PCA Forums

I see a merger with Monster in their future...

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/19/80684 ... d-sr-64hxa

It's difficult to fathom how the transfer of digital information could ever be made more silent, but Sony's internal measurements have shown its audiophile-friendly memory card producing less electrical noise when reading data.

Their new Walkman is ridiculously priced too. You can get an Astell&Kern, Pono, or a Fiio for much less and have the same quality. The audiophile portable market is very limited. Those who want a portable device that plays flac or dsd probably already have one.

You can put the memory card in the same class or hardware as oxygen-free silver cables, CD-demagnetizers, and much of Audioquests stuff. You don't need to mortgage the house to have good audio.

I've actually be contemplating a Fiio X1 mainly due to the DAC in my Samsung S3 being a bit noisy on softer music (classical piano, vocal, etc.). The players for android also don't like to play gapless very well. I managed to get a version of Rockbox installed that plays gapless very well but it's buggy. It likes to crash whenever my phone changes towers on trips.

It's a subjective review, but this guy bought the Pono and asked several people to compare the same track to one on an iPhone and most could not tell the difference and the rest thought the iPhone was the Pono.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-o ... 83039.html

Look, I used to be a sound engineer, but, MP3s at the highest encoding rate sound just fine to me (I use an iPod touch and mainly buy MP3s from Amazon). I never use VBR on my own rips either - storage is too cheap and I can sometimes hear artifacts. If you want higher quality use a lossless format.

The Pono is mostly smoke and mirrors to me. I think the quality of your cans or amp/speakers makes more of a difference. I'm not denying that A FEW people may have discriminating enough hearing to appreciate it (in the same way that some people can taste subtle differences in hot sauce while most of us can't), but they are few and in between. The Pono is also a terrible form factor. It's impractical to carry around in your pocket.

It's also pretty much BS that the documentation for the Pono says that the quality of the headphones you use is irrelevant because the Pono makes anything sound great. That's Monster JuJu talk right there.

Now on the othet hand, the Pono might be a GREAT replacement for the iPod Classic (which has been discontined). I know DJs and small club singers who use them and lament the loss. I've rejuvinated a few old ones for friends in the biz by taking the drive out and running Spinrite on it. I don't miss the Classic because a 64GB iPod Touch is plenty for my music needs, and I also listen to a lot of audiobooks and Podcasts. The touch is great for that. But if you're a DJ or a club singer you want a classic, or be DAMN sure all notifications are disabled if you use a Touch or an iPad (you'd be crazy to use an iPhone for pro work - nothing more embarresing than getting a call during a gig ).

The trouble is that from reviews I've read, loading music onto the Pono makes iTunes look like the world's greatest app (and for those of you who don't understand why people like me hate iTunes, try updating and then dragging and dropping a playlist with 500+ songs into your iPod and weep).

A lot of folks swear by the iPod Classic. It's a shame it was discontinued. This is the Fiio X1 I'm considering.

http://smile.amazon.com/Fiio-X1-FiiO/dp/B00NS3MRKC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424558780&sr=8-1&keywords=fiio+x1

It's $100 and supports APE, FLAC, ALAC, WMA, WAV, MP3, AAC and OGG files. Plus it supports up to 128 GB micro SD cards. The reviews have been pretty good.

I agree that high bitrate MP3s sound fine. My only problem with them is that they don't support gapless playback. It's a limitation of the format itself and it's only annoying if I'm listening to live recordings or albums that are continuous.

Back before the iPod was released, I had a Rio player with a miniature spinning drive (like the iPod classic). It was the size of a hockey puck. It was simplicity itself. No software required (although it COULD sync with Windows Media Player). You could just drag and drop files and folders into it like a flash drive.

It didn't use use ID3 tags at all - it went by folder and file names. You could throw all your rock music into a ROCK folder and then just select the folder and play all -> shuffle. No messing around with sometimes incorrect or missing ID3 tags (which was common back then since most of my music was ripped from my CDs or copied from friends).N o need for playlists either - the folder was the playlist. Want to add more songs to the Rock playlist? Drop them in the Rock folder.

I loved that thing, until the drive finally died a few years later, and I cried. They were discontinued by then, and I my next player was an iPod Classic. Then my iTunes nightmare began, and I had to spend several weeks fixing or creating ID3 tags on thousands of tracks

Apple is being clueless. There's a substantial number of people (both casual and professional) who would pay good money for an updated iPod Classic with, say, 128GB of flash, keeping the original circular controls (which were friggin' BRILLIANT). $500? People would buy it. Sure it would be a niche product, but so is the Shuffle and the Nano and they're still around. Heck, why don't they make a 64GB Nano? The Nano only comes in 16GB. Sorry Apply, not everyone has or wants an iPhone.

There are lots of professionals AND people like me who JUST WANT AN MP3 player, that plays MP3's VERY well, and does nothing else. While I love my iPod Touch, it just annoys me that the GUI sometimes freezes while I'm trying to bring up a song or a podcast because it's doing some mysterious background operation. And this is the latest 64GB model. I wish the OS was like Android where I could just kill every background process I didn't want. I've considered using an Android based player, but Android doesn't have a podcatcher that's anywhere as good or as easy to use as the iPod's

And no, I do NOT use my Android phone for music or Podcasts, although it does have some emergency music on it and I do rarely use it for audio books if the iPod's not handy. I want my phone battery to last, and I primarily use my phone for calls, Internet browsing, and GPS. I also don't want my music interrupted by a sound notification blasting through my phones or speakers. Plus the Griffin dock I use in the card for my iPod is just SO convenient. Plug in the lightning cable, and I'm connected to my radio and the iPad charges while in the car, plus I have play/pause/skip controls within easy reach.

I remember the Rio but I never owned one. My first MP3 player was a Creative Jukebox 2 with a 10 GB spinning hard drive. The interface was terrible but it was a good player. I still have it somewhere. I also have a Creative Zen Xfi that was also a good player until the battery started going south.

Apple's problem is that they want everyone tied to their store. Granted, a majority of people listen on their phones but there is still a decent market for people that just want a music player. Ideally, one you could just plug in to you computer and drop files and playlists into folders.

Pengo, try Beyondpod. I am very happy with it.

Aside from that, that Pono is a joke. Comparing low res MP3 to anything in this day and age smacks of snake oil advertising. I am sure they recommend buying Audioquest's 700 dollar USB cable to ensure perfect quality.

I used to have a small Sandisk Sansa one that worked similar. Basically was a MP3 player flash drive and powered off a single AAA battery. Nowadays you can just use one of your outdated Android phones as a MP3 player and be fine.

The thing with Android phones is that there is usually an app for anything you need so you can customize your experience. Hell, its even a flashlight now. I can even sync it up and download music from the new Amazon Prime music service. Only needs to connect every now and again so it works fine for that.

Aiming for portability as well, it has a 3.5 inch screen, so it isn't a bulky device like some of the new phones. Most people just toss their phones, you can reuse them now. It is actually kind of amazing the kind of support the older versions of Android still gets. When I mean older, I mean versions like 2.3.

For me, it is hard to get into Apple devices. They are too secluded in their own ecosystem that it is hard to enjoy. At least with Android-based devices whether it be Kindle or not, Amazon content is more open. They have console apps and Roku apps, rather than being lost in their own little world of Apple devices.

If I look at digital copies for example, if I have an option of Itunes or Ultraviolet the choice is easy. Platform access will always be a huge plus. The same follows suit for any digital music purchases. I want to be able to go from laptop to Roku, to phone, to tablet; without worry about content access limitations.

What app do you all use to play music on your phone if you do? I just use the Amazon app, it is a basic and integrated interface.

I use Poweramp or Rockbox. Rockbox is finicky to set up because you have to figure out which version will work with your phone and then find a theme that will make it usable. Poweramp is available through Google's store and has a free trial. I like them both but prefer Rockbox for live or continuous recordings.

I use Poweram on Android as well.