Neil Young’s Pono Gets a Bad Review
Oh, dear. After all that hype, Yahoo!’s tech reviewer doesn’t seem to like the Pono very much.
All I can tell you is that I’ve sampled other High-Res Audio players (no one has given me a Pono yet) and I’ve been able to pick up on the sonic differences. HOWEVER, if you’re using shitty earbuds or listening in a noisy environment, nothing is going to sound better.
When I build my next home stereo system, I’ll definitely invest in some High-Res gear. But for portable use? My iPhone is just fine, thank you. More here.
Linus of LinusTechTips (The best tech channel on YouTube in my opinion) absolutely skewered the Pono:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VQUFCCcQ4A
He has so many valid points and criticisms about this… Mistake of a gadget… That I had to share it here.
so you run high res audio through a $9.00 Radio Shack component and then ask people to tell the difference? That’s like taking Starbucks And Tim’s and putting sour milk in both and asking which tastes better.
pogue. yer an ass.
I don’t listen to music with headphones. I want to hear the difference on a high-end stereo and speakers.
If you’re iPhone is fine for digital music playback, it’ll be that much better if you download and play your music through the Earprint App, from Psyx research – it’s free. Check it out. It puts anything else, both in the hard and software spaces, to shame. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/earprint-by-psyx/id905070999?mt=8
Neil Young just seems like an idealistic, militant old guy that out of touch with what today’s generation wants.
While I can see the appeal of better converters than you’re going to get on a phone (at least to people who invest in good headphones), the Pono has always seemed a bit unnecessary as anything other than a piece of at-home gear. That said, I also wouldn’t rely on David Pogue to ever say anything bad about Apple.