midfi

Oh, and BTW, Kickstarter-Page with some more info is now live:

I'm also new to this forum and from Germany, and I don't even consider myself to be much of an audiophile, to be honest. But as an occasional reader of the discussions here and someone who does benefit from the knowledge of many people here, I thought it might bring some insight to post my (very subjective) outside view on this, as I am quite interested in the whole pono affair, although I wasn't aware of these plans for as long as most of you. Again, I don't consider myself to be an audiophile. I do hear the flaws in the lossy formats when I really concentrate, but honestly, depending on the music and the listening situation, I don't care and I still buy lossy, because iTunes, for whatever criticism it may get and deserve, is convenient in so many ways. Frankly, I don't hear the difference between a CD (or rip) and a Hi-Res digital file. I tried it. Even direct A-B-comparisons don't make any difference that is obvious to me. Might be my gear, which isn't too shabby, but far from anything a real audiophile might consider adequate. Maybe my DJ past is to blame as well. Not great for your ears. The reason why I am still very interested in the whole pono affair is this: What I am capable of hearing quite well is bad mastering and the flaws of bad quality playback devices or headphones. Player-wise, there are two things that are important to me. It has to sound good, of course (and from what I'm reading in this thread the DAC in it could potentially deliver) and it has to be able to power the headphones I use at home. The latter is crucial to me, because I use a Sennheiser HD 650 occasionally and a Beyerdynamic DT990 pro (250 Ohm) most of the time. Again, I'm not an audiophile, I just like how they sound, but driving them with mobile players alone is pretty damn hard. So far, I often use a lightly modded iPod 4th Gen and a penguin amp. Which isn't brilliant, but quite a lot less bulky than the laptop plus DAC combo I use otherwise. Even the ipod/amp combo is still not compact and convenient enough for me, to be honest, and that's where the pono might come in. Yes, it seems to be quite awkwardly shaped, but still much better than an ipod with some weird wiring coming out of it and going into a headphone amp, strapped together with a rubber band. As far as a ponomusic store is concerned, I am personally far more interested in the way the original masters are being treated before they reach the end customer. I could live with 44.1/16khz, but my hope is that when music is being remastered in a way that audiophiles can live with, I will at least be spared from massively overcompressed and brickwall-limited music. Such a store would have to be an acceptable user experience, though. I know it's probably a bit thick, but as a customer, I'd prefer not having to visit more than one or two digital music stores, and I really don't want to have to cope with cross-converting lossless formats. So far, if I want to go hi-res or at least lossless, I have to, and that's one of the reasons why I often stick to iTunes or rip my own CDs. Very long story short, I would probably buy a 400 dollar pono player if it delivers what is being promised so far AND it's output is powerful enough for those slightly more demanding headphones. I'd buy hi-res music from a ponomusic store if the user experience is right, the prices are acceptable and there's more to buy than the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young back catalogue. I acknowledge that I am neither an average music customer nor an audiophile. I am somewhere in between. To my experience, there are a lot of in-betweeners out there, and I think they/we are quite a huge potential target audience for the whole pono affair. As far as the kickstarter campaign is concerned, I'm somewhat tempted, but it's probably better to wait for more info on the device and the store.