Neil Young puts quality first with the portable and FLAC-capable PonoPlayer
It was Neil Young's distaste for CD sound quality that led him to launch a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of creating the world's first high-resolution portable audio player available to consumers.
Today, Young launched the product and talked to media at Warehouse Studio in Gastown, where he and London Drugs' merchandise manager Colin Cottrell dished on details of the PonoPlayer. The retailer has been chosen as the official Canadian launch partner for the device.
The yellow, Toblerone-shaped device might not be the most compact, but Young stressed that the PonoPlayer’s allure lies in its ability to play lossless FLAC files, as well as a proprietary file format created by Pono, available through a downloading service called PonoMusic World. While Young will tell you to stay away from MP3s, you can still play them on the PonoPlayer, and according to the folks at Stereophile, it will improve their sound too.
"MP3 files contain less than five percent of the content in the master file. They're tiny files of a representation—like a Xerox of the real thing," said Young. "The point of this product is not, 'can you tell the difference'; it's, 'can you feel it in the music'."
Cottrell said the technology behind the device makes it "one of the world's greatest advancements in portable music".
While the company has had no help from investors and hasn't put a single dollar into marketing, the $6.2 million raised by the Kickstarter campaign was enough to develop the product with the help of Ayre Acoustics' Charlie Hanson, and put it on the market. Earlier this year, Stereophile awarded the PonoPlayer with their Digital Product of the Year award, touting its better-sounding music playback and edge in quality when compared to similar (and much more expensive) music players.
"It's great to win awards, but we don't seek to be super successful. We just want to provide people with a choice... we want to offset the loss that has happened," said Young.
The legendary musician said that while technology has allowed for improvements in the photography and film sectors, "the audio sector has been robbed", becoming more and more degraded as convenience has arguably become regarded more highly than quality.
Now for the techies, here are the specs: A touch screen allows users to select music by album, artist or song, while three buttons control volume and power. PonoMusic World's massive database—one that Young and his team built over the course of two years after approaching major and independent record labels—provides users with what Young calls a "high-res music ecosystem" where they can purchase files specifically for the PonoPlayer. Adele's newest album, at a resolution of 44.1 kHz/16bit, will cost $14.99, while Roger Waters' higher res The Wall will cost $24.99. Prices vary based on file quality.
When a file downloaded from the database is played on the PonoPlayer, a blue LED on the device will light up. The device comes with a 64GB microSD card that can be upgraded to 128 GB, and a single charge will yield eight hours of playing time. At $499, it's an affordable option for those looking to improve their listening experience. Young estimates that about 20,000 units have already been sold.
This casual audiophile tested out the PonoPlayer with a pair of Sennheiser Momentum headphones. While Young said he prefers to use the PonoPlayer to listen to the likes of JJ Cale and Jimi Hendrix, my song of choice was Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds", and even with its simple instrumentation, the King never sounded so good.
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