Archive for August, 2013

more on PONO: technical dissection

for the audiophiles, Xiph.Org writes about the flaws of PONO:

“24/192 Music Downloads …and why they make no sense

***

Articles last month [i.e. March 2012] revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple’s Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of ‘uncompromised studio quality’. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young’s group several months ago.

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

There are a few real problems with the audio quality and ‘experience’ of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we’re not going to see any actual improvement.

First, the bad news… “

>>> read the whole article::
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

(—Monty (monty@xiph.org) March 1, 2012; last revised March 25, 2012 to add improvements suggested by readers.)

see also: Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem (on Wikipedia)

What it actually says it that the human ear can’t hear frequencies up to the maximum frequency that PONO allows, i.e. 96 kHz, with a sampling frequency of 192 kHz (double the f_max_audible), but the higher frequencies might get transformed down in the audible range by non-linear effects, giving rise to deteriorating audio sound experience (or maybe another audio experience like the warm non-linear sound of tube amplifiers versus the metallic treble-loaded sound of transistor amps) . It can’t physically do any good to augment audio experience, but we suspect it might have psycho-acoustic effects.

And, the dynamic range of 24-bit of sampling also is not audible compared to a classic 16-bit dynamic sampling range. Here we have the problem of changing audio experience with the “loudness war” due to excessive dynamic compression in nowadays audio carriers, be it CD or Vinyl, like in audio ads on radio or TV who blare so loud.

In essence there must be more mystery about why Neil Young can hear it but not yet anyone else.

Tags: digital audio, pono
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PONO Illustrates Hi-Def Audio’s Problems

A Forbes Article:

Media & Entertainment  8/26/2013 @ 8:00AM

Neil Young’s Pono Music Service Illustrates Hi-Def Audio’s Problems

There’s widespread industry speculation that Neil Young’s dream of a higher quality consumer music service is slowly getting closer, although a launch date is still nowhere in sight. Pono, in which Young is heavily invested, is a high-resolution audio ecosystem consisting of a download service supplying digital audio files transferred from the original audio masters at 192kHz/24 bit, and a dedicated player with the ability to play back those files at that resolution. Along with Apple’s best kept secret in their Mastered for iTunes program, Pono is an attempt to raise the bar in audio quality, a bar that has been continually lowered since just before the turn of the century thanks to the public’s acceptance of the quality impaired MP3 format.

Read more at:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbyowsinski/2013/08/26/neil-youngs-pono-music-service-illustrates-hi-def-audios-problems/

Tags: digital audio, pono
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Human Highway Gathering

First-ever Human Highway gathering August 2013 at Lutsen Resort, Lake Superior, in Minnesota.

Photo credit: Albert Stromann

Tags: neilfests
Posted in Pix-of-the-day | 1 Comment »

City and Colour to open Ottawa Fest-replace Neil & the Horse

The Ottawa Citizen has announced that City and Colour will replace Neil Young and Crazy Horse at the Ottawa Folk Festival on Sept. 4.

The Juno-winning band led by Canadian singer-songwriter Dallas Green has agreed to step into the headlining slot of the festival’s opening night, the newspaper writes.

Organizers had to scramble after losing Young, who cancelled his North American dates to give guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro more time to heal after breaking his hand earlier this month.

“It’s definitely been a challenging week, but I’d say I’m very pleased that Dallas Green (City and Colour) could accommodate us on such short notice,” says festival executive/programming director Mark Monahan in a news release. “He’ll make a great opening night for the festival.”

Young’s tour mate, Patti Smith, will also perform, as originally scheduled, accompanied by her band.

Read More:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/City+Colour+open+Ottawa+Folk+Festival/8826225/story.html

Tags: Alchemy Tour, crazy horse, ottawa, Patti Smith, tour dates
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Refunds, refunds, refunds and more bands at Lockn’

Trey Anastasio Band, Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, Indecision and the Jeff Sipe Trio had been added to the lineup of the Sept. 7  four-day Lockn’ festival  at the 5,000-acre Oak Ridge Estate in Arlington, Virginia.

With Neil Young and Crazy Horse having canceled their appearance at next month’s inaugural Lockn’ music festival in Nelson County, event organizers say refunds are available, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

For more information on Lockn’, formerly called the Interlocken Music Festival, visit locknfestival.com.

The newspaper says concertgoers seeking a refund should contact the ticket provider, Musictoday, via email at tix@musictoday.com or by phone at (800) 594-8499 by Friday and send their tickets back to the company no later than Aug. 31.

Organizers stressed that refunds would not be given until returned tickets were received by Musictoday.

Read more at: http://www.timesdispatch.com/entertainment-life/music-movies-tv/music/refunds-offered-in-wake-of-neil-young-cancellation/article_a97fc160-0b60-11e3-82ad-0019bb30f31a.html

Tags: Alchemy Tour, crazy horse, Interlocken Muisc Festival
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