Opinion on Pono project Guardian link

Very sloppy journalism I'm afraid. I don't know where to begin in criticising it, just from the standpoint of being an engineer let alone a consumer or mathematician. So that's why I didn't invest in Sacd! Not enough 'numbers' to impress my friends. Of course as an engineer I have no friends, just a sandwich box with my bike clips and a mini-kaleidoscope inside.

^  !

C.

I guess the article illustrates a fairly typical mainstream perspective on Hi-Res music, as well as being sloppy journalism, as you mention, Hafler 30!

The key to successfully rolling it out to a wider audience is first to get people to hear the difference to win them over, but then they have to have access to the equipment to be able to play it.

Neither of which will be that easy to achieve, consumers have to first be open to the idea.

Hopefully Pono will awaken the issue with more people, meaning more Hi-Res titles available in future, and at a lower price point.

I suppose this comment could just as easily have been placed in the Save The Stereo thread - guess I got sidetracked!

A pretty typical attitude, often expressed on this forum, from someone who has an opinion (or in this case probably someone else's opinion) and believes it to be the absolute truth. In fact, so absolute that there is no point in lifting a finger to check it - which would be very easy in the case of 24/192 playback.

I have lived long enough now to recognise many recurring themes, such as all the original and unique vehicles that have queued up over the years to deliver high quality sound to a mainstream audience which doesn't particularly care. People like us are the main beneficiaries and so long as it gets more high quality stuff out there it will work for me. Job done. For how long? Probably not too long but I'll take what I can get.

Sigh.....

The article is so much bull (regardless of whether or not Pono is any good).  2 quotes to illustrate this:-

1) "But during that period the ability of our ears to distinguish sound has not changed; 44.1kHz, 16-bit audio sampling is good enough to reproduce any music".  The first point is fact but proves nothing, the second point is unrelated and pure conjecture.  Since when has 'adequate' been the benchmark or ultimate goal ?

2) "CDs, and digital-to-audio converters, reproduce pretty much everything better than vinyl".  Cough, splutter.  Again pure conjecture, highly controversial, certainly unproven, and also unrelated to whether hi-res/Pono can improve on CD.

I thought the Guardian was supposed to be a bastion of astutely critical and non establishment journalism, if prone to the odd spelling error.  Seemingly not......

+1 on all the above, it didn't read well to me when I found it first time, re-reading again just now hasn't changed that. 

Properly recorded and mastered music is what we need.  Bigger numbers don't tell much of a story at all.