I've done A-B comparisons with the FLAC samples from Pono's store (including some at 44k1/16 that supposedly come from the CD masters) vs. my own FLACs ripped from CD. It is clear that the music on Pono, like "Gold CDs" and other audiophile snakeoil that has come before it, gets its "better" sound by remastering, not because of the higher bitrate or bit depth. I put better in quotes there, because it really is a matter of opinion, and these types of products tend to aim at the type of audiophile who listens to their equipment, rather than listening to the music, so they tend to have a different opinion of what is a better sound.
I don't know about his hardware player, but I did try a similar snakeoil player from Meridian, and found that compared to a standard DAC on the same files, it was doing some DSP processing to "clean" up the sound, which ended up sounding quite nice on jazz and other sparse "audiophile music", but downright awful on noisy rock that is supposed to have a continuous wall of guitar noise.
I'm pretty sure we can all say %@#%
Whoah there. I hope you spelt out that acronym in your head as you wrote it and didn't actually say THE WORD out loud.
Now that his destiny has been fulfilled, Microsoft no longer needs his services.
Or maybe they do need his services again. Watch where he goes next very closely. That is the industry Microsoft wants to fail in next.
I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.