of them hum the refrain and ignore the rest.

Fremer is an older dude with attitudes about modern music that are pretty stereotypical for older dudes.

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And all his drivel about some yet to be publshed Japanese study...  Does he even understand any human anatomy?  If your ears can't hear it, it's not getting to your brain.  End of story.

There's this giant world of relevant and correct knowledge about human perception that Fremer is obviously either in denial about or living in total ignorance of.  Many valid points made above in criticism of his fecent and past writings are good evidence of that. On top of that, Fremer has apparently made what he thinks is a pretty good business based on that denial and ignorance, so he's unlikely to change at this late date. He's not going to change any more than than his cohorts Atkinson or Harley. 

Next!

I'm waiting for the dog ear transplant for "audiophiles," so they can all walk around with their arrogant attitude saying "If you could only hear what I hear.  Then you'd know true quality music!"

So if the sampling rate doesn't determine the "resolution", just what exactly does it do? Before explaining, let me point out that there is no such specification as "resolution" in audio engineering.  This is another audiophile myth.  Therefore the sampling rate does not define resolution, it defines the highest audio frequency that the system can capture, store, and reproduce.

It's not the content that amazed me, but that I read it on an audio manufacturer's site. Not the usual places that I expect to find audio myth busting...

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So if the sampling rate doesn't determine the "resolution", just what exactly does it do? Before explaining, let me point out that there is no such specification as "resolution" in audio engineering.  This is another audiophile myth.  Therefore the sampling rate does not define resolution, it defines the highest audio frequency that the system can capture, store, and reproduce.

Hats off to Mr Sanders of Sanders Sound Systems.

Neil needs to read the whole paper which is yet another easily-readable summary of the facts and myths of digital audio.

I'm waiting for the dog ear transplant for "audiophiles," so they can all walk around with their arrogant attitude saying "If you could only hear what I hear.  Then you'd know true quality music!"

The point I wish to make is [...] wouldn't you also appreciate a finely crafted piece of audio gear and appreciate it even if just for how it looked and felt—even if you didn't believe it might provide a sonic improvement?

I'm not sure, but my understanding was that dogs (and other animals) had hearing "resolution" similar to humans but just weighted differently (in terms of frequency, directionality, etc.).

http://www.analogplanet.com/content/gizmod...sting-them-here

Since much of the nuance and detail of the the artist's creation is lost and never heard in a compressed format, this resulted in an apathy up the music creation and delivery chain, all the way back to the recoding studios. ...{snip}..... Music was further damaged due to the unnatural manipulation of its dynamic range to compensate for lack of audio quality. It was recognized long ago that people perceive loudness as quality and to make up for the poor audio quality due to lossy compression, the entire dynamic range of music tracks were made loud and this was the beginning of the "loudness wars".

Quote from: drewfx on 2015-01-27 16:46:28

I'm not sure, but my understanding was that dogs (and other animals) had hearing "resolution" similar to humans but just weighted differently (in terms of frequency, directionality, etc.).

Do you think that would stop audiophiles from claiming that they have a superior listening experience because they had dog ears.

Of course, you need new dog amps, and dog DACs, and of course $1000 dog Headphone and speakers to truly appreciate your new ears.

Someone with Photoshop skills needs to mock up a Stereophile cover for us!  :-)

I have [a Pono], and its technology sucks balls.

It's got a great DAC - an ESS SABRE 9016 - that powers many modern A/V receivers. Point there.

The problem is the amplifiers suck.

Ayre amps supposedly have no feedback, and that makes it "good". I suppose it is given they sell amps for $20,000 that are handmade in Colorado. However, just because you can hand make something doesn't translate into a mass-manufactured product. First off, the amp in the Pono is fully discrete (transistors, no op-amps). This is fine, if you manage to match all the transistors in each stage properly. Also fine in a $20,000 handmade product where you can go through and characterize every transistor and find matching pairs so they behave identically. But in a mass manufactured product, they probably are grabbing transistors off a reel, which means instant mismatches since they're within their specs, but will deviate due to manufacturing issues.

So a discrete amp already is at a disadvantage because without taking time to characterize every part, you're going to get an amp that behaves differently between channels and between units.

Yes, integrated units are better - best are dual units because matching within a die is far better (under 1% difference) that matching between dice (over 10-20%). IC designers know this, and they know that manufacturing can trim the differences down to practically nil within a die (in IC manufacturing, everything is based on ratios - you cannot say you want a 1K resistor because you'll get 1K +/- 30% tolerance. But you can design two transistors that will be well within 1% of each other, even if you need a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio or more - so designers work on ratios rather than absolute values). It's why you have dual DAC and dual op-amp or even more (6 channel DACs are common too) in a single package - the matching between the parts will be remarkably close, brought in closer because they can be laser trimmed during fab.

The next problem is lack of feedback causing a REALLY HIGH output impedance - about 5 ohms. If you don't know, this causes EQ because headphones with 8 ohm impedance can really vary between 1-12+ ohms over the audio range. This causes EQ (equalization) which means the amplifier actually produces different gains at different frequencies, a la a graphic equalizer. You can use an EQ to reverse this trend (that's what they're actually for - to equalize the response), but that's a bunch of processing. I've seen comments that say you should go for 8 times the output impedance at a minimum - so 40 ohm headphones or higher to minimize the EQ (at 8 times, the variance is around 0.5db).

Again, Ayre amps may do this because you're going to pair it up with good speakers that already will have higher impedances so you won't notice. But Joe Average will be using jellybean 8/16/32 ohm headphones (most common impedances).

The problem with Pono is that it hits EVERY audiophile rumor out there. Discrete good, op-amp bad (true back in the 70s with early opamps, but since the 80s we've had great audio op-amps that have excellent transfer characteristics). Feedback is bad (because feeding back a "time delayed" signal just ruins the audio purity - never mind that we're talking nanoseconds here) - even though using it lets you have lower output impedances. And that high output impedance means EQ up the hell.

And let's not say about the claim from Ayre themselves saying it's 80-90% as good as their $20,000 amp. That's just wrong on so many levels - are you saying that the amp is overpriced? Or to go the extra mile costs an extra $19,600?

Hell, I'm surprised they stuck with 3.5mm jacks given all the design work - 3.5mm jacks while convenient, do have limitations w.r.t. cross talk and other parameters.

And the hardware's kinda crappy - underpowered SoC running Android AOSP 2.2. yes, 2.2. it's sluggish all around.

I've actually never wanted to back out of a kickstarter as much as I have with Pono.

Pedram Abrari, EVP of Technology, Pono  explains the cause of the 'loudness' wars.

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Since much of the nuance and detail of the the artist's creation is lost and never heard in a compressed format, this resulted in an apathy up the music creation and delivery chain, all the way back to the recoding studios. ...{snip}..... Music was further damaged due to the unnatural manipulation of its dynamic range to compensate for lack of audio quality. It was recognized long ago that people perceive loudness as quality and to make up for the poor audio quality due to lossy compression, the entire dynamic range of music tracks were made loud and this was the beginning of the "loudness wars".