Neil Young's PonoMusic Hits $2M On Kickstarter

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For some reason I read that as "Neil Young's Porno Music" and now I can't get wow-chicka-wow-wow out of my head.

Well, that didn't take long. Less than 24 hours after legendary rocker Neil Young launched a Kickstarter page for his long-talked-about Pono music service, the campaign surpassed its goal of $800,000. As of this writing, the PonoMusic Kickstarter campaign has more than $2 million in pledges from more than 6,200 backers.
 
Haven't even heard of it. I'm sure it'd have a limited user base as average users can do with MP3 and be perfectly content. The audiophiles will jump on this, though. I'd be seriously looking into it later this year after I do some audio upgrades.

Neil Young is pretty awesome, too.
 
Did Neil Young really have to raise $2 million for this project? He must be broke...
 
If he wasn't willing to cough up what amounts to pocket change for him, he must not be very confident in the business model.
 
Did Neil Young really have to raise $2 million for this project? He must be broke...

I think you fail to understand that MANY kick starters have nothing to do with needing funding. They just figure if you can get more money why not? Tons of kick starters fail but the team keeps working which means they must have other money, Others have money to start and even admit it but still ask for more. Tons of companies now see kickstarter as just an extra source of revenue for projects that are already completely funded and committed too.
 
Over the three years of PonoPlayer development, we considered many different designs and concepts.

iriver-t60.jpg


It took them three years to rip off an iRiver? Why is the audiophile hobby littered with so much bullshit?
 
Dumbest name for a product ever. Every time I see it I read PornoMusic
 
be curious more on the info, like what DAC and so on that will make this player SO much better than any other player with FLAC/AAC support?

08cb0e1eb6447a2e3aad5617028f5805_large.jpg
 
Specifications weren't released because the player is probably pure shit. The biggest red flag is how they're pushing HD music.

I will laugh when this ships with iPod-quality earphones.
 
be curious more on the info, like what DAC and so on that will make this player SO much better than any other player with FLAC/AAC support?

08cb0e1eb6447a2e3aad5617028f5805_large.jpg

I don't this will be any better, the biggest thing it's pushing is "high level audio" quality and many file type support. The music store idea has already been pushed and is in extreme competition these days with most supporting movies now.

There's not much to this device other than the name of a big musician pushing it, which seems to help, look at all those sub quality headphones doing well?
 
For some reason I read that as "Neil Young's Porno Music" and now I can't get wow-chicka-wow-wow out of my head.
i thought it said pornomusic lol....
Dumbest name for a product ever. Every time I see it I read PornoMusic

I believe he chose PonoMusic intentionally to gather more kickstarter funds in the hope that most people will simply misread it. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that would happily donate money to get better music in porno's. Current music in pornos needs to be shorter and more engaging. Most people completely lose interest within a couple minutes.
 
** any idea why i can't edit my posts???
No one is allowed to edit posts in the Front page news section. I was told the rule was changed a couple years ago to make people have some more accountability in what they choose to post in a front page news section viewable by anyone member or non-member alike. Not sure if that last part is true or simply rumor, I know for fact that no one short of a moderator can edit posts in the Front Page News section.
 
iriver-t60.jpg


It took them three years to rip off an iRiver? Why is the audiophile hobby littered with so much bullshit?
because it's really easy to make money off snobs

you should get in on it

i'm gonna get working on a cable replacement for this device
 
iriver-t60.jpg


It took them three years to rip off an iRiver? Why is the audiophile hobby littered with so much bullshit?

3 years is about right it took apple about that long to do the same to Archos, on both the iPod and the iPad.
 
A fool and his money are soon parted. I suspect this turns into another Ouya real quick.

Oh we want it, we want it... (Then it comes out) Oh, this sucks, let's sell it on eBay.

I'm just going to keep on listening to my MP3s on my phone.
 
i would say if they weren't doing the laser inscriptions for bands they may not have so many.. as i am sure people are planning to sell for profit..
 
A fool and his money are soon parted. I suspect this turns into another Ouya real quick.

Oh we want it, we want it... (Then it comes out) Oh, this sucks, let's sell it on eBay.

I'm just going to keep on listening to my MP3s on my phone.

Yep. All the celebs in the video are bought and paid for fodder. Its an ugly player in a world where most human beings can not tell the difference between a 320k bit rate MP3 and a 96/24hz FLAC. Tell me how this $400 player at retail is somehow going to be worth while?

Oh right , it isn't. This player is probably blowing up at the Head-fi forums with all kinds of advertisers drooling at the prospect of selling more snake oil to the thousands of idiots that believe if they spend $200 on a sealed USB cable with a "special" nitrogen injected interior that their music will suddenly come out as if its being played like mana from heaven. Those same fools that buy anything marketed to them virtually and claim that everything is an enhancement.

Good to see Neil Young has a sharp business sense in his old age.
 
The music player is getting to much attention. It is nothing special, as there is already other audiophile grade music players on the market for about the same price.

What Pono Music is also proposing is a audiophile / pro grade music store. That is new and interesting. Guaranteed high quality music for sale.

I'm no audiophile. But I sure as hell can tell the difference between a 320kbs mp3 and a CD. On the other hand I have playing around with Opus codec and that does blur the tones for me.
 
I could see a lot of people getting suckered into this that don't even have high enough quality headphones or car speakers etc to make use of the higher quality.
 
The music player is getting to much attention. It is nothing special, as there is already other audiophile grade music players on the market for about the same price.

What Pono Music is also proposing is a audiophile / pro grade music store. That is new and interesting. Guaranteed high quality music for sale.

I'm no audiophile. But I sure as hell can tell the difference between a 320kbs mp3 and a CD. On the other hand I have playing around with Opus codec and that does blur the tones for me.

With some of the earlier encoders it was possible because they were so terrible, but generally it's incredibly difficult except for sometimes you can detect a small amount of "tin-ey" sound in the highs.

You can't however detect the difference between uncompressed 44.1Khz 16-bit audio and 192Khz 24-bit audio reliably. Many double blind ABX tests confirm it.

You guys should read the huge thread over at Ars Technica on this thing, the crazed audiophools are out in full force, it's pretty hilarious.
 
I probably should have said lossless instead of uncompressed in the second line of my post... but for the point it's roughly the same thing.
 
I probably should have said lossless instead of uncompressed in the second line of my post... but for the point it's roughly the same thing.

No worries I understood it.

CD audio is my maximum. I don't expect to perceive anything higher. However it nice to have the option of higher audio. I keep an extensive FLAC collection, mostly rips of all the CD's between myself and friends. Then we can decided based on space constraints how much to compress it.
 
iriver-t60.jpg


It took them three years to rip off an iRiver? Why is the audiophile hobby littered with so much bullshit?

pretty sure the iRiver does not have 192/24 FLAC support

expect for that $700 player they make... so the pono seems like a bargain in comparison
 
Specifications weren't released because the player is probably pure shit. The biggest red flag is how they're pushing HD music.

the fuq? did you look at the pcb photos? I doubt they would be using what look like Wima and Nichicon caps if it were crap... and a lot of people want higher bit-rate music... I buy a lot of 192/24 and 96/24 stuff from hdtracks.com
 
the fuq? did you look at the pcb photos? I doubt they would be using what look like Wima and Nichicon caps if it were crap... and a lot of people want higher bit-rate music... I buy a lot of 192/24 and 96/24 stuff from hdtracks.com

Yep, a huge number of people like to waste money on high bitrate audio. I'm going to love it when people want Infrared and Ultraviolet to be included in their video because you can really feel the difference the expanded range gives you.
 
Yep, a huge number of people like to waste money on high bitrate audio. I'm going to love it when people want Infrared and Ultraviolet to be included in their video because you can really feel the difference the expanded range gives you.

yes, and I have heard people even love to waste money on faster computers and video cards just to get more FPS their eyes probably cant even see! :rolleyes:
 
cool, a music player that cant fit in my pocket.

is the entire video just famous people talking about this thing? i had to mute it because the player wouldnt let me skip ahead to someone actually talking about the thing and i got sick of hearing them talk. saying it's better than cd is bullshit when you're listening on a car stereo in a super old car. you cant hear that difference unless youre in a recording studio or really nice sound insulated room with nice speakers. or using good headphones, which i guess maybe they were but it didnt sound like it.
 
yes, and I have heard people even love to waste money on faster computers and video cards just to get more FPS their eyes probably cant even see! :rolleyes:

Considering you can actually notice a difference most of the time(play a faster shooter and do 120FPS vs 60FPS constant vs variable FPS, then come back), that was a fail comparison.
 
I think I will stick with my record player and just buy a vintage CD player with a good DAC.... I do agree that a high quality audio store like iTunes could be a big hit with audiophils though.
 
Considering you can actually notice a difference most of the time(play a faster shooter and do 120FPS vs 60FPS constant vs variable FPS, then come back), that was a fail comparison.

exactly, you seem to fail to see my point, but anyway, I can notice the difference between 44/16 and 192/24 on my sound system... not everyone listens to music only on a clock radio

the same way people spend mad money on video cards for 120fps vs 60, some people spend mad money on audio equipment if they want a better sound
 
exactly, you seem to fail to see my point, but anyway, I can notice the difference between 44/16 and 192/24 on my sound system... not everyone listens to music only on a clock radio

the same way people spend mad money on video cards for 120fps vs 60, some people spend mad money on audio equipment if they want a better sound

You say you can because you know when you are listening to them. No one can tell in ABX tests any better than random chance, even when they previously claim they can. That's why I originally made the point abound infrared and ultra-violet for video. You ears can only hear up to about 21Khz in perfect conditions, which can be perfectly reproduced by a sampling frequency of 44.1Khz with a slight bit of headroom. Your ears can't hear higher, so sampling higher only wastes space.

The vast majority of 'HD' audio that sounds better does so because it's remastered and not run through a compressor to make everything as loud as possibly like on new CDs, which actually makes the audio better, but isn't the result of the difference between 44.1Khz and 192Khz, it's the remastering process.

Many people can reliably tell when they are playing on 60Hz vs 120Hz screens. It's easily testable. Linus from NCIX even made a video about it if you really want to google it, the non-gamer person couldn't reliably tell the difference, but Linus got it right every time.
 
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