daelm
Epic Member
Item: Neil Young's Pono Audiophile Music Player (Silver, Limited Edition "Beck", 129 of 359); Ayre Acoustics DAC; FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, Unprotected AAC, DSD; Lossless playback up to 192/24 bit; 64GB internal memory
Age: 3/4 years (can't remember)
Price: R5000
Warranty: none. If you know the story of the build process, you'll know why.
Packaging: original. wooden box, player carry bag, guides, etc.
Condition: pristine. barely used - I had other options, unfortunately, and it became second or third choice
Location: Johannesburg
Reason: not used/Marie Kondo/consolidating cash/need to grow up, etc.
Shipping: Not preferred but can use PostNet if required
Collection: sure
Pictures: will add if there is interest
Link:
The story:
I bought it out of curiosity from Ysrael at CPlan Audio because I had been following the whole controversy with Neil Young and his Kickstarter to try and bring back good sound. (I bought a pair of Audeze LCD-2s and AKG K3003i's at the same time, to complement it - both of these will probably also soon be advertised.) The reviews at the time were weirdly polarized - either it was a total fraud or it was excellent. Both Ysrael and I found it (surprisingly) very very good even compared against much more expensive music players. Warm, spacious, and very musical. I think a lot of the backlash was actually against Neil Young and ignored the fact that he was just the public face and advocate for better music. The internals and the set up were Ayre Acoustics, and personally I think they did really really well.
It got side-lined mainly because I fell in love with an Acoustic Research M2 that I bought around the same time and which hasn't been displaced by anything since. The nett result is that it got used very little and then got boxed and put away. The Pono streaming service that was supposed to be part of the package was closed in 2016/2017, but that doesn't affect the player, which loads from the PC. What does get affected is firmware support, obviously. As far as I remember there's a JRiver community that you can leverage to get ongoing and updated firmware, but I am getting too old to work that hard these days. It's a pretty good music player if that's what you're after, and it's probably going to be collectible at some point, hence the price.
TL;DR: There are a lot of things in this price range currently that don't deliver as well.
FYI
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Age: 3/4 years (can't remember)
Price: R5000
Warranty: none. If you know the story of the build process, you'll know why.
Packaging: original. wooden box, player carry bag, guides, etc.
Condition: pristine. barely used - I had other options, unfortunately, and it became second or third choice
Location: Johannesburg
Reason: not used/Marie Kondo/consolidating cash/need to grow up, etc.
Shipping: Not preferred but can use PostNet if required
Collection: sure
Pictures: will add if there is interest
Link:
The story:
I bought it out of curiosity from Ysrael at CPlan Audio because I had been following the whole controversy with Neil Young and his Kickstarter to try and bring back good sound. (I bought a pair of Audeze LCD-2s and AKG K3003i's at the same time, to complement it - both of these will probably also soon be advertised.) The reviews at the time were weirdly polarized - either it was a total fraud or it was excellent. Both Ysrael and I found it (surprisingly) very very good even compared against much more expensive music players. Warm, spacious, and very musical. I think a lot of the backlash was actually against Neil Young and ignored the fact that he was just the public face and advocate for better music. The internals and the set up were Ayre Acoustics, and personally I think they did really really well.
It got side-lined mainly because I fell in love with an Acoustic Research M2 that I bought around the same time and which hasn't been displaced by anything since. The nett result is that it got used very little and then got boxed and put away. The Pono streaming service that was supposed to be part of the package was closed in 2016/2017, but that doesn't affect the player, which loads from the PC. What does get affected is firmware support, obviously. As far as I remember there's a JRiver community that you can leverage to get ongoing and updated firmware, but I am getting too old to work that hard these days. It's a pretty good music player if that's what you're after, and it's probably going to be collectible at some point, hence the price.
TL;DR: There are a lot of things in this price range currently that don't deliver as well.
FYI
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