[gwern]

> "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.

[Chipchipperson]

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.

[SloopJon]

> 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."

[gwern]

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.