This is a review and detailed measurements of the discontinued Neil Young PONO "high resolution" player. It is on kind loan from a member. Online prices today range from US $400 to $600 and more!
The player comes in an attractive wooden box with nice accessories such as a pouch to hold the triangular shape of this player. The LCD display is grainy. I did not like that it would time out to just a bland bar of what is playing instead of staying on "now playing" screen. To get that you need to press the "O" button again and then you see your controls to skip and such.
Music transfer was easy using USB connection.
In case you are not familiar with this player, Neil Young started to rant about poor quality of compressed music online and took out his music of the services of that era. And then partnered with Ayre to introduce this player and music service to go with. The key selling point being high resolution music. I didn't have a Pono player but found their service to have lower prices on CD and high-res music than many other services so bought good bit of music from them before they closed the door.
The purpose of this review is to see the capabilities of the Pono player to deliver better than CD experience. So let's measure that.
PONO Player Measurements
I maxed out the volume and captured our dashboard (into high impedance):
Despite not putting any load on the player, the headphone output maxed out at just 1 volt. This is what mediocre phone dongles output. As a minimum the output should have been 2 volts. Apparently you get this if you combine the line out and headphone out into a balanced output. I did not have such a cable so all of my testing is in the default mode.
The output is fair bit distorted with one channel much worse than the other. Averaging the two lands in the Pono player into the "poor" category of all dacs/players tested:
As a reference, an Apple phone dongle has SINAD of 99 db, nearly 10 dB better.
Lowering the output to half a volt improves things some:
But we are still worse than performance of a proper 16 bit system (SINAD of 93 dB). Multitone test operates at this level so makes a better showing:
Dynamic range test shows that even at max volume we barely clear the bar for 16 bit audio:
Jitter test is decent although a lot of dirt could be hidden under that high noise floor:
Since my analyzer can't control the player, these are all the measurements I have. But I think we all know the story here.
Conclusions
The pono player would rate at below average for a CD/16-bit player. As such, it cannot have any claim of doing justice to high-resolution audio. Cleary little attention was paid to verifying the device actually performs at the level that was assumed. The late Charlie Hansen was apparently behind this which makes it surprising to see such low level of performance. Measurements in Stereophile magazine were just as awful as mine:
Notice the distortion being much higher in one channel just like mine. The worse channel second harmonic reaches -68 dB making its SINAD just as bad. Yet, JA finishes the review with:
"Even taking into consideration its relatively affordable price, the PonoPlayer measures very well.—John Atkinson"
Measures very well? How on earth can someone say that about a digital player with that kind of measurement in 2015? The thing has copious amount of distortion, far in excess any proper CD player. Such is life of commercial publications.
Anyway, we now know this is not a performant player and the fact that it met its demise due to market forces was well deserved.
Specifications:
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The player comes in an attractive wooden box with nice accessories such as a pouch to hold the triangular shape of this player. The LCD display is grainy. I did not like that it would time out to just a bland bar of what is playing instead of staying on "now playing" screen. To get that you need to press the "O" button again and then you see your controls to skip and such.
Music transfer was easy using USB connection.
In case you are not familiar with this player, Neil Young started to rant about poor quality of compressed music online and took out his music of the services of that era. And then partnered with Ayre to introduce this player and music service to go with. The key selling point being high resolution music. I didn't have a Pono player but found their service to have lower prices on CD and high-res music than many other services so bought good bit of music from them before they closed the door.
The purpose of this review is to see the capabilities of the Pono player to deliver better than CD experience. So let's measure that.
PONO Player Measurements
I maxed out the volume and captured our dashboard (into high impedance):
Despite not putting any load on the player, the headphone output maxed out at just 1 volt. This is what mediocre phone dongles output. As a minimum the output should have been 2 volts. Apparently you get this if you combine the line out and headphone out into a balanced output. I did not have such a cable so all of my testing is in the default mode.
The output is fair bit distorted with one channel much worse than the other. Averaging the two lands in the Pono player into the "poor" category of all dacs/players tested:
As a reference, an Apple phone dongle has SINAD of 99 db, nearly 10 dB better.
Lowering the output to half a volt improves things some:
But we are still worse than performance of a proper 16 bit system (SINAD of 93 dB). Multitone test operates at this level so makes a better showing:
Dynamic range test shows that even at max volume we barely clear the bar for 16 bit audio:
Jitter test is decent although a lot of dirt could be hidden under that high noise floor:
Since my analyzer can't control the player, these are all the measurements I have. But I think we all know the story here.
Conclusions
The pono player would rate at below average for a CD/16-bit player. As such, it cannot have any claim of doing justice to high-resolution audio. Cleary little attention was paid to verifying the device actually performs at the level that was assumed. The late Charlie Hansen was apparently behind this which makes it surprising to see such low level of performance. Measurements in Stereophile magazine were just as awful as mine:
Notice the distortion being much higher in one channel just like mine. The worse channel second harmonic reaches -68 dB making its SINAD just as bad. Yet, JA finishes the review with:
"Even taking into consideration its relatively affordable price, the PonoPlayer measures very well.—John Atkinson"
Measures very well? How on earth can someone say that about a digital player with that kind of measurement in 2015? The thing has copious amount of distortion, far in excess any proper CD player. Such is life of commercial publications.
Anyway, we now know this is not a performant player and the fact that it met its demise due to market forces was well deserved.
Specifications:
| SCREEN | 2.5" |
|---|---|
| OS | Android 2.3 |
| CPU | ARM Cortex-A8 |
| RAM | 256MB |
| MEMORY | 64GB (plus additional 64GB MicroSD card included) |
| PORTS | Micro USB, MicroSD card reader, 2 x 3.5mm headphone jacks |
| SIZE | 5" x 2" x 1" (13cm x 5cm x 2.5m) |
| WEIGHT | 4.6 ounces (130g) |
| BATTERY | "Up to 8 hours" |
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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