Pono Will Play Stereo DSD Downloads Soon

[bmoura]

A high ranking executive at PONO Music says the Neil Young Pono will be able to play DSD downloads "sooner than you think". Sounds like a ROM upgrade to the device which already has a DSD-capable ESS DAC Chip inside.
http://www.audiostream.com/content/pono-play-dsd

 

[elmer]

My Fiio X3 can play DSD as well as WAV, FLAC, AIFF et al, can display album artwork stores up to 128 GB, is smaller than the PONO and costs under $200

http://www.cnet.com/news/fiios-nifty-200-portable-high-resolution-music-player-is-a-knockout/

 

[bmoura]

My Fiio X3 can play DSD as well as WAV, FLAC, AIFF et al, can display album artwork stores up to 128 GB, is smaller than the PONO and costs under $200

http://www.cnet.com/news/fiios-nifty-200-portable-high-resolution-music-player-is-a-knockout/

And you can get products like the iDSD Nano and the Geek Out for under $200 to add DSD playback to any PC or Laptop. We will see if the cache of having a product from Neil Young encourages music fans to pay more than that for Pono.

 

[mdmost]

Good news. As a Pono owner, DSD was the missing piece for a one stop hi-res device for me that's portable.

 

[bmoura]

Good news. As a Pono owner, DSD was the missing piece for a one stop hi-res device for me that's portable.

The Pono has a DSD-capable DAC chip inside. So I always wondered if DSD playback was coming via a ROM software upgrade.
Turns out it is.

In terms of one-stop hi-res devices, there are some good ones out there - Geek Out, UFO and iDSD Nano and Micro.
All three fit in your pocket and provide very nice DSD and PCM playback on the go.

 

[mdmost]

I'd love to see a comparison of the 4 and how they sound. Hopefully Sound and Vision will take that on at some point.

 

[bmoura]

I'd love to see a comparison of the 4 and how they sound. Hopefully Sound and Vision will take that on at some point.

There are some reviews out there of the portable download players (see links below). If you want a player with DSD 256fs, the two iDSD units are the way to go. The others are limited to DSD 128fs.
Otherwise, they all are worth hearing.
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue74/ufo_dsd.htm
http://www.audiostream.com/content/lh-labs-geek-out-1000-dacheadphone-amplifier
http://www.audiostream.com/content/ifi-nano-idsd-dacheadphone-amp
http://www.audiostream.com/content/ifi-micro-idsd

 

[mdmost]

Just got a notice to update to firmware 1.0.5 which adds DSD support. About to try it out.

***ALERT: Because of a previous issue (that is fixed in this firmware version), please remove your microSD card prior to downloading and installing this latest firmware update. After downloading the firmware update, to install, please eject your PonoPlayer from your computer and unplug the Micro-USB cable from your PonoPlayer. ***

Watch the Firmware Update video for a walkthrough of the update process.
http://vimeo.com/111570190


Firmware Version 1.0.5 Release Notes:
Feature Enhancements & Bug Fixes

Added DSD playback capability

Playback of DSD file utilizes the DSD mode of the player’s DAC. The data in the DSD file is presented directly to the DAC.
Support for 2 channel DSD64 and DSD128 files
Support for DFF file container (containing uncompressed data)
Support for DSF file container including ID3 tags

Improvements to Audio file support
Corrected “Scanning Music Library” issue for MP3 files that have malformed UTF-8 tags
Added handling for truncated/malformed WAV files
Added handling for AIFF files with invalid chunks (some HDTracks files had this issue)
Added support for 32 bit WAV files

Improvements to USB mode and device management
Fixed issue where the PonoPlayer drives weren't always detected if the player was asleep when plugged into a computer
The screen rotation locks automatically while Music Transfer Mode is enabled
Detect corrupted files that cause the “Scanning Music Library” issue and display a dialog with the filepath of the file to allow users to connect via USB and remove the file.
Detect if the internal storage is formatted to an unsupported filesystem or has filesystem errors that the player cannot repair. Display a dialog allowing the user to reformat the internal storage if this occurs.

 

[bmoura]

Just got a notice to update to firmware 1.0.5 which adds DSD support. About to try it out.

Let us know how it goes. The free upgrade to DSD 128fs makes the Pono more interesting as a portable player.

 

[mdmost]

It's great so far. I loaded some OOP SACD-R files I've acquired here and there. They sound really good. Tried the free download from Native DSD but I'm not a huge fan of instrumental music. I may check out some DSD offerings from Acoustic Sounds.

 

[bmoura]

It's great so far. I loaded some OOP SACD-R files I've acquired here and there. They sound really good. Tried the free download from Native DSD but I'm not a huge fan of instrumental music. I may check out some DSD offerings from Acoustic Sounds.

Native DSD has mostly Classical and Jazz to date. There will be more DSD Downloads - and musical styles - in Multichannel and Stereo DSD there soon.

You might try some of the David Elias DSD downloads on Native DSD and free samples of his music on the Oppo web site. It's vocal/acoustic.
His first two albums (The Window and Crossing) were on Multichannel SACD - now out of print. His more recent albums are download only.
http://oppodigital.com/hra/dsd-by-davidelias.aspx
https://skettisandwich.nativedsd.com/

On Acoustic Sounds, all downloads are Stereo. Multichannel is coming soon. Today, the most impressive DSD downloads there - not surprisingly - are the ones sourced from Analog Tapes and DSD recordings. Some interesting ones include the Creedence Clearwater Revival catalog, the Nat King Cole albums and 3 ABKCO titles by The Animals, Sam Cooke and the Rolling Stones - all sourced from Analog Tape plus some native DSD recordings including Band of Horses, Grant Farm, Elephant Revival, Steve Vidaic and Janet Feder. Also worth considering.
http://store.acousticsounds.com/index.cfm?get=results&categoryID=372
http://store.acousticsounds.com/index.cfm?get=results&CategoryID=372&LabelID=6
http://store.acousticsounds.com/index.cfm?get=results&searchtext=creedence&categoryID=372
http://store.acousticsounds.com/index.cfm?get=results&searchtext=nat,king,cole&categoryID=372

Along with Jazz and Blues (Eric Bibb) on DSD File.Com and Acoustic, Instrumental and Classical on Blue Coast and Downloads Now. (Both DSD File and Blue Coast + Downloads Now also have Free Download programs if you provide an email address for their newsletters).
http://shop.dsdfile.com/free-dsd-download/

Enjoy!

 

[salsdali]

I will be using a pono to play dsd files thru the Line Out on the pono player and to the AUX IN on my car stereo.

Does the pono play and convert multichannel dsd files (created by using sonore iso2dsd in multichannel mode) to stereo (dual channel) for output or do I need to rip only the dual channel SACD layer using sonore so that my car stereo will be able to play only the dual channel?

Does the pono ONLY play dual channel dsd files or does it play multichannel dsd and convert them to dual channel for output?

My Kenwood car stereo does not output multichannel to my car speakers (I only have 2 stereo speakers) but it will play multichannel DTS 5.1 Discs and down convert to DTS 2.0. I guess my question is, does the AUX IN on my car stereo down convert to 2.0 when receiving 5.1 multichannel input from the Pono or does the Pono ONLY output 2.0 from the Line Out.