Neil Young’s Toberlone-shaped Pono high-resolution music player, which was supposed to be released in the fall, has been delayed until the first quarter of 2015. This product earned $6.25 million on Kickstarter, then $7 million on Crowdfunder, which is a crowd-funding investment site, so the company has around $13 million (though they don’t have all of the Crowdfunder money yet). That will earn a lot of interest between now and delivery date.
This is another setback for Pono, which has seen its CEO leave (or be fired), and those fans who ponied up money may start getting antsy. Oh, and Neil Young’s getting divorced; it’s not clear if that has anything to do with the delay…
Update: Pono has posted an update on their Kickstarter page saying:
“An article recently came out with unfounded claims suggesting PonoPlayers pre-ordered though Kickstarter would not ship until 2015.
Our team wants to reiterate our commitment to all of you: Delivery of the PonoPlayer still stands as originally expected–October 2014 or December 2014 depending on your specific player.”
The website does say Q1 2015, but perhaps that’s for people ordering now; perhaps they’ll be shipping the Kickstarter orders sooner.
If that’s the case, however, they might have made it clear in their statement…
Kirk, you might want to check out the response from Pono’s Pedram Abrari in the comments below the Showbiz411 post you’re citing. There is no production delay and there are other significant errors in the post, according to Abrari.
I think that announcing a ship date, and moving that date back is what is called a “production delay.” I saw that there were other errors in the post I link to, and I don’t repeat them here.
Kirk, you might want to check out the response from Pono’s Pedram Abrari in the comments below the Showbiz411 post you’re citing. There is no production delay and there are other significant errors in the post, according to Abrari.
I think that announcing a ship date, and moving that date back is what is called a “production delay.” I saw that there were other errors in the post I link to, and I don’t repeat them here.
In the meantime, they can simply listen to 16-bit lossless files. After all, it will sound exactly the same.
In the meantime, they can simply listen to 16-bit lossless files. After all, it will sound exactly the same.
the term “lossless” is marketing garbage. if there’s 24bit masters recorded well they will sound better than the 16bit masters that have been downsampled. what do you think happened to the additional 65 million datapoints when downsampling?
they get lost.
“lossless” is a term invented in the mp3 era and it is very misleading. anything less than the original masters are “lossy”, whether it’s through data compression or downsampling.
different kind of loss, yes, but loss nonetheless.
the term “lossless” is marketing garbage. if there’s 24bit masters recorded well they will sound better than the 16bit masters that have been downsampled. what do you think happened to the additional 65 million datapoints when downsampling?
they get lost.
“lossless” is a term invented in the mp3 era and it is very misleading. anything less than the original masters are “lossy”, whether it’s through data compression or downsampling.
different kind of loss, yes, but loss nonetheless.
Perhaps now would be the time to publish an apology – I am a Kickstarter backer and I received my Pono Player on Monday (8th Dec 2014) exactly as they said they would.
Perhaps now would be the time to publish an apology – I am a Kickstarter backer and I received my Pono Player on Monday (8th Dec 2014) exactly as they said they would.