Pono Music Software

[jriver]

It should be fixed in a future firmware update.

[Jud]

I can say that HD TRACK .aif files show up on Pono sometime, and sometimes they do not. I can't figure it out but it's a royal PITA. I'm not at all enjoying the PONO app... it's slow and very buggy. The drag-and-drop works better but it's still hit and miss. Sometimes the Pono player looks empty as a drive but has music on it. Very strange. Don't know what I think yet. I am trying to find some headphone recommendations so I can see just what I think...

 

Both I and one of the Pono forum moderators think the relatively inexpensive Etymotic ER-4P in-ear monitors are a match made in heaven with the Pono player.

[Jud]

Yes, I agree. My suggestion was more in regards to the fact that most AIFF format files have a .AIFF extension as opposed to an .AIF extension.

 

And that I had no issues with any files with a .AIFF extension, only those from HD Tracks with an .AIF extension ( and to be clear I am not blaming either JRIVER or HD Tracks for this ).

 

-- Barr aka "Brian"

 

Whoops, I always am ready to call you Brian for some reason but had managed to save myself in time previously. I used to get mad at my father for mixing up my friends' names until I found it was hereditary.

 

Strangely my experience has been exactly the opposite - for example, of 20-odd AIFF tracks from Mark Knopfler's Privateering that I transferred to the player, only the single track with an .aif extension showed up in the UI; the rest, with .aiff extensions, were all hidden. So I'm converting to (uncompressed) flac for the time being and awaiting that firmware fix.

[REShaman]

Both I and one of the Pono forum moderators think the relatively inexpensive Etymotic ER-4P in-ear monitors are a match made in heaven with the Pono player.

 

Hello Jud,

 

Just placed an order for Etymotic Research ER-4PT MicroPro Noise-Isolating In-Ear Earphones (Black) to use with my LE NY Chrome specifically when exercising, e.g., walking my neighborhood. Thank you for the recommenation. Also read your remarks and the Moderator's at the Pono Community Forum for IEM.

 

Arrival date is Monday, December 29th.

 

With appreciation,

Richard

[Jud]

Only one caution, Richard: These things have amazing noise isolation, so pay close attention to traffic!

[REShaman]

Only one caution, Richard: These things have amazing noise isolation, so pay close attention to traffic!

 

Precisely, Jud. Prudent counsel. And reflected in several Amazon.com reviews on the product pages.

 

Fortunately, I live in a quiet neighborhood overlooking the Hudson River and the Jersey Palisades. In NYC, often behind the wheel, I see pedestrians on their cell phones in the middle of the street head bowed, texting (?) while crossing oblivious to the oncoming traffic or behind the wheel with their heads lowered (texting?), or in the left lane of traffic driving at speeds well below the speed limits, cell phone raised to their ear.

 

Your admonition is a testament to the merit of the Micro ER-4PT. Given my enjoyment of the Pono Player's output while sitting in my music room, I am looking forward taking it to the streets and taking my music library with me.

 

Thank you NY, Charles Hansen and all the artists accomanying me on my jaunts, ;>}

 

Enjoy the music,

Richard

[baddog]

Whoops, I always am ready to call you Brian for some reason but had managed to save myself in time previously. I used to get mad at my father for mixing up my friends' names until I found it was hereditary.

 

Snip, snip....

 

 

No problem there, all in good fun, I too have the darndest time with names. At least yours is rather memorable...

 

I got a similar "response" from Pono today on my open ticket, their solution was as follows, "I do recommend converting your files that are AIFF to FLAC file"

 

I left them a rather detailed response on while that might be an acceptable short term solution, but that long term they should have Ayre make the appropriate firmware fix to the music software.

 

Barr

[REShaman]

No problem there, all in good fun, I too have the darndest time with names. At least yours is rather memorable...

 

I got a similar "response" from Pono today on my open ticket, their solution was as follows, "I do recommend converting your files that are AIFF to FLAC file"

 

I left them a rather detailed response on while that might be an acceptable short term solution, but that long term they should have Ayre make the appropriate firmware fix to the music software.

 

Barr

 

Hello Barr,

 

Thank you for following through with an additional comment to emphasize our preference for a cure rather than a work-around. I hope they make this cure their priority, whoever is responsible for the firmware updates.

 

Enjoy the music,

Richard

[baddog]

Well I would go plead my case with Neil but not sure where he is spending the holidays. If anyone has any tips please let me know.

[REShaman]

Well I would go plead my case with Neil but not sure where he is spending the holidays. If anyone has any tips please let me know.

 

Perhaps with Daryl Hannah ;>} bringing in the New Year.

 

BTW: Happy New Year!

 

Best,

Richard

[baddog]

Richard - Omigosh! I thought you were kidding, but then I had to check. All I can say is wow....

 

Happy New Year to all!

 

Barr

[REShaman]

Richard - Omigosh! I thought you were kidding, but then I had to check. All I can say is wow....

 

Happy New Year to all!

 

Barr

 

 

Unfortunately, David Crosby voiced remarks about NY and Daryl Hannah's relationship which so offended NY that NY has refused to ever work with CSN(Y) in the future. My outcome is not to spread gossip, merely to express my regret that dear friends have had a falling out. Clearly this post is OT; and I ask the indulgence of the membership. Our loss as I so enjoyed CSNY in collection. Perhaps the rift can be repaired and CSNY for the future may be available for our Pono Players (not not).

 

Enjoy the music,

Richard

[zettelsm]

I've only had time to do a few experiments with my player, however I've experienced the .aiff bug. Figuring I could bypass slow loading with PMW I loaded several high-resolution albums directly onto the micoSD card using a USB reader and dragging the album folders from the desktop to the card.

 

That worked fine for all the non-.aiff albums and three of the four .aiff albums. The fourth album does not show up in its entirety -- no tracks, no album cover, nothing to show it exists on the SD card, though looking at the card via computer shows the album is there.

 

Otherwise I'm extremely pleased with the sound quality. Just a real PITA to not know what you are going to get when trying to load music, since the vast majority of my albums are in .aiff format. And no, I'm not going to convert them to FLAC as a work-around!

 

Just another datapoint along the information superhighway of life.

 

Steve Z

[cgiammona]

I've only had time to do a few experiments with my player, however I've experienced the .aiff bug. Figuring I could bypass slow loading with PMW I loaded several high-resolution albums directly onto the micoSD card using a USB reader and dragging the album folders from the desktop to the card.

 

That worked fine for all the non-.aiff albums and three of the four .aiff albums. The fourth album does not show up in its entirety -- no tracks, no album cover, nothing to show it exists on the SD card, though looking at the card via computer shows the album is there.

 

Otherwise I'm extremely pleased with the sound quality. Just a real PITA to not know what you are going to get when trying to load music, since the vast majority of my albums are in .aiff format. And no, I'm not going to convert them to FLAC as a work-around!

 

Just another datapoint along the information superhighway of life.

 

Steve Z

 

This must be a random bug as all of my aiff albums are on the player. I used both methods of installation - software and drag and drop.

[baddog]

Well after the initial recommendation of converting any problematic files that do not show up in the Pono player to FLAC, Pono Support has gotten back to me and at the behest of their engineering team requested me to send them samples of the problematic files. So I have sent them a number of files that they can analyze further. They have indicated they will be releasing new firmware in Jan/Feb, and a goal of trying to address this issue in that release.

 

So the good news is I believe that Pono has listened to the feedback we have been sending them and will try to redress, which I think is great.

 

Barr

[Jud]

Well after the initial recommendation of converting any problematic files that do not show up in the Pono player to FLAC, Pono Support has gotten back to me and at the behest of their engineering team requested me to send them samples of the problematic files. So I have sent them a number of files that they can analyze further. They have indicated they will be releasing new firmware in Jan/Feb, and a goal of trying to address this issue in that release.

 

So the good news is I believe that Pono has listened to the feedback we have been sending them and will try to redress, which I think is great.

 

Barr

 

They (Pono customer service) apparently are learning as they go. You got the most sophisticated reply; I was one of the earlier folks to notify them of the bug, and at that point their suggestion to me was to check the USB connection. (I replied that this didn't address the issue, as the tracks were on the player and thus there was no connection issue, they just weren't displayed in the player window; and that the problem only occurred with AIFF files, so they might want to look into how their firmware was handling those files. Never heard back.)

[REShaman]

ER-4PT IEM arrived today from Amazon. So did a fever of 101.2 which tempered my enthusiasm for listening to music. Given the proposed agenda for curing firmware anomalies, I am not in a hurry. Curing the flu at the moment is more important. So glad I had the flu shot. And, yes, I, too, am grateful for Pono Music.com's taking on the AIFF bug many players are experiencing. For the time being, I have my own bug to contend with.

 

Happy (achoo) New Year ;>}

 

Richard

[baddog]

Well another update on the firmware and the issue with some files not loading into the music server software on the Pono.

 

I heard back from Pono engineering today. This is what they found, note these files were all downloads from HDTracks.

 

Our engineering team has identified the issue with these files.

The three files provided all have an invalid chunk at the end of the files which causes the parser to reject the file as valid. The chunk is invalid because it indicates a size that extends beyond the end of the file (by 4 bytes). The chunk type is APPL which we would ignore anyway.

We've adjusted the parsing logic to ignore the invalid chunk and allow playback of these files. The fix for this issue will be included in the next firmware release.

[REShaman]

Well another update on the firmware and the issue with some files not loading into the music server software on the Pono.

 

I heard back from Pono engineering today. This is what they found, note these files were all downloads from HDTracks.

 

Our engineering team has identified the issue with these files.

 

 

The three files provided all have an invalid chunk at the end of the files which causes the parser to reject the file as valid. The chunk is invalid because it indicates a size that extends beyond the end of the file (by 4 bytes). The chunk type is APPL which we would ignore anyway.

We've adjusted the parsing logic to ignore the invalid chunk and allow playback of these files. The fix for this issue will be included in the next firmware release.

 

This revelation may account for HDtracks that are not displayed or playable. But, Barry Diament's Winds Of Change which transfers all the tracks, meaning physically present in the Pono Player only displays 3/13 tracks that are playable. I merely added the tracks 192/24 AIFF) off the DVD-R into my iTunes Library then transferred those tracks to the Pono Player.

 

Perhaps thee are a number of scenarios that impede the Pono Player's firmware from displaying and playing certain tracks from the same album. Wonder what the difference is that makes the difference. Have chosen not to convert AIFF tracks to FLAC tracks even if that is the work-around (my choice).

 

Best,

Richard

[cgiammona]

This revelation may account for HDtracks that are not displayed or playable. But, Barry Diament's Winds Of Change which transfers all the tracks, meaning physically present in the Pono Player only displays 3/13 tracks that are playable. I merely added the tracks 192/24 AIFF) off the DVD-R into my iTunes Library then transferred those tracks to the Pono Player.

 

Perhaps thee are a number of scenarios that impede the Pono Player's firmware from displaying and playing certain tracks from the same album. Wonder what the difference is that makes the difference. Have chosen not to convert AIFF tracks to FLAC tracks even if that is the work-around (my choice).

 

Best,

Richard

 

Richard

 

Interesting, I transferred Winds of Change to my Pono Player - all songs are displayed and play without any issues. All of my files are in AIFF format.

 

Chris

[shadow ewe]

Both I and one of the Pono forum moderators think the relatively inexpensive Etymotic ER-4P in-ear monitors are a match made in heaven with the Pono player.

 

My first after-market IEM was the Etymotic (HF-3?) and they were consistently good across the board. Plus Ety does a "Out of Warranty trade-in/upgrade program" that I think is a smart idea.

 

So another thumbs up too.

[REShaman]

Richard

 

Interesting, I transferred Winds of Change to my Pono Player - all songs are displayed and play without any issues. All of my files are in AIFF format.

 

Chris

 

Chris,

 

That is interesting. I tried both methods for transferring the Winds Of Change AIFF tracks, that is:

 

1. Transferred using PMW.

2. Manually copying tracks from Music Library on external drive to Pono Player's music folder.

 

Each time, only tracks 4,8,11 were displayed and playable even though all 13 tracks were present in the Music folder on the Pono Player.

 

Great! Now what? Pono Music, I believe, posted that they are working on firmware anomalies. These peccadillos are frustrating and unwelcome.

 

Glad you are not having this issue. Wish I wasn't having it too.

 

Enjoy the music,

Richard

[beetlemania]

I don't have Pono player but I just bought my first two albums. It mostly went OK but I tried to use JRMC 18 at the same time PMW was downloading and JRMC got wonky. There was a pop-up screen about "super user". Then there I got a message as if I was installing JRMC for the first time! I breathed a sigh of relief when my JRMC settings and libraries came thru unscathed, phew!

 

Another thing I don't understand is why the Pono website gives the impression you can DL from it when, in fact, you have to use PMW.

 

As an aside, I bought a 24/44 and a 24/96. The spectrogram on the 24/96 looks good . . . maybe Pono will avoid the faux-hi-rez files that were not uncommon on HDT a couple of years ago?

[REShaman]

Pono Music (3/16/2015)

 

1. Fixed: Syncing files with conversion enabled would cause files to re-convert on every sync.

2. Fixed: Tracks on device not in sync were not getting deleted even when this option was enabled.

3. Changed: Timeout moved to September 1, 2015

4. Changed: By default, list columns widths are now auto-sized depending on contents. This can be changed in options / tree & view.

5. NEW: When songs in the PMW library are stored on a network share drive, the drive is now bookmarked by PMW so if it's not mounted after a reboot, PMW will automatically re-mount the drive when needed.

6. Fixed: CD ripping would sometimes fall out of secure mode.

7. Changed: The download process triggered at PMW startup will skip over downloads that have failed 3 or more times. Selecting "check for downloads" from the PMW account menu will force retrying the failed downloads.

8. Fixed: Numerous Retina mode improvements.

 

Best,

Richard

[REShaman]

PMW 20.0.83 available at Pono Music

 

20.0.83 (3/18/2015) beta

 

1. Fixed: After playing a track directly from CD, a message could pop-up saying the disc could not be identified.

2. Fixed: PDT-280: WebKit plugins are now disabled. Plugins (e.g. Silverlight) could cause crashes and freezes, especially during the checkout process.

3. Fixed: PDT-279: The drive is identified as /:\ on the CD misread Information dialog.

 

Best,

Richard