Neil Young presenting Pono on the Late Show with David Letterman. Image via PSFK

Rock and Roll icon Neil Young appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman on Friday to reveal a new type of mp3 player which is scheduled to be released later this year. The portable music player is called Pono (pronounced pewnoh). “That’s Hawaiian for righteous,” Young explained. Pono is designed to produce vinyl and analog quality sound by transferring both to the highest possible digital resolution. “This plays back the best sound that anybody can get, it can’t get better than this. This is what they do in the studio.”

Pono will be set apart from other mp3 players and iPods by “presenting songs as they first sounded during studio recording sessions.” The device has already started getting attention from Warner Music Group, Sony Music, and Universal Music Group. Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea even listened to Pono and exclaimed that, “It’s not like some vague thing that you need dogs’ ears to hear. It’s a drastic difference.”

Young explained that Pono is about preservation of high quality music. “Now we can preserve the original works from Louis Armstrong all the way up to Cab Calloway, Bruce Springstein and Bob Dylan and Jay-Z, all the way through.” 

[Via PSFK] 

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Claudia McNeilly is an editorial intern at the Toronto Standard. You can follow her on twitter at @claudiamcneilly

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