Neil Young has recently been working on a new high quality audio format called Pono. The new format promises to give the highest digital resolution possible, similar to the studio quality sound that artists and producers hear on their original recordings.
Young wants to offer consumers a cloud-based library of recordings from their favourite artists and the enjoyment of a convenient music listening experience that is vastly more superior in quality to what’s currently presented.
Rolling Stone reports that Young has been filing patents for the new format, which will counter the super-compressed song files you purchase from online music stores such as iTunes and Amazon. He has been quite vocal since last year, stating that back in his day they offered 100% of the sound on his recordings, and these days the quality is not sufficient to transfer the depth of the art.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Young had the intentions of continuing where Steve Jobs left off; the two had talked about developing an iPod-like device that could store roughly 30 studio-quality albums that could download to users overnight.
“Steve Jobs [was] a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve got to believe that, if he’d lived long enough, he would have done what I’m trying to do.”
Young isn’t a stranger to pioneering new audio techniques. His 1968 debut LP was one of the first albums to be mixed with the short-lived Haeco-CSG technology.
