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Pono is Finished

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shAf:
I read Neil's books, and I especially remember Neil reminiscing about listening to LPs in the "good ol' days" ... except he referenced listening to his portable record player in the Topanga Canyon cabin, or he referenced listening to his Pono while riding around in his Lincoln Continental convertible. I thought "Man'o',an, Neil... I love your music but not your opinion of audiophile hardware..."

...and then he delivers a store that offers nothing more than 24bit flacs than can be played with MC...not unique at all...

chericaplanellery:
When you say Pono is over, are you referring to the software and the store?
I purchased JRiver's software which essentially was the same and now I own the license forever and I believe that I will not have any issues with the software. The Pono player Hardware - the player works great. 

The Pono store, Neil said in his last post that he would not be reopening the store unless it was better than it was before. Also, he has lowered his prices recently on all his music he sells in FLAC from his website I hear. 

I just wanted to say that personally I am not at all disappointed in the fact that I purchased the player for 300.00 because to me, the customer, it has been a bit of a learning process, but I don't regret any of it. 

I don't even understand why someone would be angry about either the store not reopening (There are plenty of other stores to purchase Hi Rez from) or the software issues because JRiver can be bought for like 50.00 and it works great.

The whole point was to make people like me who are not audiophiles be aware of a way to make digital music sound better and for a reasonable price which 300.00 was very reasonable to me. I had basically stopped listening to music much except in my car and now I can't wait to listen to music everyday in balanced mode too.

I still don't know crap about files and formats but I know full well that mp3 sounds so bad compared to FLAC or the few Hi rez albums I purchased from the Pono store and HD tracks. I keep choosing the albums in the higher quality everytime.

I am not sure why but now all my CD's I ripped either transferred from Itunes or transferred from Pono Music World to JRiver are now M4a and I know there may be a way to convert it to FLAC but everytime something is converted, i believe it loses what the original had in the sound quality.  I don't know but still, it's not a problem for me. I just pick an album I have on a CD that I want to hear and in FLAC and I rerip it and delete the other album.

Whatever that Pono s-cks guy was mad about, i don't know, but I saw another guy who went online and was complaining and they helped him finally. He had an issue with the battery life of the player.  So I am just saying your comment that Pono is over, I believe is untrue because I enjoy mine everyday.  I agree with you in the Software aspect, JRiver has been developing software and tweaking it and with all those years and years of experience and programmers, it was assumed by someone that Pono could make their own software work (first of all) and then to say they would make it more user friendly was what they hoped to do but didn't promise anything. But, the point is for 50.00 more - Pono customers can purchase the JRiver software easily and buy from HD tracks or whoever else.  Right? 

any ideas or if you could please explain some in plain easy terms how the file formats work. I do not use Itunes and do not want MP3 quality at all. Pono plays all formats but I am just trying to understand it better. Like I said I have no problem reripping my CD's if there's any question that by converting it might lose data in the compression.

JimH:
The M4A files would be coming from iTunes.  It might be best not to use it.

You could learn more about file formats by searching on the Internet or reading Wikipedia. 

Make sure you use a lossless format like FLAC.  Apple's lossless equivalent is ALAC.

chericaplanellery:
Ok Thank You
I have been reading and googling about audio file formats but I need to play around and get experience with the different settings to truly understand it all.
I ripped about 200 CD's into ITunes before I knew that Itunes, I believe, dummies down the CD quality (unless I had my ITunes settings to compress files to m4a). Point is I wish I could recover those original ripped CD's IF they were saved somehow in the Apple lossless format. This was like 5 years ago. Was Apple using ALAC then or is that a new thing? I only go into Itunes for other reasons than music. I will have to look at the settings. Now JRiver is set as my main music software so if I insert a CD to rip, it doesn not go into ITunes. I have it set to ask me what to do - play, rip, etc. I wasn't sure if ALAC was truly the same as FLAC. thanks for that info. FLAC or ALAC is the least resolution I like to listen to. I mean it is fine. The best is the albums I bought in 24bit 192 kHz like Neil Young Harvest is and it also says 301.78 MB.  Then I have for ex a Linda Ronstadt album that's FLAC  16 bit 44.1 kHz 18.86MB.   So I get confused with all of that too. I know about MB's the more MB's the more space it takes up and therefore the less compression I believe.  I am looking and seeing that FLAC is usually 16Bit or maybe it always is?  but the kHz seems to be the way to get the best sound (as long as it's lossless) Then I believe the best is 192 kHZ  and then 96 kHz is great too! and like I said if it says FLAC it sounds good to me too - good enough at least.  But all the CD's from Itunes which at first I was so happily surprised that they automatically moved over to JRiver software (PMW) until I realised they were in MP3 quality ;/ or m4a  - I suppose they are almost interchangeable terms too? Point is, I didn't even know before I purchased the pono player if it could play music from wherever. I understand it fully now though that the Pono plays all formats. Ok so thanks again. and Yes Ponos--cks man or woman needs to be much more kinder! There are so many people who truly care about music on the Pono music pages on facebook and in this and on the Pono community so there is no reason to get all worked up. The player itself probably only came with a 1 year warranty anyhow? I don't know but mines worked for years and I purchased another one as a back up and for keeping as it's a Neil signed limited Edition Pono I got off E Bay - only slightly used.  Also, there was another person complaining and I said then sell it for 300.00 and get your money back if you don't like it because people are paying that easy on E Bay.   Thanks Again - I am not sure if you work with JRiver Jim? but I can imagine you have had a lot of people who know nada about computers looking for help so I don't know if or why Baronpeloton below was saying 'This is great news" but I can imagine why  and at this point. Hopefully Neil or someone will advise soon as to what they are doing.  New customers who but the player at Frye's or wherever, I believe, need to have like JRiver software or a few recommendations of audio software to buy with the player or else lots of people won't know what to do.
I admit when I first got it and sat down to plug it in... I literally stopped and was stuck until I realised I had to turn the Player on! LOL  but I think others have had the same issue so i don't feel bad. it lights up to show its charging but of course it has to be turned on and then it recognises the player and asks if you want to load any music. ;) thanks thanks   more ideas appreciated but I'll figure it out eventually and in the meantime I am good.

Awesome Donkey:
Apple's been using ALAC for a long time, easily a decade.

The problem is the m4a container, iTunes uses it both for the lossy AAC and the lossless ALAC.

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