David Balfour questions whether Pono is the right way forward for high quality audio

17 April 2014 - Editorial

Neil Young’s Pono high resolution audio project this week completed its funding round on Kickstarter with a final tally of $6.2m raised. Considering the original Kickstarter goal was $800,000, this could be seen as a massive demonstration of public demand for better quality, hi-res digital music services. 

Is the success of Pono’s funding round evidence of a valuable emerging new market segment? Or is this a case of celebrity profile hyping the reality? The first thing to note is that Pono is not a particularly new concept – there is already a significant number of players offering hi-res audio files online. WAV and FLAC files have been available from many retailers for years already, whilst many other retailers already offer downloads in a range of qualities significantly above the traditional 16bit/44.1kHz CD mastering minimum standard. In fact, the only things that really makes Pono ‘new’ are the fact that its hi-res audio ecosystem centres on an own-brand device. That, and the fact that Neil Young himself is respected by millions.

There are a large number of ongoing arguments to be had about what constitutes ‘hi-res’ audio and whether the promised improvements can actually be ascertained by the average human. Whilst no one would doubt the inherent superiority of WAV/FLAC audio encoding over MP3, once one starts to go further up the ‘quality’ spectrum, there are strong arguments to suggest that people can’t actually tell the difference between the formats. What seems certain is that an ultra-hi-res file played on anything less than the best hardware will lose many of its advantages before it even reaches the human ear. In this respect at least, the idea of Pono being device-centred makes a certain amount of sense – it adds another link in the chain of ensuring a high quality audio experience. But have you seen the device? It’s definitely not pretty. Iconic maybe, at a push. We can’t see many people warming to them or proudly displaying them as people they did the early iPods. And isn’t the idea of portable hi-res audio kind of missing the point? Should such incredible sound quality not really be enjoyed in a specially designed environment with minimum outside interference?

We feel that the whole Pono project is looking overhyped. Yes, there’s a demand for hi-res audio but does it really need its own device? And does it really make sense to push the quality level as high as 24 bit/192kHzAre lower quality files such as 24bit/96kHz really noticeably inferior? (If you really want to geek out and gain a scientific understanding of the issues around encoding quality, we recommend you watch this extremely thorough video explanation.) Further questions about Pono remain unanswered, most noticeably around the business model of the company itself. For example: what cut will Pono take on sales and how much will be returned to artists? We feel that if it wasn’t for Neil Young’s personal involvement, the reaction to the service would be a lot cooler than it has been. 

Despite our reservations, there’s quite a lot to like about concepts behind Pono. If there’s one thing we should have learnt as an industry in recent years it’s that we need to serve music fans with the products they want. In certain cases, perhaps especially classical and jazz, the advantages offered by hi-res audio files are indubitable, as is the demand for them. As bandwidth increases and hardware costs continue to decline, we suspect that hi-res audio will become a much more important market segment for the music industry in coming years. Whilst we look forward to seeing the market grow, we’re not sure Pono is offering anything as appealing or as useful as it aims to be.

What we do like to imagine is some kind of future deluxe bundling offers which enable us to serve audiofiles and superfans in the best possible way. We can see real appeal in a product such as a 180 gram vinyl in deluxe packaging with hi-res download code included. If we can create future products which combine the best parts of the physical and digital worlds in a new an enticing way, customers should be happy to pay for them.