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[JimH]

Now that you've had a chance to get to know it, how do you feel about the device, the sound quality, and the overall experience.  I'd like to hear from anyone who wants to share the good or the bad. 

For those who don't know JRiver, we built the Pono Music World software.  The rest was done by others.

Thanks,

Jim Hillegass
CEO, JRiver

[jmone]

I too am interested in what Pono users thing, as the bashing is well underway!  Review by David Pouge

[shieber]

The sound quality is great -- better than you can find in other devices anywhere near its price.  The articulation is superb, crustal clear an clean without sibilance or harshness. Played through my Stax driver and earspeakers, it's as good as I've heard. Playing through a nice pair of balanced armature IEMs, the performance is still breathtaking. Even with a pair of cheapo earphones, the earphones sound much better than they deserve to. I haven't had the chance yet but I suspect listening through a set of Audeze of Hifiman planar magnetics would be about as good as the electrostatic Staxs. If your source material and speakers can handle the definition, the PP can provide it.

The pp still has some UI quirks and a couple of bugs (the sml issue has not been fully resolved), and the pmw software can be, shall we say, counterintuitive -- but at least PMW is very robust.

[Markbot]

Jim,

So far I have been very happy with my Pono especially now that they have added DSD support. About 90% of my use is playing the Pono in my car to/from work. My Camaro has an analog line in jack which I connect the Pono line output to with a Monster cable. I was very much in the market for upgrading the pretty decent sound system my convertible came with. The Pono sound quality is so much better than my iPod and Sirius-XM that I'm pushing back the need to upgrade my car's sound system. I am frankly shocked by this outcome, but very pleased by it. That's the good side.

On the downside trying to navigate the Pono menu while driving is impossible and probably more dangerous than trying to text. Luckily I'm an album rock guy so I usually listen to the same album all the way to work. I sure do miss the click wheel.

The PMW software seems decent, but at least for me there is a steep learning cure coming from WinAMP which I used with my 160 GB iPod Classic. Once I master the software I think things will be better. Right now I'm using it only to handle my HiRez FLAC and DSF files destined for the Pono. I'm not using it to catalog my entire digital music collection which is spread across multiple (~20) external hard drives totaling maybe 50TB.

One feature which is missing is the ability to use the Pono with a USB output to another DAC like the Micro iDSD DAC. Maybe the Pono2 will be capable of such. I've heard great things about using the iDSD as headphone amp and USB power source.

The Pono is very slow to boot up. I have to remember 5 or so minutes before leaving for work to boot it up so I can get in the car hit play and take off for work. Why does it have to scan for music every boot?

The Pono is very slow for file transfers whether using PMW or just Windows Explorer. I asked and was told that it is a USB2 device, but it sure seems much slower than that. Maybe the Pono2 will support USB3.

I'm not a big fan of Micro SD cards either. They are too small and too expensive. You can purchase 128GB SDXC cards for $30 on sale and I have a nice wallet to store them in and cart them around. This makes swapping cards much more convenient without fear of loss.

So in Summary I think the Pono sounds better than I expected though HiRez file quality can very greatly. My primary goal is to rip my vinyl collection to DSD and play those files on the Pono so I'm in charge of quality control. There is room for improvement on the hardware and software side, but there always will be. I look forward to spending much more quality time with my Pono and PMW software.

Mark

[Eric05]

Do I love my Pono?

Well, what I love :
1/ sound quality : with my Nad HP50 Headphones it sounds great
2/ the ability to connect 2 headphones
3/ the physical control buttons

What I don't love :
1/ the screen : the view angle is very narrow
2/ the sd card trapdoor is cheap, bilding quality in not top notch...
3/ behavior with flac album single file : my Neil Young "Freedom" album is one single flac file : when I transfered it from PMW software to pono player, the file (wich is the whole album) was transfered 12 times as long that there is 12 titles on this album. I have to manually delete the 11 flac files. And Pono Player recognises the file as one title (that last 1 hour) !
4/ the "eject" process from your software : when files transfer to my pono player is over I have to push a first "eject" button, then I have to find the hidden menu "Detail" then cross the whole screen to push a second "eject" button. Come on, why isn't my Pono ejected when I push the first eject button
5/ you PNM software is basically JR Media Center  with a dedicated skin : while I love JRiver on my PC, I'd like to have a more simple and ergonomic way to manage my pono library
6/ what I really don't love is the price of the HD files on Pono Music Store. This is "foutage de gueule" in french... Hopefully, I buy my HD music on Qobuz, less expensive
7/ oh, and no french power plug with my pono, they send me a usa one


Well, at the end of the day I have to say that I'm quite disappointed, if the sound quality is here, there is too many things I don't love to be fully happy. Some reviews I've found in english and in french are quite right.

[Eric05]

Oh and as said in previous post, file transfer is sooooooooooooooo long ! I can't believe it's just because of usb 2, my phone is usb 2 either and it's not that long !

[roqpyl]

Sound is great! I'll put it on shuffle through my fairly serious sound system and find myself listening all day like I used to in the vinyl days. Definitely different and better somehow. Maybe science says hi-res is bogus after a certain level but my experience says otherwise. Can one quantify how we hear when part of the equation is "feel"?
Speaking of feel, in the car I can skip, pause and replay without looking which is really, really cool. Having raised buttons works better than doing the same on an iPod. The Pono touch screen works fine for me (when it doesn't freeze).
The file transferring, PMW, spontaneous ejecting of the player when connected to the iMac have all driven me crazy since November. Horrible experience. No satisfaction from Pono on why the player ejects if I simply bump the table. I no longer sync but that means no new playlists. Not so good.
So, Ponoplayer, great; JRiver, overly complex (to me) and buggy.

[MyKart]

No. The music files sound great. If you can't hear the difference, you aren't comparing apples to apples or you have a tin-ear. However, the player, itself, sucks. Buggy interface, buggy PonoMusic App. Not worth $400 until improvements emerge.

[JohnT]

4/ the "eject" process from your software : when files transfer to my pono player is over I have to push a first "eject" button, then I have to find the hidden menu "Detail" then cross the whole screen to push a second "eject" button. Come on, why isn't my Pono ejected when I push the first eject button

Try the new build posted today (20.0.75).  One click of the 'Eject' button in PMW will eject both storage devices.

[Eric05]

JohnT, I've tried, it's fine. nice to see you're so responsive ! Thank you.

[shieber]

For the quality of the sound, alone it's worth $400 and more, even if you have to labor with the still quirky interface and a somewhat finiky version of Jrivers for data manager and store interface.


Just look how long it took apple to get iTunes/ipod halfway decent.

No. The music files sound great. If you can't hear the difference, you aren't comparing apples to apples or you have a tin-ear. However, the player, itself, sucks. Buggy interface, buggy PonoMusic App. Not worth $400 until improvements emerge.

[Skaterstu]

Here are my two cents...

The Pono sound is great, no question about that.  However, the overall experience so far is one of immense disappointment.

1)  I didn't get my signed certificate from Neil Young...  I got my friend in USA to order for me in Nov and he told me that nothing came through in terms of a signed certificate.  I hear that many people also had this problem.

2)  Pono Music Store is awful, and at best cumbersome, at times unusable.  It's only for USA, and is slow, unresponsive.  Whoever designed it should be fired as it's an incredibly poor interface.

3)  Pono software on the device itself is poor..  there are times that I don't touch the screen and it starts selecting albums itself..  occasionally songs skip around and it can be annoying.

So far I love the sound, but the Pono experience is not up to scratch, in fact its far from acceptable.  Bottom line...  don't release a product that is so faulty that its gonna alienate the customers, especially those outside the USA.  To me this seems incredibly counter productive, and incredibly naive.