Neil Young Launches Ultra-Hi Res Pono Audio Player

A year and a half ago, Neil Young debuted a prototype for an audio player he claimed would revolutionize the digital music industry. Now, the device is finally reaching out to the market. The player is listed with a $399 price tag for when the device goes retail, but the Kickstarter is offering the stock players for $299 and several signature series featuring signatures from high profile artists like Metallica, Dave Matthews, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers for $400. The signature series also comes preloaded with the artists two favorite albums. Pono is built to offer the best fidelity possible from a portable device through utilizing the FLAC standard. What makes Pono different from previous multi-format audio players is that Pono Music plans to also launch a music service strictly selling high bitrate recordings.

How high? Insanely high. Ponos kickstarter shows up to ten times the throughput of a standard CD and up over 30 times the 320kbps mp3s that iTunes and Google Play sell. At this point, you may be thinking those files must be enormous. And you wouldnt be wrong. A 50MB album of mp3s would translate to about 1.5GB in Ponos Ultra-Hi Res FLAC release.

But how much can it even hold at that bitrate? The Kickstarter pages FAQ responds to storage inquiries with a total of 128GB. 64GB of memory is built into the player and another 64GB of memory on a removable microSD card. Since it sounds like Pono Music is going to be hosting any one of the four above listed levels of quality for each album, they suggest youll be able to maintain a local library of 5000 to 800 tracks in the worst case scenario.

The device itself is something of an oddity with its triangular design; this design, however, allows for some pretty beefy looking capacitors and a large battery thats unfortunately not discussed beyond much more efficient than a flat battery. Navigation is handled via touchscreen and the face buttons take care of volume with the power button in the middle.

The Pono supports AAC, AIF, ALAC, FLAC, mp3, and WAV, so pushing over your current library wont be an issue. In fact, youll at least benefit from the assured hardware upgrade over your current audio players; one of which being the interesting output situation. The player has two standard 3.5mm jacks, one specifically meant for outputting to headphones, the other for a high quality stereo auxiliary output.

The funding has exploded beyond five times the original goal, but beyond the Kickstarter, will people really have any interest in the product? Skeptics wonder if the average consumer will even hear the difference, despite the number of popular artists claiming that its some of the best audio theyve ever heard:

Consumer interest will vary per person. A properly manufactured CD should have ten times the fidelity of the average mp3. While audiophiles can most likely hear the difference between the two versions, some people cant. But really, just as with video, the higher the quality, the less noticeable return. Small footprint codecs came about in the first place to remove empty space and remove as much data from audio as possible while keeping the quality nearest the original. So ultimately, what were gaining back is audio that was initially removed because it was deemed non-essential to the listening experience.

So while it may not be the perfect device for everyone, Pono seems to guarantee a top tier mobile music experience. Itll have a hard time squeezing itself onto the market, facing goliaths like iTunes and Google Play Music; but if it does catch on, we could even see those libraries updated to higher quality releases as well.