Ooook. Put some similar stuffs in there. Dude seems to be tap dancing and spinning stuff. I usually hate that kind of stuff.

The controversial point in Hansen's responses to both Tyll and Atkinson seems to be the assertion that the specific diamond buffer circuit used in the Pono Player is effectively "self-correcting" in terms of its output impedance.

I'd be interested in seeing you take your best shot at explaining why that's not correct.

If you're not up to it, I will certainly understand.

It is not valid Burns. Tyll tested his stuffs with IEMs and the thing swings them by more than 2 dB. Tyll even said:

"When I did blind tests with the JH13 and ES5 I was readily able to tell when I was listening to a high output impedance device or a low output impedance device. "

Hansen is throwing all kinds of technobabble there. His "time smear" crap ticked me off a bit as well. I don't appreciate when folks do that. Lastly he wrote in the comment section:

"As noted previously, there is essentially zero correlation between the measurements and perceived sound quality. I actively discourage paying any attention to the measurements whatsoever, especially with electronics. It does far more harm than good."

That is complete BS IMO.

Why would he be up to attacking an assertion? Especially when the data, measurements and subjective experiences correlate to the facts? An 'assertion' wipes that away and now we need to disprove a negative?

Where's the proof and evidence to support the assertion? Let's start there.

Honestly, Tyll was waaaay to nice to someone who is clearly deaf, dumb or dishonest. It's at least one of the three when you look at all the data available. Why are you so adamant about defending Hansen's ludicrous statements? You yourself said you noticed the effect of OI and that the Pono wasn't anything more than a decent all-in-one for the money at best.

If it's that far off base, then why can't you (or anyone else, seemingly) write one or two concise paragraphs debunking it.  This conversation is nothing but ad hominem attacks on someone who, with all due respect, has a track record of designing and building products that no one here can match.

If it's that far off base, then why can't you (or anyone else, seemingly) write one or two concise paragraphs debunking it.  This conversation is nothing but ad hominem attacks on someone who, with all due respect, has a track record of designing and building products that no one here can match.

Burns I can tell you I had no idea who this Charles Hansen dude was. I just read most of his comments at IF, and I'm in WTFness state. This guy seems to know some of the theory and applications. But he is spinning it to fit his agenda. Obviously so. It pisses me off more that some folks like you and perhaps Torpedo, which I follow for their knowledge and taste in music actually give any credit to this guy.

Today this dude labeled me as an "objectivist" jihad crusader for calling him on his bullshit enumerated below:

1) "The end result is that the PonoPlayer is the only portable player to date that will drive virtually any headphone to satisfying levels, regardless of impedance or sensitivity, without the need for an external headphone amplifier, especially when used in balanced mode."

 

2) "The ambient noise of our listening situation makes the noise floor of the PonoPlayer a moot point."

 

3) "This means that as the load impedance presented by the headphones decreases that the output impedance of the PonoPlayer will also decrease. This is exactly what is desired from an output stage."

 

(Tyll showed the Pono actually colors IEMs. Furthermore, cans are not exactly resistors, and if the Pono's impedance actually changes with load then we have another problem).

4) "Frequency response is almost tertiary in its importance. Anybody can recognize a familiar voice on a telephone with a bandwidth of 300 Hz to 3 kHz, even if you haven't seen that person in twenty years. (So much for the argument about the "short persistence" of aural memory...)"

 

5) "there is essentially zero correlation between the measurements and perceived sound quality. I actively discourage paying any attention to the measurements whatsoever, especially with electronics. It does far more harm than good."

 

6) "With transducers it can be helpful, but only to a trained expert. Search out Tyll's test of the $2 headphones sold by United Airlines for in-flight entertainment. They measured abysmally in every respect, yet after he listened to them he stated that they didn't sound nearly as bad as they measured."

 

(If $2 UA cans are awesome sauce, remind me why the hell I would buy a $400 DAP?)

7) "Take a theoretically perfect AC generator outputting 1 volt RMS and add a 3 ohm resistor in series. With a very high (negligible) load such as the 100 kohm input impedance of an AP test set, the 3 ohms pales to insignificance and you will measure 1 volt X (100,000/100,003) = 0.99997 volts RMS.

Now repeat this with a 32 ohm l oad and the equation is 1 volt X {32/(32+3)} = 0.914 volts. Since P = E^2/R we get an output power into 32 ohms of 26 mW.

I will leave to you to calculate the output power into other impedances.

Now, what have we learned? I say absolutely zero about the PonoPlayer"

 

This guy is a spinner ala the-marketing-guy.

IMO, w/o so much bull-shit this horrid plastic toblerone, half-assed GUIed, mild sounding, overpriced POS wouldn't get any attention.

I even forwarded your comments about having a better build with perhaps a more solid chassis and more options. Answer? Here:

"Your suggestions are good ones although not necessarily practical ones."

 

"Also at Ayre we strongly believe in not offering options."

 

"There will be a more detailed response regarding the industrial design of the player coming from Phil Baker, SVP of Product Development and Operations at Pono in the next couple of days. This should provide some great insight into the industrial design decisions that were made."

Will see...

"Also at Ayre we strongly believe in not offering options."

You mean like colors, the Codex, and $100k systems? Right...

How about the option of finding another name that LFF didn't use first?