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by Chipchipperson 4097 days ago
"In terms of its sound, I would say that for me it's without equal in the realm of hand held portable players in terms of pleasurable listening...When I compare it side-by-side in blind tests with other players I find its smooth yet resolving treble to be its stand-out characteristic. "

" This test pitted the Pono Player against a Galaxy Note 4 and an Apple iPad Air. This was actually the hardest test to get a reliable grip on identifying the various players... Because differences were so small I had to rely more on a subjective approach—just relaxing and sensing how the music was affecting me. Usually it would take me 5-15 minutes of listening and slowly switching back and forth between sources before I could determine which was the Pono Player."

One of these things is not like the other...
2 comments
gwern 4097 days ago
> "Usually it would take me 5-15 minutes of listening and slowly switching back and forth between sources before I could determine which was the Pono Player."

Yes, I'm not clear on how his blinding setup works, but this sounds like the sort of activity that could easily unblind oneself.

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Chipchipperson 4097 days ago
Well that and if this device is so great that it will save music and we need to send $500 and re-purchase our entire music library from the Pono Store, then you should be able to tell the difference between it and a tablet pretty easily without 15 minutes of intense concentrated listening.
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SloopJon 4096 days ago
> I'm not clear on how his blinding setup works

Search for "Blind Testing" on the first page: "I use a passive three-way switch to route the outputs from the three sources to a pair of headphones. ... without looking, I scramble the cables in each hand."

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gwern 4096 days ago
Can that possibly work? I would not expect cables to be perfectly indistinguishable (human touch is pretty sensitive), if only because of slight differences in tension/position/direction.
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splitdisk 4097 days ago
Self-deception is the hardest thing to contend with in these kinds of listening tests. An edge case might be this person's experience with self-deception in a hearing test:

http://www.sociopathworld.com/2012/02/hyperlexia.html

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