I still use the Pono at home to listen to IEMs. It is a truly rare bird: A DAP where sound was prioritized over all other considerations. Poor battery life, terrible UI and OS, insanely takes 20 minutes to over an hour to read all the music on higher GB SD cards, but sounds fantastic and was extremely reasonably priced for the SQ.
thanks, just checking - I ripped my entire CD library to mp3 very carefully to use old playback software that does not have FLAC support. I have heard the pono before and I think I will look for one now on fleabay
@k4rstar If you do get one and have any questions, message me. Also if you get one and enjoy it, consider a balanced cable for it from Surf Cables, one of the few places that still makes custom cables for it. It sounds best balanced, that’s how I’m listening to it now in fact.
I like my Pono also - especially balanced. For balanced cables, I believe the ones for the Sony PHA3 also work for Pono (and are available cheaply on fleabay). Also, these cables are fairly easy to make (only 2 wires to solder per "fiddly" jack). But the Pono on-board memory is unreliable, have to load all music on micro sd.
@k4rstar I use them with the FD-X1. I could use them in balanced with the HD580 but personally I don’t think it has enough oomph to lift the Sennheiser veil.
@k4rstar The player does have a high OI, so it’s not suitable for OI sensitive BAs like CFA IEMs. The Andromedas sounded pretty mushy out of it. It’s great for DD IEMs or cans, and planars that aren’t so insensitive that they need speaker taps to power them. The Pono can put out a good amount of power in balanced mode but even in SE it can power a good amount of cans.
I've been a fan of the Pono from the beginning. It managed to combine the spacious Sabre sound with an amp section that enhanced and worked with that sound. Synergy.
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