I’ve been seeing weirdly intense hostility to the Pono music player and service. A Business Insider article implies that it’s a scheme by Apple to make you buy your music all over again at higher prices. Another article complains that it will hold “only” 1,872 tracks and protests that “the Average person” (their capitalization) doesn’t hear any improvement. I wonder if some of these people are outraged because they’re confusing Pono with Bono and thinking this is the new copy-proof file format which he said Apple is working on.
In fact, Pono isn’t using any new format and isn’t introducing DRM. Its files are in the well-known FLAC format. FLAC stands for “Free Lossless Audio Codec.” The term technically refers only to the codec, not the container, but it’s usually delivered in a “Native FLAC” container. It can also be delivered in an Ogg container, providing better metadata support and slightly larger files.
The “lossless” part of the name refers to FLAC’s compression. MP3 uses lossy compression, which removes some information, sacrificing a little audio quality to make the file smaller. FLAC delivers larger files, giving better quality and a larger file size for the same sampling rate and bit resolution. According to CNET, “Pono’s recordings will range from CD-quality 16-bit/44.1kHz to 24-bit/192kHz “ultra-high resolution.” 96 kilohertz (dividing 192 by 2 per the Nyquist theorem) is way beyond the threshold of human hearing, so it’s understandable that people are skeptical about whether it offers any benefit over a lower sampling rate. Frequencies that high are normally filtered out.
FLAC is non-proprietary and DRM-free, and it has an open source reference implementation. Someone could put FLAC into a DRM container, but then why not use a proprietary encoding? Using FLAC is a step forward from the patent-encumbered MP3, with license requirements that effectively lock out free software.
iTunes doesn’t support FLAC files, so the Business Insider claim that Pono is Apple’s way of making you buy music over again is idiotic. It’s like saying Windows 8 is an Apple scheme to make you buy new software.
As the number of gigabytes you can stick in your pocket keeps growing, the need for compression decreases. For many people, amount of music storage takes priority over improved sound quality, but some will pay for a high-end player that gives them the best sound possible. I don’t get why this infuriates so many critics. At any rate, the file format shouldn’t scare anyone.
For more discussion of FLAC as it relates to Pono, see “What is FLAC? The high-def MP3 explained” on CNET’s site; the headline is totally wrong, but the article itself is good.
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Mad File Format Science 
Pono’s file format
I’ve been seeing weirdly intense hostility to the Pono music player and service. A Business Insider article implies that it’s a scheme by Apple to make you buy your music all over again at higher prices. Another article complains that it will hold “only” 1,872 tracks and protests that “the Average person” (their capitalization) doesn’t hear any improvement. I wonder if some of these people are outraged because they’re confusing Pono with Bono and thinking this is the new copy-proof file format which he said Apple is working on.
In fact, Pono isn’t using any new format and isn’t introducing DRM. Its files are in the well-known FLAC format. FLAC stands for “Free Lossless Audio Codec.” The term technically refers only to the codec, not the container, but it’s usually delivered in a “Native FLAC” container. It can also be delivered in an Ogg container, providing better metadata support and slightly larger files.
The “lossless” part of the name refers to FLAC’s compression. MP3 uses lossy compression, which removes some information, sacrificing a little audio quality to make the file smaller. FLAC delivers larger files, giving better quality and a larger file size for the same sampling rate and bit resolution. According to CNET, “Pono’s recordings will range from CD-quality 16-bit/44.1kHz to 24-bit/192kHz “ultra-high resolution.” 96 kilohertz (dividing 192 by 2 per the Nyquist theorem) is way beyond the threshold of human hearing, so it’s understandable that people are skeptical about whether it offers any benefit over a lower sampling rate. Frequencies that high are normally filtered out.
FLAC is non-proprietary and DRM-free, and it has an open source reference implementation. Someone could put FLAC into a DRM container, but then why not use a proprietary encoding? Using FLAC is a step forward from the patent-encumbered MP3, with license requirements that effectively lock out free software.
iTunes doesn’t support FLAC files, so the Business Insider claim that Pono is Apple’s way of making you buy music over again is idiotic. It’s like saying Windows 8 is an Apple scheme to make you buy new software.
As the number of gigabytes you can stick in your pocket keeps growing, the need for compression decreases. For many people, amount of music storage takes priority over improved sound quality, but some will pay for a high-end player that gives them the best sound possible. I don’t get why this infuriates so many critics. At any rate, the file format shouldn’t scare anyone.
For more discussion of FLAC as it relates to Pono, see “What is FLAC? The high-def MP3 explained” on CNET’s site; the headline is totally wrong, but the article itself is good.
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