Legendary musician Neil Young has been working on releasing a new high audio quality MP3 player, the PonoPlayer, to compete with Appple’s iPods.
The artist has been making serious strides in the commercial music sector. He had previously launched and funded PonoMusic, a music download site that would be used in tandem with the PonoPlayer.
In what would seem to be a strange time to release an MP3 player, given Apple’s recent statements that the legendary iPod is now being put out to pasture in favour of its iPhone, the PonoPlayer’s unique selling point is that it will aim to give the listener a much higher-quality audio playback compared with the standard MP3.
The triangular prism-shaped device will have an LCD touchscreen and its high audio quality will be provided by digital audio specialists Eyre.
In terms of memory, the standard model will have 128GB of internal memory, the equivalent of 500 high-quality albums, but this can be expanded with external SD memory cards.
This high quality comes at a hefty price however, as PonoMusic indicates PonoPlayer’s starting price will be US$399, with the first pre-orders becoming available on Kickstarter from 12 March.
Young had previously announced the PonoPlayer back in 2012 and had given it a 2013 release date that was subsequently pushed out to March this year.
