Neil Young launches new music player | Hacker News Reader

Neil Young launches new music player

rocknerd.co.uk

23 pointsdavidgerard19 comments

This video helped me understand the actual issues around digital audio encoding. It's nice to use brain space for facts instead of woo. If you're convinced that digital anything is inherently inferior to analog, it should clear some things up.

https://www.xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

Here's a post on the same site that addresses Pono more directly. Also very helpful for developing your understanding.

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

"passionate consumers, who hunger to hear music the way its creators intended" - Unless this device teleports me to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, it fails at this goal.

Feel free to substitute your concert venue of choice here.

I would think that the headphones/speakers would be as important, if not more so, than the device. If you crank out high fidelity music through ear gummies that you get for 10$ at the drug store then you're not going to get great sound. But if you take your standard iTunes MP3 and push it through some decent cans, or even better a proper stereo like a set of B&O speakers, then you will get sound that's great and clear. 100% of my music listening is carried out via extreme-quality streaming through Spotify via a set of Bowers and Wilkins P3 headphones, and I'm always happy with the results, regardless of whether it's from my laptop, iPhone, or iPad.

I'm 47, and I know damn well I can't tell a 320kbps MP3 from the CD unless it's a shitty encode. My arse Neil Young can.

"If Neil Young, age 68, who’s played feedback-drenched noise on stage for the past forty-odd years, can reliably tell a Pomo file from a FLAC prepared from said Pomo file in A/B/X testing, I will give you a lollipop. Two lollipops."

You're cheating. The real challenge is a Pono file, encoded to CD, then FLAC'ed, versus the Pono file. CDs are not that impressive, and there is more advanced technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Audio

I'm not endorsing the Pono, but I'll also bet you a lollipop that 95% or more of your music collection came from data that was on a CD.

>encoded to CD, then FLAC'ed

You realise that's a no-op, right?

I also give you this marvellous study on "golden ears" and "high-resolution audio" versus science: "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted Into High-Resolution Audio Playback."

http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_emperors_new_sam...

> > A PONO file, encoded to CD, then FLAC'ed

> You realise that's a no-op, right?

Given that the PONO file will have more bits per sample than the CD encoded version, from a digital point of view, no, it is absolutely not a no-op. It has different data in it, even when the reversible compression has been reversed.

If a person with good ears can tell the difference, that's a different question. And even if someone somewhere can tell the difference sometimes, do enough people who pay for music care?

The CD to FLAC bit is a no-op. To say that suggests not paying attention when writing.

If a person with good ears can tell the difference, I'll give them three lollipops. The record of actual A/B/X testing of such is a pretty consistent "no better than chance".

> You realise that's a no-op, right?

No, it is certainly not. Encoded to CD is most definitely not a no-op.

It's like I said, "Shot in the head, and then tickled with a feather."

Don't tell me that together, it's like being tickled with a feather.

What a headline. iPods got a lot of praise for including Wolfson DACs. The hardware was better than most and they sounded better. The ES9018 in this might indeed sound great, too.

Wouldn't it be nice for this to catch on? A chance to move all audio from v0/16/44 to lossless/24/192. With DMCA, maybe a good player to jailbreak and put linux on. If anything, it'll give Apple a reason to update the iPods.

As an ardent opponent of audio woo, I will admit that "high-resolution" audio does have one advantage: it never has a LOUDNESS WARS mix.

Apparently the 128GiB storage will allow 1000-2000 "high resolution" albums to be stored at once.

I have 96 FLAC albums on my Mac, and they take up 42GiB.

I wonder what then "high resolution" is supposed to mean.

Actually, the press release claims only "about 100 to 500" albums for 128 GiB model: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/neil-youn...

http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2014/03/press-releas...

It appears they made a mistake in the press release originally and have now corrected it.

It used to say 1000 albums, they meant to write 1000 songs.

Those little devices are filled with snake oil. Buyer beware.

It's audiophile, snake oil has been the main consumer good for a while.

As far as I can tell, Machina Dynamica actually started off as a parody of audiophiles ... then a tidal wave of idiots bashed down their metaphorical door, screaming "TAKE MY MONEY!!" As woo-hostile as I am, I can't quite bring myself to completely condemn them for just taking such resolutely stupid people's money. I must write up the story for RationalWiki.

But it is very good quality snake oil. Targeted at people who can tell the difference between bad and good snake oil.

But I need pure organic sound, hand picked in the crisp morning, mountain air.

Speaking of that I need to stop by the store and pickup a new electro-static sound filter for my car speakers

Reply on news.ycombinator.com