News - Neil Young's Pono hi-fi music player smashes Kickstarter goal

[malfunction]

I take it you haven't taken part in many blind tests?

I was stunned to hear a £100 record deck blow away a £2500 CD player. Not exactly a blind test as it is pretty obvious when the record is playing, but the difference in clarity was astonishing. That was through separate Musical Fidelity pre and power amp, played through floorstanding speakers which were either Linn (so a record bias) or my Mission 763 which I bought for CD use. The purpose of the evening was to decide if you could hear the difference if you bought such an expensive CD player which we had on evaluation from the local HiFi shop. All the best components from everyone we knew in one room.

Now the fun part is that whilst that convinced a bunch of us that CD is flawed, none of us converted to vinyl as it is such a pain to use and store. I remember a lecturer at university going through the maths of why CD wasn't very good thanks to the low sample rate, but after that day I believed it.

OK, I'll admit I'm hardly a specialist but while I could just about buy into the idea that the record player somehow sounded 'nicer' I'd be amazed if it was clearer, unless the CD had the typical (dynamic range) compression post processing applied and the record didn't (or couldn't) have the same level of compression applied.

[wasabi]

I take it you haven't taken part in many blind tests?

One. Did it myself to compare compression by ripping some CDs to flac then converting to mp3, ogg, different compression levels, some lossless, VBR etc etc .

Played all back through my regular 80s midrange hifi.

I ended up slightly preferring regular compressed WMA. Which I shouldn't have 'in theory', but I did.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

One. Did it myself to compare compression by ripping some CDs to flac then converting to mp3, ogg, different compression levels, some lossless, VBR etc etc .

Played all back through my regular 80s midrange hifi.

I ended up slightly preferring regular compressed WMA. Which I shouldn't have 'in theory', but I did.

I tried blind tests with AAC and CD.

AAC tends to be better than MP3 as a compression system last time I checked.

What I did notice is that AAC sounded duller than the CD for certain types of music I listen to,especially the decent masters.

OTH,a lot of modern pop music is mastered for lower bitrates and computers,and as with anything it depends on what type of music you are listening to.

Mastering does make a HUGE impact though. One of the reasons why SACD was deemed better for some albums than CD,was down to the mastering alone AFAIK.

Edit!!

This is the other thing.

FLAC is an archival format and as time progresses lossless compression will get better and better. You can convert it with no loss then and have even smaller file sizes too.

Anyone who buys music is not going to have 1000s of albums unless they are some audiophile and for the average computer,the storage is not a problem. Games and video take up far more space and storage are cheap.

Even storage on phones is less and less of an issue,and even then a lower bitrate MP3/AAC is fine since people will be using smaller headphones with loads of ambient background noise. You are hardly going to do anything apart from casual listening on the bus.

Moreover,streaming wll start to eat into the need to have songs stored on your phone more and more. Only those using the train or plane a lot probably might need to have songs stored ATM.

[DanceswithUnix]

OK, I'll admit I'm hardly a specialist but while I could just about buy into the idea that the record player somehow sounded 'nicer' I'd be amazed if it was clearer, unless the CD had the typical (dynamic range) compression post processing applied and the record didn't (or couldn't) have the same level of compression applied.

What my old uni lecturer called "sample droop", you don't just hit a brick wall at the Nyquist point at 22KHz, the sampling process starts losing detail well before then. The natural frequency response droops as you get towards the sample filter point. You can try and boost it back to flat, but information is lost so you are kind of boosting noise. Note this is nothing to do with the playback process, so all the oversampling and single bit DAC stuff that loses the need for an aggressive recovery filter whilst definitely a help can't recover what is gone.

So yes, the record was clearer and more detailed. I only put the record on for a laugh, it was a only cheap deck I bought from Richer Sounds, but I had a well recorded album in both formats handy. We were all stunned at the results. My mate ran off to get some more vinyl with matching CD to see if it was a fluke, the few tracks we tried the CD notably lost, albeit not by much.

He bought the CD player anyway, because even back then who the hell listened to records?

All records are compressed, but I guess that is the point. The RIAA filter standard is a simple analogue system that was well understood with no complicated maths and no anti aliasing to take care of.

These days my ears probably only work up to 15KHz, so CD will be fine. Perhaps there are perks to old age

[malfunction]

I understand what you're saying in terms of higher frequencies (that they essentially approach a square wave rather than simply becoming a square wave at 22KHz), I'd just be amazed if the differences you heard were down to the technical capabilities of each medium rather than the production / mastering techniques applied to them at source, or the playback equipment (particularly as, if I'm reading it right, you played them back through different speakers).

Might have even been down to the fancy CD player - maybe it was trying to do too much with the source material - it must have been doing something 'extra' to justify the 2.5K price tag!

[Funkstar]

The fact that a CD is 16bit and 44.1KHz is pretty arbitrary. It's based on a convoluted method of getting mastered audio from the studio to a CD pressing plant using a specific kind of video tape already in use.

Philips wanted the format to be 14-bit and 44KHz, eventually the Sony/Philips working group agreed on the standard we have now. (all from here: Compact Disc Digital Audio)

There is some science in there, but i get the feeling that Red Book Audio CDs are pretty compromised because of the technology available at the time.

[DanceswithUnix]

I understand what you're saying in terms of higher frequencies (that they essentially approach a square wave rather than simply becoming a square wave at 22KHz), I'd just be amazed if the differences you heard were down to the technical capabilities of each medium rather than the production / mastering techniques applied to them at source, or the playback equipment (particularly as, if I'm reading it right, you played them back through different speakers).

Might have even been down to the fancy CD player - maybe it was trying to do too much with the source material - it must have been doing something 'extra' to justify the 2.5K price tag!

We had a handful of CD players given that was what we were really testing. The living room usually had my speakers on it, my friend plugged in his speakers given that they were going to be what the thing would be paired with. So basically it was a bit of a HiFi plugfest, we were not long out of Uni and sharing a house, so sort of thing you do at that age. My point with the speakers was that we tried both, the Linns you would expect to sound good on vinyl as that is what they specialised in. My Missions are much more flat though.

But still, the point is that making a record sound that good is a faff. Very careful handling, removing of mould release agent with chemicals, constant brushing to get bits out of the groove before and after playing. Stuff that, I don't care how good it sounds I would rather slap a CD in and I am done.

I do know what you mean that it could have been anywhere on the signal path, we played with most of it except cables because they don't matter There is also the whole thing that *where* in the spectrum distortion happens is more important than how much. Like valve amps that distort like hell but in a way the ear likes so some people pay through the nose for them. Mugs

The fact that a CD is 16bit and 44.1KHz is pretty arbitrary. It's based on a convoluted method of getting mastered audio from the studio to a CD pressing plant using a specific kind of video tape already in use.

The story from the time was that the guy in charge of Sony wanted a certain piece of classical music to fit on a single disc. Lasers available at the time would have set the pit size and hence the total capacity, 16 bit was really hard and expensive to do back then so was a good choice (my first CD player had a single 14 bit DAC which it switched from left to right channel creating funny phase effects at high frequency). Apparently 44.1KHz fell out from those constraints, but I'm sure Phillips and Sony would want a better sounding story than that though

[CompanionCube]

The question is will it be able to drive higher quality high impedance headphones (which would only make sense if listening to 192khz) , i doubt it.

[Funkstar]

The story from the time was that the guy in charge of Sony wanted a certain piece of classical music to fit on a single disc. Lasers available at the time would have set the pit size and hence the total capacity, 16 bit was really hard and expensive to do back then so was a good choice (my first CD player had a single 14 bit DAC which it switched from left to right channel creating funny phase effects at high frequency). Apparently 44.1KHz fell out from those constraints, but I'm sure Phillips and Sony would want a better sounding story than that though

I've heard this too, it was supposedly some classical piece. I do wonder if we would have had 48khz instead of 44.1khz, all the modern audio formats use this instead, or multiples of that. Unless there is another arcane reason for that decision.

[DanceswithUnix]

I've heard this too, it was supposedly some classical piece. I do wonder if we would have had 48khz instead of 44.1khz, all the modern audio formats use this instead, or multiples of that. Unless there is another arcane reason for that decision.

A quick google comes up with a 1951 recording of Beethoven's 9th which is 74 minutes, though it sounds like Sony wanted 44.1 to match one of their existing tape formats and the 74 mins was done by upping the diameter from 11.5 to 12cm. Either way, given that 48KHz was quite established too and the Phillips choice we could have had another 2KHz of audio if the politics had worked out differently. Mind you, we might have had 14 bit instead of 16 and that would have been far worse!

[Funkstar]

My point in bringing all this up is that some people seem to believe that the Red Book CD format is all that we need and the bit depth and frequency are as they are for fidelity reasons. Clearly this isn't the case and the CD is nowhere near an absolute for audio quality.

Some people can't hear the difference between on audio format and another, or one level of compression or another, and that is fine. That is not to say that higher quality or higher resolution audio is not something that should be strived for.