Why CDs May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl!

They don't. I'm talking LPs 1954-1991, and played with a pick-up that has reasonably performance too of course.

2 1 2 0

The restrictions vinyl has, made mixers and mastering engineers balance the sound.
Everything is possible on CD... So a lot of sound people abused those possibilities.
No doubt everything should sound better on cd.
But I prefer vinyl... Just for the entire listening experience: you see the record spinning, big album cover, it's understandable not 0 and 1.
The more convenient music became, the more it is listened to as an average consumer product.

The revival is just marketing. Especially the 180 grams vinyl. Just marketing. It only feels as better quality.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-02-04 09:36 by BowieStone.

I love vinyl. And I also like CDs. I do admit that some CDs sound better than their vinyl counterparts. However, I also feel some vinyl sounds astoundingly better than their CD counterpart. And there is that mythical "warmth" that albums have, which comes from the analog process as opposed to binary digital process. The other big thing, is that when you play a record you play it! you don't skip songs, you don't reprogram the CD or playlist. You spin an ALBUM which used to be an artistic statement. That is what it's all about. I think music is like a buffet and there are times you want to hear an album, or a CD, and even a digital download. I love having the choices. And some stuff I strictly listen to on album. . . and look for on album as opposed to CD or digital download.

Neil Young talks about Pono at The Tonight Show

[www.nbc.com]

video: [www.nbc.com]

'onkyo music' now in US, UK, Germany

According to the german 'STEREO' magazine, the Onkyo HiRes-Download Store is beside Japan now also officially available in USA, UK and Germany. The 'STEREO' article says the amount of HiRes-Tracks at 'onkyo music' is at the moment still lower than at HDTracks, Highresaudio or Qobuz, but the prices are a little bit higher compared to the competitors ....

[www.onkyomusic.com]

onkyo music has great Stones HD downloads, exclusive to onkyo.

Here's what you can find on onkyo Japan : [www.e-onkyo.com]

Sticky Fingers, Exile, Tattoo You and Goats Head Soup are from the 2011 flat transfers from original tapes (same that were used for the SHM-SACD's and SHM-CD's).

Says you have to live in Japan to purchase.

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whitem8
Says you have to live in Japan to purchase.

Apparently there not available on UK-Germany-USA onkyo websites...

The U.S. Onkyo page has "Not Fade Away" / "Time is On My Side" / "It's All Over Now" from a various artists British invasion compilation album.

"Hear all the ghostly sounds you miss from an MP3"
[music.cbc.ca]

Interesting points made about the pono player

video: [www.youtube.com]

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three16
Interesting points made about the pono player

video: [www.youtube.com]

Don't waste your time, the guy goes on and on about nothing truly important. Says 16-bit 48Khz music is good enough. The whole idea of the hi-res revolution is that the ability to deliver better sound is being enabled. It's not as noticeable in every case but it eliminates one hurdle to a better listening experience, it's a good thing.

If we could get engineers to master recordings with more dynamic range and quit compressing the hell out of everything, the high-res experience would truly shine, imo. peace

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Naturalust

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three16
Interesting points made about the pono player

video: [www.youtube.com]

Don't waste your time, the guy goes on and on about nothing truly important. Says 16-bit 48Khz music is good enough. The whole idea of the hi-res revolution is that the ability to deliver better sound is being enabled. It's not as noticeable in every case but it eliminates one hurdle to a better listening experience, it's a good thing.

If we could get engineers to master recordings with more dynamic range and quit compressing the hell out of everything, the high-res experience would truly shine, imo. peace

that is the exact point this guy is trying to make, he has other videos explaining this in better detail. Not a waste of time for anyone to listen, imo

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three16

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Naturalust

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three16
Interesting points made about the pono player

video: [www.youtube.com]

Don't waste your time, the guy goes on and on about nothing truly important. Says 16-bit 48Khz music is good enough. The whole idea of the hi-res revolution is that the ability to deliver better sound is being enabled. It's not as noticeable in every case but it eliminates one hurdle to a better listening experience, it's a good thing.

If we could get engineers to master recordings with more dynamic range and quit compressing the hell out of everything, the high-res experience would truly shine, imo. peace

that is the exact point this guy is trying to make, he has other videos explaining this in better detail. Not a waste of time for anyone to listen, imo

Well, imo, he is losing the point with everything else he talks about, Eq'ing, polarity reversal, pre-emphasis, etc. The ability to hear a better mastered digital file at 24-bit, 96K is better than at 16-bit 48K, especially since most mastering has been done at 192K, 24-bit. Pono and Neil's point about hearing what the artist produced (the true master) can't really be disputed, something will always be lost with compression and down-sampling.

Like I said, providing high res for public consumption is only one of the hurdles, elimination of perceived loudness through less compressed recording and mastering is obviously another big hurdle. It's going to take the artists and engineers themselves to fix that one. peace

Interview of producer Daniel Lanois (who produced Le Noise) from The Vancouver Sun

On Neil Young and the Pono, analog vs. digital

“In regards to Neil, bless his heart for going after quality. We’ve spoken about it a lot when I was working with him. When we were kids — and Neil is a little older than me, he’s a generation ahead of me — it was very common to pay a visit to the hi-fi shops. You’d go in and there would be a well-informed sales guy — it was all guys at that time — and you’d have a chance to try the German headphones and the Danish ones and the electro-static speakers. So there was a very, very high regard for an understanding of quality in reproduction in sound.

“It’s no news to anyone what happened: Convenience, MP3 and buzz, and there was a dip in quality. But thankfully in part to Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, it became cool to buy an expensive set of Beats headphones because people want to hear quality all over again.

“Pono is simply a very, very high digital resolution machine. What’s nice about what Neil is up to is that he’s gone back to analog sources and recordings. It’s like a film vs. digital camera: There’s no pixelization in that technology, it’s just saturation. That’s why Neil loves analog and those old tape masters. Then the idea is to transfer to this high-grade digital format so you get the density of the analog and the proper reproduction we should have been operating by all along digitally.

“Neil is saying, ‘Not good enough.’ So here we are. At least people are talking about fidelity all over again. How great is that? It’s not so much about analog over digital, it’s about, ‘You want to go to digital? Bring it on.’ But people don’t really care how you make records. In the end, people just want to be transported by music. Everything is driven by cost.

“Quality has always been with us. Just about every record I’ve worked on sounds really great. Did I ever want them to be played on an MP3 system? I want to shoot the guy who invented that thing.”


Intersting bits about Bob Dylan latest record too.

[www.vancouversun.com]

The sound of the 70s: Neil Young's Pono player is taking us back to a time before CD when music actually sounded good

By Rob Waugh Event for The Mail on Sunday


This column has never before dealt with any gadgets made by Neil Young.

I speak with a reasonable degree of confidence here: the hirsute Sixties rocker has never dabbled in technology in his half-century-plus career, never mind creating a portable audio player that has quietly built up as much hype as anything since the iPod.

There are two obvious stumbling blocks for Young’s Pono player, which he financed by raising £4 million on crowdfunding site KickStarter.

First, it’s impossible to say the word Pono without people thinking you’re talking about racy films. Second, it looks like a Toblerone.

But Young hopes the player, which promises better sound quality than most current digital portables, will herald a new era where people actually sit down and listen to music (his music, preferably), rather than snacking on the go.

Pono plays ‘hi-res audio’, or HD audio, digital files recorded at the same or higher resolution than CD. It pairs with an online store where you can buy the stuff, although it’ll play most HD files without complaint.

Testing it with (of course) Neil Young’s Old Man, you definitely can sense the magic dust of HD audio. It’s got a certain sparkle, and a sense of space.

The triangular player is built to sit on a surface, and the sound, likewise, rewards listeners who bother to sit down and enjoy it rather than half-listen on the bus.

Crucially, it’s also the right side of £300: most players that can play HD files cost over £1,000.

Young himself would be the first to admit this is a niche product.

It doesn’t even try to compete with smartphones. There are no modern fripperies such as apps, email or Angry Birds. It just plays music.

And forget earbuds, you’ll need big headphones, or a proper hi-fi to get the idea.

It might be futuristic, but this is a player for old stick-in-the-muds, created by an old stick-in-the-mud. And for that alone, it deserves our applause.

Many tech sites have gleefully stuck the boot into Pono. But they are missing the point. HD audio really is the future.

In a century where CDs are increasingly irrelevant, it’s insane to have a ‘cap’ on music quality.

Pono’s aimed at an audience born at a time where music came on vinyl, and sounded excellent, who have listened to it descend into the digital mire over the past two decades.

Pono’s not perfect, but it’s the sound of hi-fi starting to dig its way out.

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

I read an earlier article (I think it was linked here) where about a dozen listeners did a blind A-B comparison test switching back and forth between HD audio and 44 KHz 16-bit CD audio and they could not tell the difference. Reality bites.

Honestly, that Neil Young promo clip where various musicians are singing high praise for the Pono player is just Internet era hype.

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MileHigh
I read an earlier article (I think it was linked here) where about a dozen listeners did a blind A-B comparison test switching back and forth between HD audio and 44 KHz 16-bit CD audio and they could not tell the difference. Reality bites.

Honestly, that Neil Young promo clip where various musicians are singing high praise for the Pono player is just Internet era hype.

An audio A-B comparison test doesn't mean much if listeners don't know what to look for. Also it depends on how the test was conducted : if you keep switching from HD files to CD files most people won't be able to catch the difference. Plus not all HD audio files are equal. Some can sound really good, others won't sound much better compared to a CD quality file. Really depends on the source and the mastering.

An audio A-B comparison test doesn't mean much if listeners don't know what to look for

Which one sounds best?

peace



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-03-14 05:59 by Naturalust.

" Really depends on the source and the mastering. "

That's the answer to the above question.

Once you go above CD quality,differences among formats don't really matter anymore. (unlike 128 kbps .mp3's versus .ogg's in the world of lossy compressed audio for an example)

SA-CD / Blu-ray Audio / High-Res FLAC and WAV will all work IF you have the proper set-up.

Alright. I see what you mean now.

Often times, a non-audio enthusiast won't notice differences until they are pointed out.

For example,listen to this part with the bass notes or listen to this other part with the cymbals.

This is especially true when they have become conditioned to listening to lossy , compressed music on cheap equipment for 15 + years.

Also, some of these A-B tests are inherently flawed. The wrong equipment to notice the difference is used (not using a proper home audio set-up) or not enough equipment is used (no dedicated portable headphone amp .... or a sub-standard one) .

"After months of speculation, Neil Young has admitted that the marketplace built around his Pono player is “gone”

[ultimateclassicrock.com]

It's just not the right time to promote ponography, Neil.

Thread title could be changed to:

'Neil Young prevents Pono Music'

or

'Neil Young retracts Pono Music'


Well he meant well I suppose, but clearly Pono was a waste of his time and effort.
Hoping his next big dream 'dubbed Xstream' has more success.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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Hairball

Well he meant well I suppose, but clearly Pono was a waste of his time and effort.

Not quite - maybe it was at least a contribution to establish a market plus an awareness for HiRes-Music.

But there're now equal or better HiRes-Player from other vendors which can do the same or more than the Pono-Player, like FiiO X5-III, Astell&Kern AK380 or Sony NW-WM1Z.

There're now also a amount of HiRes-Download-Stores - and they can only sell what the Record Companies deliver. If the Record Companies won't open their Archives, won't offer Audio-formats like DSD or they do Remasters in bad quality, what should PonoMusic then do?


Regarding Neil Young’s new Streaming-Service Xstream see also here:

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kowalski

Just read this, sounds promising for hi-res downloads prices.

Neil Young’s New Streaming Service Is Xstream

'I'm still trying to make the case for bringing you the best music possible, at a reasonable price'

[iorr.org]

Full statement from Neil Young about Pono:

[www.neilyoung.com]

Quality Whether You Want It Or Not

A few years ago when I first played Pono music for my 24 year old daughter, she just looked at me and asked, "Why have I never heard this?" A week later she called me and said that listening to Pono had ruined her iPod collection. She said that when she heard iTunes, she could not forget what Pono did to her. And its not just Pono. Its all the High res music players and stores. They need your support to grow and bring the magic.
Don't believe the negativity that you might find when you google Pono. We woke the beast who has a vested interest in defending large mp3 libraries. There is also a certain backlash to giving a damn about quality. But there is nothing wrong with caring about things being good, nothing shameful about being an audiophile who loves sound and is moved by music, and nothing wrong with loving music so much you want to hear it and feel all.

"Quality whether you want it or not" - That is our mantra internally here at Pono. Although technology and the age of convenience has largely taken over the world at this point, with compressed files that are nothing but IP compromises built and marketed to enable commerce, pure quality will always have a place in culture and will make its way back into the mainstream, just as high definition TV, video and movies have. In our times, there is only one art form that has suffered at the hand of technology while the others have excelled.
It's music reproduction. That is why Pono exists; to bring all the sound of music back to the people and preserve the art of recorded sound; so the true living soul of music can be carried with you everywhere you want to go.

Thanks for listening!
Neil Young
Pono
April, 2016

BTW, Neil Young albums are available in HD quality for the price of a itunes download if you buy them on Neil Young site : [neilyoung.warnerbrosrecords.com]

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Irix

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Hairball

Well he meant well I suppose, but clearly Pono was a waste of his time and effort.

Not quite - maybe it was at least a contribution to establish a market plus an awareness for HiRes-Music.

But there're now equal or better HiRes-Player from other vendors which can do the same or more than the Pono-Player, like FiiO X5-III, Astell&Kern AK380 or Sony NW-WM1Z.

There're now also a amount of HiRes-Download-Stores - and they can only sell what the Record Companies deliver. If the Record Companies won't open their Archives, won't offer Audio-formats like DSD or they do Remasters in bad quality, what should PonoMusic then do?


Regarding Neil Young’s new Streaming-Service Xstream see also here:

Quote
kowalski

Just read this, sounds promising for hi-res downloads prices.

Neil Young’s New Streaming Service Is Xstream

'I'm still trying to make the case for bringing you the best music possible, at a reasonable price'

[iorr.org]

OK I retract my original statement, and will now say Pono was not a waste of his time and effort!

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Two years ago I thought it was a long shot so no surprise here. Memory and hard drive space keeps getting cheaper so nowadays there is no issue in having your music in 320 kbs MP3 format. For sure, it is not perfect but 320 kps is pretty darn good. I don't touch anything Apple or in Apple format.

I don't get his high-resolution streaming service because that demands having the high-resolution playback hardware. One is useless without the other. It just occurred to me that very modern home theater AV amplifiers might have the playback hardware and the wifi connection so who knows.

You would be better off to obtain the high-resolution files as opposed to relying on streaming , bandwidth , and especially wi-fi which would just degrade the audio anyway.

If you have the high-resolution files,there are many playback options including playing them back off of a USB stick or off of an SD card plugged directly into an AV amplifier with a USB INPUT port and high-end / high-res DAC's .......... or plugged directly into an Oppo or Cambridge universal disc player which have the appropriate DAC's.

I would be wary of modern AV amplifiers though. In general,their build quality (in the low end to mid-range) has gone down .... maybe to offset the production cost of "modern" features. To get a good modern AV amplifier,you would need to start getting into high-end models.

The other alternative would be to get a good portable high-res player,an alternative to the Pono,such as the Fiio X5 , use its DAC's and send the analog audio to an old school amplifier such as a Pioneer SX-1980 / Sansui AU-X1111 MOS V / Sansui AU-919 / Sansui Alpha AU-907MOS LTD / or a Sansui G-7700 . Maybe even an old school high-end Kenwood amp. In this set-up,the digital is converted to analog via the portable music player and the amplifier handles the rest. Obviously,the quality of your speakers would then enter into the equation.