“Neil Young has appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman to promote Pono, a high-quality digital music service that will launch next year,” Sam Byford reports for The Verge.
“Rolling Stone reports that Pono will be comprised of a music downloads store, a tool that converts digital audio files into analog-sounding recordings, and a series of audio players,” Byford reports. “Young showed off a prototype Pono player to Letterman, and the design is nothing if not unique — it’s a bright yellow triangular prism with a small screen and simple controls.”
Byford reports, “The player will, according to Young, play back Pono master files with ‘the best sound anyone can get.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: SACD redux.
It’s hard for many to understand what Neil Young is talking about. We have been listening to digital dreck for a long time. Those of us who grew up with analog (lps and cassettes) should understand this. I remember the impact of listening to records and tapes and enjoyed listening and buying music to a much larger degree. I cannot listen to mp3’s. A lot of people do, but they have not idea what they are missing.
What it really amounts to is density of musical information. It translates to the whole listening experience. It’s not really about doing an AB comparison. The more information and complexity in the sound, the more you neurons have to enjoy. It’s really quite simple.
Pono music player, blah, I want the music to sound the way I remember it in good’ol times, that’s why I play everything through the RetroPlayer.