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Neil Young's Pono is having expansion and funding troubles
Neil Young says the Pono music player and its accompanying high-quality music service aren't doing too badly. He also admits, however, that things haven't been easy since he and his team managed to raise $6 million via Kickstarter. In a Facebook post, the music legend writes that the company still doesn't have a proper CEO since the last one left over a year ago. Young is the acting head honcho, but he'd prefer a "proven business leader" to take over the role. In addition, his team's efforts to expand to Canada, UK and Germany and open up www.ponomusic.com in those areas are being hampered by lack of funding -- clearly, that Kickstarter money is not nearly enough. Young says, however, that the store will open in those countries as soon as the company has the means to make it happen.
Well I hope Neil Young will remember, an iPhone man don't need him around anyhow
Remember Neil Young's PonoPlayer? The Kickstarter campaign for the vintage rocker's "revolution in music listening" raised a huge US$6.2 million, with notables like Norah Jones, Elvis Costello and Tom Petty spouting about how the new $400 music playing box made them "feel the music" more than standard digital music players. Well, industry pundit and former professional musician David Pogue took on PonoPlayer in a Yahoo! Tech post last week, finding that a majority of listeners in a blind test actually preferred playback of music from an iPhone over the pricy and oddly-shaped yellow block. I'll let you read the full article from Pogue over at that other site, but the gist of it is that a) most people cannot hear or "feel" the difference of the Pono playback, b) many songs in the Pono store have not yet been remastered in the 192kHz/24-bit format Pono is promising, and c) it's a lot cheaper to buy a pair of good headphones and use your iPhone than buy a new player and re-purchase all of your music. Pogue's "taste test" can be seen below in this little video clip. Enjoy!
Finally, we heard what Neil Young's Pono music player sounds like
Herbie Hancock just tickled my ears. Not kidding. Adele did too. But Herbie tickled them better. No, this isn't some weird dream/nightmare. This is Pono. Go listen to Hancock's "Watermelon Man" now (link here). We'll wait. Back? What you just heard was a compressed version of Hancock's classic. What I just heard was not, and the difference is quite dramatic (even over reasonably priced headphones). Good thing too, given that Neil Young's quest with Pono has been to guide us away from the tyranny of the heavily compressed MP3, and steer us to the calm, warm waters of uncompressed audio. But, even though we've followed the Pono story quite closely, we learned a little more about the curious yellow prism today, too.
Weekends with Engadget: GS5 and Fire TV reviews, Sony's Yoshida on VR, and more!
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Neil Young on digital audio: You're doing it wrong
When news first broke of Neil Young's plans to serve up high-resolution listening to audiophiles last year, we wondered how he'd get folks to splurge for a $400 player and re-buy their existing libraries. Sure, six to 30 times the resolution of MP3s looks great on paper, but will we really be able to hear the difference? The rock icon says yes, and it's because there's nothing that's currently available that even comes close to Pono. Young says that existing audio formats are unable to adequately present a full range of tones, so he "decided to create an ecosystem that provided exactly what the artist created." From the bits of info we've seen so far, the outfit claims people who love music and really want to be able to hear songs as those artists tracked them will be sold easily.
Here's the iPhone that saved a soldier's life from a suicide bomb explosion, and other news for March 12, 2014
KSL.com has an amazing story about how a Utah soldier's iPhone 5 saved him from a suicide bomber's blast in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Shaun Frank was helping others in his unit overturn another unit's vehicle when he was approached by a teenager who stood just feet away. The teenager detonated a suicide bomb and Frank was hit with metal ball bearings shrapnel. Fortunately, the shrapnel didn't get past Frank's left front pants pocket. Behind that area lie major arteries and the only thing that stopped a ball bearing hitting there was Frank's iPhone 5: "They did tell him when he got back to base that that iPhone probably saved his life," said Frank's sister, Alisha Lantz. "He wanted to go overseas and fight and be part of fighting for our country," Lantz said. Frank was just weeks into his second tour of duty last fall when his family got the call every military family dreads. Frank had been injured. ... "He had his iPhone in his pocket. The iPhone stopped a few of the ball bearings as well," Lantz said. There isn't much left of the phone. It doesn't work now, but it's something Frank wants to hang onto. "He really wanted to keep it as a memento," Lantz said. Annoyingly, when he got back to the States and sent the iPhone to Apple to see if it was covered under their accidental damage insurance, the company told Frank they could give him a new iPhone, but would need to keep the old one. After three months -- and Frank's story airing on KSL -- Apple finally relented and gave him the original phone back. In other news: The popular Speedtest.net app has been updated with universal support. It now supports iPads. Concerned about who's snooping in on your calls or mobile data? Vodafone in Germany is now selling encrypted SIM cards that work in iPhones. PonoMusic's PonoPlayer "iPod killer" surpassed US$1.1 million in pledges on Kickstarter...in one day.
Neil Young's music player for audiophiles reaches Kickstarter on March 15th
We now know how Neil Young plans to make his dreams of high-quality digital music come true: crowdfunding. The artist's company PonoMusic is launching a Kickstarter campaign on March 15th that will let you reserve the PonoPlayer, Young's long-teased, audiophile-grade portable jukebox. The 128GB device will set you back a whopping $399 when it goes on sale (less with the Kickstarter discount), but its creators are promising audio fidelity worthy of the price tag. The hardware will offer natural-sounding digital filtering from Ayre Acoustics, ESS' most advanced digital-to-analog converter and "perfectly flat" frequency response with most any set of headphones. As you might expect, there will be a matching online store that delivers high-resolution tunes. The PonoMusic team hasn't said just when its media player will reach your pocket, but it shouldn't be too long before you're listening to a pristine version of Harvest while on the move.
