Pono Player - Is This the Future of Mobile Music?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,187 words · ~10 min read
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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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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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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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you