Neil Young's Time Fades Away on PonoMusic: Hello, old friend!

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Jim the Oldbie

My right elbow hurts.
Joined
Jun 6, 2015
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With all the hoo-hah over Neil's fancy new music player, I haven't paid much attention to the other half of the concept, the PonoMusic download service. But today I read this mention here on QQ (thanks 'atrocity'!) of not only the service but the fact that Neil's elusive classic, Time Fades Away, was available for download there!

Full disclosure: This will always be my favorite Neil Young album. I've worn out at least 2 copies of it on vinyl. It was released right smack in the middle of my high school years, and it has become part of my DNA. Every autumn, right around Halloween as the leaves are falling, I am compelled for reasons I can't even recall anymore to put this one into heavy rotation for a couple of weeks, then let it rest again until next year when the ritual repeats, as it has pretty much without fail for the last 40-some years. What I'm trying to say is, I really really like this album a lot...

<ahem> Anyway. I'm happy to report that the download from PonoMusic sounds great.

By now, most Neil fans know the story of this recording. It was mastered direct-to-disc using an early automated mixing console, so no official stereo master tapes were ever made. Because of this, any proper reissue would require an actual remix from the original 16-track master. Sadly, for reasons known and unknown, Neil just never really seemed to like this record very much (and it is his music after all); so it just didn't happen. Until now.

How's it compare? The HDCD was pretty compressed, so there's really no contest there. But this version is much clearer and more dynamic than even any vinyl copy I've ever heard. It's really never sounded like this. You can crank it right the hell on up, and it will take you right to the show.

I do need to complain a bit about the PonoMusic service itself. The site requires that you download & install the "PonoMusicWorld app" (or whatever it's called), which turns out to be an audio-only, marketing-slathered version of JRiver Media Center, which beside the fact that I already have JRiver installed (Grr!), is wa-ay too much screwing around just to download some tunes. Also, I personally don't believe the hype about this insane 192K sample rate stuff. I'm convinced the night-and-day difference here is due to the long-deserved proper remix & remaster that this music has finally received. Hell, my audio rig resamples everything to 96K on the fly anyway, and it still sounds like Neil & the boys are right here in the living room. It's just wonderful.

If you love this album half as much as I do, you want to hear this. I know, twenty bucks is still twenty bucks; but you know this one is special. As for me, I'm going to enjoy it one more time tonight - then save it until autumn rolls around again.

-- Jim
 
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I'm happy to report that the download from PonoMusic blows them both out of the water.

Cool! I pulled the trigger on it last night but haven't even sampled any of it yet. I'm hoping to have some crank-it time tonight.

I do need to complain a bit about the PonoMusic service itself. The site requires that you download & install the "PonoMusicWorld app" (or whatever it's called), which turns out to be an audio-only, marketing-slathered version of JRiver Media Center, which beside the fact that I already have JRiver installed (Grr!), is wa-ay too much screwing around just to download some tunes.

I hate it too. I've got it on a computer that's by no means a slouch but that software is a *slug*. Making me enter my name and password again before the downloads would start also seemed unnecessary. And the downloading itself is ridiculously slow. The reason I haven't even sampled what I bought is that I had to go to bed last night before anything finished. When I got up this morning I found that three of the tracks from "Rust Never Sleeps" aborted...fortunately, it let me restart and they all came in...though thinking about it now, I should probably flac -t everything just to be safe.

I wound up getting "Time Fades Away", "Rust Never Sleeps" and the Dylan mono set. First thing I noticed is that the Dylan set is tagged as a single very long album...I'm going to spend some time to re-tag it so it comes up as the original individual ones.


Also, I personally don't believe the hype about this insane 192K sample rate stuff.

Me either. And I question how firm Mr. Young's commitment is when there are several of his own titles that had physical discs released with 24/96 that he's only selling at 16/44.1.

But having said that, I think the Pono store is serving a genuine need. There are lots of people selling lossily compressed files and a few people selling a few lossless high-resolution ones, but I think Pono might be the only place where you can get that much standard resolution lossless material without having to buy a CD. Even better, at least some of what they're selling is no longer in print on CD. Selling out of print material as downloads has always seemed to me like the most obvious use of that technology.

And when I say "without having to buy a CD", I'm not trying to be anti-physical media...but I'm 56 and have been collecting the stuff my entire life. I literally can no longer file it all in an organized manner. The records are completely hopeless and the CDs can only sort of be done because I invested in a jillion JewelSleeves. At least I can listen to anything digital in an organized fashion because I have it all on a server with multiple backups.
 
Cool! I pulled the trigger on it last night but haven't even sampled any of it yet. I'm hoping to have some crank-it time tonight.

Oh hell yes!

"The punches came fast and hard,
Lyin' on my back in the schoolyard..."

Don't Be Denied! :smokin

...And the downloading itself is ridiculously slow. The reason I haven't even sampled what I bought is that I had to go to bed last night before anything finished. When I got up this morning I found that three of the tracks from "Rust Never Sleeps" aborted...fortunately, it let me restart and they all came in...though thinking about it now, I should probably flac -t everything just to be safe.

Yeesh, that sucks... I had better luck with the actual internet part. My connection was maxed out & completed in under 10 minutes.

I wound up getting "Time Fades Away", "Rust Never Sleeps" and the Dylan mono set. First thing I noticed is that the Dylan set is tagged as a single very long album...I'm going to spend some time to re-tag it so it comes up as the original individual ones.

Yikes! No cue sheet even? That's not very professional.

...And I question how firm Mr. Young's commitment is when there are several of his own titles that had physical discs released with 24/96 that he's only selling at 16/44.1.

When it comes to Neil, sometimes we just gotta shrug our shoulders. :rolleyes: I keep reminding myself, yeah, he's a little out of plumb, but this guy wrote "Cinnamon Girl."

But having said that, I think the Pono store is serving a genuine need. There are lots of people selling lossily compressed files and a few people selling a few lossless high-resolution ones, but I think Pono might be the only place where you can get that much standard resolution lossless material without having to buy a CD. Even better, at least some of what they're selling is no longer in print on CD. Selling out of print material as downloads has always seemed to me like the most obvious use of that technology.

Oh, I agree. Along with Time Fades Away, just for the hell of it I also got Todd Rundgren's Initiation. I've owned a couple of different releases of it for years, but I was just curious. (The download sounds OK by the way, 16/44, nothing special.) Anyway, they had a lot of his old titles that I'm pretty sure are getting hard to find on CD. More power to them in that endeavor.

And when I say "without having to buy a CD", I'm not trying to be anti-physical media...but I'm 56 and have been collecting the stuff my entire life. I literally can no longer file it all in an organized manner. The records are completely hopeless and the CDs can only sort of be done because I invested in a jillion JewelSleeves. At least I can listen to anything digital in an organized fashion because I have it all on a server with multiple backups.

Hee! I'm sure my collection of assorted circular plastic is embarrassingly modest compared to most around here, but I'm at the point where if there's a way to keep another piece of it from eventually floating around in the ocean, that sounds like a plan to me. I never used to think about that stuff much, but it seems like the older I get the more it bugs me (just turned 58, by the way). So yeah, servers & backups, and backups of backups - I'm fully OK with that these days.

-- Jim
 
Yikes! No cue sheet even? That's not very professional.

I didn't mean it was one giant file...every track is its own FLAC, but the entire set downloads as tracks 1-94 of a single album. I suppose that's accurate in its own way, but that's just not the way I'm likely to listen to it, so I re-did all the tags to make the server show multiple albums. And I really like what I've played so far, both the Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
 
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