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this my friends is the pano player it's a 400 portable audio player conceived by

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canadian music legend neil young's company pono a word that means righteous

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that raised over 6 million on kickstarter in early 2014. and while

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normally i would refer to a device like this as an mp3 player and it certainly

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does playback mp3s that term feels inapplicable here because mr young

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sought to create something much greater than that no what mr young envisioned

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was an entire ecosystem where artists

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record labels and music lovers can cooperate to bring music listening

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enjoyment to a new level by making high-resolution audio tracks both easily

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available and enjoyable does it deliver

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that or is it the worst kind of snake oil nonsense that i've seen in quite

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some time i guess we'll find out won't we

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cooler master's case mod world series is your opportunity to show off your

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modding skills and win great prizes entries close february 7th 2015. click

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now to learn more let's begin with a physical overview of the unit it's a

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triangular prism for some reason i guess pono predicted what would happen with

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the whole bendgate iphone 6 plus thing and chose what is not only the most bend

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resistant possible shape but also one that would be extraordinarily

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uncomfortable to sit on if you were to store the player in your back pocket at

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the top of the unit are two three and a half millimeter jacks that can be used

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in four different modes this one is for standard headphones and has variable

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volume control while this one simply outputs at a constant volume and is

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intended for use in the car or anywhere else where an external app would take

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care of volume adjustments if you want to use both jacks then there are two

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modes for you one is pono share which lets two people listen to the same thing

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at the same time and the second is balanced output where each connector is

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dedicated to left and right audio something you'll need pretty specialized

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equipment or some modding to take advantage of on the bottom is a micro

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usb port for charging and thankfully

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simple drag and drop music file transfer and a flap to cover the micro sd

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expansion slot pano's site says max 64 gigs to go with the 64 gigs of internal

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memory for a total of 128 but online i found lots of references to a

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compatibility with 128 gig micro sd cards so i suspect their site is a

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little behind in the recent advancements in microsd capacity which brings us

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around to the front there are three buttons on the panel player volume up

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volume down and the middle circle button which handles play and pause and then

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hold for power and panel earned some kudos from me for these buttons having

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both distinctive shapes that are easy to feel for when you can't see them and a

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satisfying tactile feel then promptly lost all of that kudos and then some the

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instant that i looked at the two and a half inch touchscreen on the front holy

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crap this thing is bad i don't remember the last time i saw such an atrocious

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display with abominable viewing angles like this on a device that cost more

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than a hundred bucks typano's credit the navigation of their

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apparently Android-based operating system is fairly simple and intuitive

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mostly swipe sideways to sort music in a variety of different ways or access

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system settings scroll up and down to go through lists touch to play and swipe

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from the bottom for track controls and cover art but there are some pretty

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yeah we're new at this uh type quirks too the display auto rotate can be

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glitchy as heck the device lacks a wake

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sleep button for the display so you just have to wait for it to time out then

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interact with the buttons so change the volume or pause your music to wake it

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there's no typing based search for your music library i guess thanks to the tiny

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screen so if you have a lot of music you can either slow scroll manually or quick

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scroll by letter down the right hand edge but that option only pops up if you

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start slow scrolling first something that i thought we'd taken care of a

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number of years ago none of that stuff really bothered me though when i was

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just using the device and if the panel player was cheap i likely wouldn't even

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mention it but the panel isn't cheap which raises a lot of questions for me

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what did they spend all that money on the screen sucks there's no wireless

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connectivity of any kind so forget streaming your spotify music through its

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amp or anything like that and the battery life is truly abominable with

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its 2950 milliamp hour battery delivering a mere eight hours of

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playback i had discmans 15 years ago that could do better than that now hold

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on a minute Linus this isn't some swiss army knife device i don't give a rat's

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patoo to fit bluetooths or red tooths or toothpicks how does it sound will it

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cause my soul to rediscover music will it transport me to a sublime musical

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experience no of course not don't be silly i decided on my sennheiser hd 600s

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for most of my listening tests but spent some time with my ie80s as well since it

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is a portable player and i threw everything i had at this thing some high

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bit rate mozart flax obviously converted to apple's lossless codec for the iphone

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that i purchased back when i did my geek out review some top 40 crap both flax

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and mp3s some rips from a couple of bare naked ladies i had lying around and

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anyway output volume was leveled across my test devices and iphone 6 and the

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pano player for apples to apples mobile devices with an o2 and odac used

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periodically as a sanity check i used my extect sound level meter and a one

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kilohertz test tone at 80 decibels to level everything off and in spite of

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pono's claims that their player will make everything from the high definition

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tracks on their web store to the crappiest mp3s sound better no matter

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how long i sat in a dark room with my eyes closed listening to the same

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segments of song over and over again no matter what track from what genre i

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listened to i just couldn't hear a compelling argument for

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why the panel player has any right to exist especially at this price point

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other than as a transparent attempt to build non-tech savvy people for money

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with empty promises of an experience that it simply can't deliver

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but lioness there are so many testimonials from everyone from

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audiophiles to regular people to neil young himself who are saying the panel

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player is an experience unlike anything else and yeah i guess so but while mr

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young talks a good talk about making high quality audio tracks available to

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the masses something i actually very strongly agree with what he ignores is

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that the bit rate has very little to do with the quality of attract past a

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certain point while mastering technique has everything to do with it and i don't

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know whether it's ignorance or willful deception but i can't take anything the

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guy says seriously about this when he gets on camera and talks about the

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superior dynamic range of analog media versus cds when even laymen like me know

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that's categorically incorrect has so much dynamic range then when it

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hits you it hits you with a full envelope of dynamics and i really hope

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it was some misinformed peon at pano that got quoted by engadget as saying

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that the engineering being done by ire allowed the panel player to have no

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amplifier per se what does that even mean it runs on

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pixie dust sheesh player aside though and mr young

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has made it abundantly clear that they don't really even want to make players

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forever presumably because letting someone else make the pono certified hd

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audio players then selling music to those customers online is much more

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lucrative pano can still do some good in

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the world if it raises awareness about the importance of high quality audio

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files and makes them more accessible to more people but my cynicism hat here is

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whispering in my ear that what's that gryffindor no wrong hat here

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thank you is whispering in my ear that from pano's actions they don't appear to

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care about any of that because if they did there wouldn't be a snake oil

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indicator on the player to tell you you're getting the best possible experience solely because you obtained

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the song from their store when in truth there are plenty of other places online

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to buy equally high-res audio that won't light up that indicator if they cared

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they would be educating about the importance of quality mastering versus

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loudness mastering rather than trying to convince people they need 24-bit 192

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kilohertz files to hear everything when

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it's been empirically proven that they

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actually sound worse and their store might let me buy don't know much by

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linda ronstadt by itself instead of forcing me to spend 125

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on her entire 80s studio album collection in order to get the highest

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quality version so move along everyone

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while your experience may vary if you're one of the few people with extremely

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difficult to drive electrostatic headphones or other exotic solutions as

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far as the other 99.99 of people are concerned the only reason

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the panel player can apparently deliver 80 to 90 percent of the performance of a

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27 000 amplifier according to the designer of both is not because it is

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made of magic but because there was nothing special about that amp either

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it's all in the way the information is being spun to you

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speaking of spin i don't really need to put any spin on today's episode's

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sponsor ting because their business model really speaks for itself ting only

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charges their users for the amount of service that they actually use that

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means whether you're a power user or you only have a smartphone out of necessity

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and you'd be happier with a cinco phone than that you'll be paying a fair amount

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for the service that you use no locked in 200 minutes of talk however many megs

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of data just what you actually need and use every month they operate on the

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sprint network so anywhere with good sprint service will have good ting service and starting in february so in

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about a week here they'll be running on a gsm network meaning that you'll be

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able to use about 80 of the smartphones available in the market today including

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the iphone 6 and 6 plus one big thing with ting is that they will actually

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tell you how much you would pay on ting before you sign up exactly just head

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over to Linus.ting.com and use their savings calculator to enter your last

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few bills and they'll spit out how much you would have paid by switching to ting

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so give it a try they'll even give you 25 bucks off a new device or 25 in

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service credit pretty awesome offer from a pretty awesome mobile provider thanks

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ting for sponsoring this episode thanks you for watching it like this video if you liked it just like it if you thought

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it sucked leave a comment if you have something else to say i'm sure it's going to be a flame war down there

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though so uh unless you got your flame retardant suit on might just want to

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stay out of the comments on this one speaking of flame retardant suits Linus

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tech tip shirts are fully flame retardant so you're going to want to buy those over on the link in the video

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description they're not flame retardant please don't let yourself on fire with a Linus tech tip shirt we assume no

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reliability for etcetera etcetera etcetera also linked in the video description you can give us a monthly

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contribution or you can change your amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so every time you buy a

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pono player i'll make 32 dollars i'm still not gonna recommend that you buy

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it because i don't need your three to two dollars that badly but apparently mr young does thanks for watching and as

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always don't forget to subscribe

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you