![\"150825_pono_postcard_front\"](\"http:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/150825_pono_postcard_front.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFigure 1 – One side of the post card handed out by the Pono representatives at the recent CAS6 event. [Click to enlarge]<\/p>\n
Take a look at the information on the card. There’s the Pono logo at the top (BTW I like the logo…simply, elegant and memorable) and a headline statement to the right. It says, “High Resolution Music Store”. As you might expect, I reacted to that claim with a healthy amount of skepticism. The PonoMusic store offers virtually zero high-resolution audio tracks! How long can you keep denying the truth.<\/p>\n
The bottom of the card continues the fantasy, “PonoMusic brings you the largest collection of Hi-Res music anywhere with over 2 million tracks”. I’d be curious to know who wrote the copy for the piece of advertising? Did Neil approve this message?<\/p>\n
Here are the indisputable facts about the music available on the PonoMusic site.<\/p>\n
They sell the same major label content as HDtracks and the other high-resolution licensees. According to the label representatives, they’ve delivered about 5000 “high-resolution transfers” of older analog masters…, which are not actually high-res sources…to the high-res retailers. These guys are all selling the same tracks. HDtracks does have a lot more of these high-resolution transfers because they’ve done deals with a whole bunch of small independent labels. David Chesky told me that the number was about 15,000 last summer. I can only assume that it’s increased to about 20,000…maybe?<\/p>\n
So where does PonoMusic get the remaining 2 million tracks for their catalog of “Hi-Res music”? They claim to have the largest collection of “Hi-Res music” in the world. I’ve heard Neil Young interviewed a number of times and even spoken to him personally on a couple of occasions…he hates CD quality sound and always has. However, it turns out that all of the other tracks for sale on his “High Resolution Music Store” are ripped CDs provided by Omnifone, a UK company that specializes in ripping, converting, and tagging music tracks.<\/p>\n
I thought that Neil and his minions had figured this out…I guess not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pono representatives were at the California Audio Show a couple of weeks ago. I could see them just outside the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,45,478],"tags":[97,657,50,40,172,57,1032,70,640,26,639,980,42,298,251,645,638,637,227,643,169,1026,1027,954,150,335,1037,41,347,27,1022,116,659,660,661],"class_list":["post-5085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio_shows","category-dr_aixs_posts","category-ponomusic","tag-5-1-surround","tag-advanced-resolution","tag-aix-records","tag-analog-vs-digital","tag-audio-resolution","tag-audio-specifications","tag-dvd_audio","tag-hd-downloads","tag-hd-music","tag-hd-audio","tag-hi-res-audio","tag-hi-res-music","tag-high-resolution-audio","tag-high-res-music","tag-high-resolution","tag-high-resolution-audio-experience","tag-hires-audio","tag-hires-music","tag-hra","tag-hra-listening-experience","tag-mark-waldrep","tag-music-and-audio","tag-music-and-audio-a-user-guide-to-better-sound","tag-music-server","tag-pcm","tag-pono","tag-ponomusic","tag-provenance","tag-spectragram","tag-spectragraphs","tag-studio-acoustics","tag-surround-music","tag-uhd-audio","tag-ultra-high-definition-audio","tag-ultra-high-resolution-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5088,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions\/5088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}