PONO nono?

There has been quite a buzz lately about Neil Young’s new PONO compact audio player that promises to deliver 192 KHz sample rate audio, which is a much higher rate than most studios use for recording or mixing.
Young claims he can clearly hear the difference. But between what? An mp3, sure. But that is not the whole story.

Here is a great little article (albeit a marketing piece for Benchmark, a company whose converters is use daily). This dispels some of the hype involving high resolution recording.

What Is High Resolution Audio?

My take is that a high resolution audio player is a welcome addition to the market, but it is not necessary to use the computer resources necessary to record at 192 kHz sample rate. More than sufficient is 96 kHz (24 bit), and even that might be overkill. Yes I can hear the difference between 16 bit CD quality (44.1 kHz) and high resolutions. I would welcome a player that allows me to hear my masters recorded and mixed to 88.1 kHz or 96 KHz at 24 bit, so they sound like they do in the studio, and that is what it’s all about, right? Anyway the future of audio delivery is about streaming high resolution formats anyway, so bring it on!

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