Despite the setback of losing Stuart’s technology, we were not about to give up. We had come so far, and we weren’t going to let this obstacle get in the way. Hamm began calling his many contacts in the audiophile community, asking them if they knew of another technology or audio expert who might have something that could help us distinguish the player. While no one was doing anything similar to what Stuart had been working on, Hamm was referred to Charley Hansen, the founder of Ayre Acoustics in Boulder, Colorado.
CHARLEY HANSEN
Charley was a brilliant designer of high-end audio equipment, including amplifiers, pre-amps, DACs, and other electronic components that were among the finest available in the world, with some components retailing for as much as $10,000.
He was passionate about audio quality, a real genius, and a contrarian about how audio products were being designed and marketed. In particular, he was critical about how most hardware manufacturers focused more on specs than audio quality. Charley obsessed about his product details, including features others ignored, such as the design and behavior of the volume control. He would fine-tune his designs by spending hours conducting listening tests as he made the tiniest changes to optimize the sound. Charley had been paralyzed below the chest after a motorcycle struck him head-on while bicycling years earlier and used a wheelchair. But he had kept applying his brilliant mind to building outstanding audio hardware.
When Hamm went to Boulder to meet with Charley, he asked if he’d be interested in working on Pono with Neil, and Charley became very excited. He told Hamm that he had always wanted to create an affordable listening device that tapped his expertise, and he thought he knew just what to do.
Charley dismissed Stuart’s technology as solving a problem that didn’t exist and therefore no longer needed solving. We had no reason to shrink the files at all, since memory and file size were not the issues they had been years earlier. Like Neil, he was opposed to a new proprietary music format that added new restrictions to the music files and was controlled by for-profit companies.
The key to designing an exceptional player, he explained, was to focus on improving the audio quality, which, he surmised, could be much better than anything now available. He would use one of the best DACs and incorporate a much better amplifier, based on the designs he used in his own high-end products.
He said he would pick the very best low-power DAC made for portable devices, and for the amplifier, use discrete components instead of off-the-shelf amplifier chips used in other players—again, what Charley did with his own audiophile products. The amplification design, he asserted, is one of the most important areas that impacts audio quality, and most companies get it all wrong.
While it might require hundreds of separate parts, including resistors, transistors, and capacitors, instead of a single inexpensive amplifier chip that everyone else used, Charley promised the performance would be much better than any other player ever made. It would be designed with no feedback loop, just as he designed his own products. Conventional products use a feedback loop that measures the output signal to adjust the input signal, something that he found degrades audio quality. Charley would also use a balanced output design, something only high-end audio products use, that provides two channels of audio, each through its own headphone jack, that are isolated from each other to deliver superior audio.
Charley Hansen, founder of Ayre Acoustics
Charley confidently predicted he could create the best player that ever existed, and he was ready to get started.
We signed an agreement in which he would receive a royalty for each player sold, and Charley went to work. Charley’s approach would require a redesign to a major portion of the Pono player’s electronics and expert skills in being able to pack all the additional components onto the small circuit board. Dave Paulsen had just those skills, and he and Charley would work together for many months. Charley and Dave considered each other geniuses, because each was the best at what he did.
UNCERTAINTY
While we were elated that Charley had a solution, there were still lots of unknowns. Could we fit his new electronics into the player? What would it do to battery life? Could Charley really do what he promised?
If we could pull this off, it would be a great example of benefiting from a setback. We’d have a product that sounded better than anything we imagined, while losing a feature that wasn’t nearly as useful as we had first assumed. After all, what would be preferable, a player that could hold more files, or a player that, in Neil’s words, sounded like God?
The future became a little brighter as we moved into 2014. We had a strong CEO, capable teams hard at work on the player and the music store, and a new audio partner who could help us make the best portable player in the world.
However, we were still struggling to bring in enough money to fund the increase in activity. We continued to bring in small private investments, but few major ones. Yet, the need for cash would become even greater as we moved closer to manufacturing.