Neil Young’s Music Player is Designed to Deliver Quality Sound

Writing in his book Waging Heavy Peace, Neil Young expressed concern about digital audio quality, criticizing in particular the quality offered by Apple‘s iTunes Store. The Canadian Musician wrote, “My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years” 

Acting his part as a music legend, he has come up with revolutionary new music system called ‘Pono’  that promises the best possible experience when listening to your favorite music. The idea comes from the mind of musician Neil Young who founded the company by the same name back in 2012. The goal here is to use the FLAC format in order to provide listeners with “the finest quality, highest-resolution digital music from both major labels and prominent independent labels.”

For digital music, sound files get compressed to make them take up less storage space, squeezing out some of the music’s more finer details. It is a triangle-shaped music player, set to be released later this year, that will bring the quality of hi-fi stereo sound back to the mainstream in the age of the iPod. At first glance Pono Music seems to be just a regular mp3 player, but the technology behind it is what makes it truly special. The digital filter used in the PonoPlayer has minimal phase, and no unnatural (digital sounding) pre-ringing.

All sounds made (including music) always have reflections and/or echoes after the initial sound. There is no sound in nature that has any echo or reflection before the sound, which is what conventional linear-phase digital filters do. This is one reason that digital sound has a reputation for sounding “unnatural” and harsh.”

Though its $399 price tag might be troublesome for the consumers.The Kickstarter project to fund the device raised $6.2 million; the 3rd biggest campaign in the crowdfunding site’s history.

The player is said to have about 6 times more musical information than a typical MP3, which explains why all the songs sound better with Pono Music. The service is supported by all major labels and some independents ones across all genres.