The annual spring bacchanal that is South By Southwest is underway down in Austin, playing host to hundreds of bands and creative types, including a boatload of Nashville artists and your intrepid Scene correspondents — more from them soon. Aside from
some new Coldplay songsand Chance The Rapper
getting shut downby the fuzz, the hottest news item so far is Neil Young's impassioned pitch for the new high-resolution music player and download/library service Pono. As Young explained,
Pono's goal is to reinvigorate the market for high-quality audio by offering an equally convenient and better-sounding alternative to the MP3 and MP3 players — namely, a store that sells 24-bit digital downloads (among other formats) and a triangular player with 128 GB of flash memory and high-end audio components, retailing at $399.
Young presented his case on Tuesday afternoon, coinciding with the launch of a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. The goal of said campaign was to raise $800,000 by April 15; when I checked a few minutes ago, the pledge tally approached $1.7 million.
Clearly, there's an interest in improving access to high-resolution audio that extends further than the celebrity endorsers who appear in the Kickstarter video (including Third Man Records' Jack White, who recently worked with Young on his forthcoming A Letter Home, though reportedly in the role of low-tech ambassador, rather than duet partner). Audio fidelity was a prime concern for Band of Horses on their recent Acoustic At The Ryman album. There's plenty of room for debate, even in the analog realm: On my recent visit to Welcome to 1979, I learned that they got into the vinyl cutting business because of poor-sounding vinyl masters.
Anyway, this is far from the first time someone's come up with a media delivery system that surpassed the quality available on the most popular formats. Do you remember CODE, the 24-bit-audio-on-DVD system devised by honorary Nashvillian T Bone Burnett? Or, does anyone (besides me) have a DVD-Audio or SACD player? In the video realm, maybe you remember HD-DVD, or (you don't have to date yourself) Betamax. These things don't always work out according to plan, and there are a few holes in the Pono concept. For one, it's still a portable device that most folks will probably listen to on earbuds. Also, people still pirate MP3s, even with their competitive pricing, and Pono's projected pricing is in the CD retail range, $14.99 to $24.99. And what about the power drain caused by working with high-res files? Said the Scene's Adam Gold: "Long may it run; its battery, at least." Handling that partly explains the device's Toblerone shape.
So, my fellow audio enthusiasts, are Young and company on the right track with Pono? Is high-res digital audio a losing battle, being fought mostly with cool points? Is all-analog the best way to go? The Pono-curious (New Ponographers?) will have to wait until October to give their feedback on the device and service, but you can sound off in the comments section right now.
