“Neil Young wants us to believe that higher-res audio files played through his banana-colored Toblerone will improve our music-loving lives,” Sam Machkovech writes for Ars Technica. “I’m here to say that he and his team are kinda full of crap — though that doesn’t negate the amount of quality found in this little, weird-looking thing.”
“Considering Pono’s firm sales pitch about us needing the highest-res audio available, we were surprised to not find any ‘highest resolution only’ filter in its internal storefront,” Machkovech writes. “This is where Pono’s snake oil really begins, because when you play any 192/24 songs on the player, it rewards you by—we’re not kidding—turning on a little blue neon light. This doesn’t happen if your 192/24 songs didn’t come from Pono’s storefront, however, as those are apparently not 192 enough.”
Machkovech writes, “No amount of testing made 192kHz/24-bit FLAC audio sound noticeably better than high-quality MP3s.”
Much more in the full review here.
Related articles:
Neil Young’s Pono Player: The emperor has no clothes – February 2, 2015
Neil Young’s 24 bit/192kHz ‘PonoMusic’ project is a very silly boondoggle – March 16, 2014
Neil Young unveils new music media ‘ecosystem,’ PonoMusic – March 12, 2014