Young Audio

[Vespasiano Jilg]

Youngfaces about a year of paperwork before the government will register his trademarks. Last week, they were approved for publication in a public journal for 30 days, a step that allows competitors to challenge Young if they find his registration harmful. The journal is set to be published later this month; if the trademarks face no opposition or snags, Young must then file documents detailing how he intends to use the trademarks, which the government could register as early as the holidays, according to the filing schedule.

Young has a history of paying close attention to audio quality. His 1968 debut LP was one of the first albums to be mixed with the short-lived Haeco-CSG technology, which improved the sound of stereo albums played on mono equipment. Young has also been heavily involved with the remixing and remastering of his catalog for years.

The Neil Young Archives (NYA) has a URL, , but to call it a website is a severe understatement. It is a museum of audio, video, film, and more, that amounts to the most comprehensive artist-curated collection in the vastness of cyberspace. I spent a weekend, and then a few more days, trawling through its treasures and pleasures, thanks to a gift subscription from my longtime Neil Young advisor/advocate Barbara Heinsohn, and felt, like an afternoon at the Louvre, that I was just barely skimming the surface.

Young has been forthright in expressing his distaste for the limited audio capabilities of compressed mp3s. He started his own audio company, Pono, as early as 2012, to offer better audio bandwidth. Labels wanted to charge a premium; Omnifone, which ran the Pono store, was bought by Apple, and shut down, according to the website Noise11.com (April 23, 2017).

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Not all young people have the opportunity to visit the Anne Frank House. Therefore, a new video tour has been created alongside the audio tour. This video tour is in English and can be seen from today 3 PM (CET), in 14 short episodes, on YouTube and Facebook. In the coming weeks, we will also share the episodes on Instagram and TikTok. This video tour guides young viewers through the Anne Frank House using footage filmed in the museum, with a virtual Anne Frank as their guide. The video tour is enhanced with historical images and clips from the Anne Frank video diary.

For years, Neil Young has endeavored to bring high-resolution audio to the masses. High-resolution audio (aka hi-res audio) has higher sampling rates (96 kHz or 192 kHz) and bit depth (24-bit) than CD quality, which generally has a 44.1 kHz sampling rate and 16-bit depth.

In addition to his new SiriusXM stream, Neil also offers high-res music and video on his Neil Young Archives website. Both Neil Young Radio High-Res and the Neil Young Archives are powered by OraStream, a Singapore-based firm that dynamically adapts streaming to the exact quality of the original music source.

Pono (/ˈpoʊnoʊ/, Hawaiian word for "proper") was a portable digital media player and music download service for high-resolution audio.[1][2][3] It was developed by musician Neil Young and his company PonoMusic, which raised money for development and initial production through a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter.[4][5] Production and shipments to backers started in October 2014, and shipments to the general public began in the first quarter of 2015.

Pono's stated goal to present songs "as they first sound during studio recording sessions", using "high-resolution" 24-bit 192kHz audio instead of "the compressed audio inferiority that MP3s offer" received mixed reactions, with some describing Pono as a competitor to similar music services such as HDtracks, but others doubting its potential for success.[2][6][7][8][9][10][11]

Writing in his book Waging Heavy Peace, Young expressed concern about digital audio quality, criticizing in particular the quality offered by Apple's iTunes Store.[12] "My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I've been practicing for the past 50 years," he said.[13]

PonoMusic was founded in 2012 by Young, along with Silicon Valley entrepreneur John Hamm as the company's CEO.[14] The name was derived from pono (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-smallfont-size:85%.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-smallfont-size:100%pronounced [ˈpono]), a Hawaiian word for "righteousness."[1]

Pono reportedly had backing from, and had signed a full agreement, with Warner.[15][16] In September 2012, Young appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman with a prototype of the player, and confirmed backing from Warner, as well as major record labels Sony, and Universal.[17][18][1][19][16][20] Young claimed that Pono would provide "the finest quality, highest-resolution digital music from major labels as well as prominent independent labels" using the FLAC audio file format.[21]

On March 12, 2014, the company with the help of Alex Daly and her crowdfunding consultancy Vann Alexandra, launched a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that surpassed its target in one day.[22][23] PonoMusic raised $6.2 million via pre-orders for the player by the end of the campaign.[24][25]

In June 2014, Young assumed the title of CEO of Pono Music.[26] In August 2014, PonoMusic turned to Crowdfunder to raise more equity.[27] They closed with a total financing of $4 million. While many more international investors were interested, they had to be turned away due to regulatory restrictions.[28] The Pono player and music store was officially launched in January 2015.[29]

By June 2015, however, Variety Magazine reported that PonoMusic struggled with funding issues, which had slowed the company's expansion.[30] Prior to June 2015, Young had sought financial backing from Donald Trump.[31]

PonoMusic's products are based on the FLAC audio format, which the company re-branded as Pono audio format. The player device, called the PonoPlayer, was initially priced at $399 and came with a maximum of 128GB of memory (64GB built-in plus 64GB on MicroSD card).[32][33] The press release noted that the PonoPlayer, developed in collaboration with Ayre Acoustics, could store "100 to 500 high-resolution digital-music albums".[34] PonoMusic was the device's accompanying desktop-based media management system, which allowed customers to download and sync music to the player.[34] The online PonoMusic store sold downloadable music.

On July 17, 2016, PonoMusic announced that it would be temporarily shut down due to the acquisition of their bankrupt content partner, Omnifone, by Apple Inc.[35] They further stated that during this shutdown period, PonoMusic would be transitioning to a new platform provided by 7digital. The website, however, has been in a non-operating "under construction" state since then.

In April 2017, Young announced the PonoMusic store was being discontinued, but with future plans to transition the service from a download model to a high-resolution streaming service to be known as "Xstream".[36][37] As of October 2019, however, the service had yet to launch, and there have been no further announcements regarding its future.

A 2012 Rolling Stone report on Pono relayed generally positive anticipation, but quoted musician Jim James as asking, "I've already bought Aretha Franklin's 'Respect' a lot of times. Do I have to buy it again?"[9]

Press reaction to Pono announcements in March 2014, was generally skeptical: approving of the idea of good sound, but questioning the viability of a standalone player in a market that had moved largely to smartphones and increasingly towards music streaming.[6][7][8][38] Several commentators suggested that the key to improved sound lay largely in music engineering and mastering practices, rather than in file formats and players.[39][40][41]

In the wake of its launch at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2015, Pono received mixed reviews. Yahoo Tech's David Pogue conducted a blind test with 15 volunteers aged 17 to 55 comparing Pono Music downloads (FLAC format) played on a Pono Player with iTunes downloads (AAC format) played on an iPhone; he found that the participants did not prefer Pono.[42] A subsequent (subjective, non-ABX) review in the Stereophile magazine, deemed the Pono Player's performance superior to more expensive components and players with the reviewer saying "I am pleased to report that CD rips sounded excellent through the player."[43]

Today, music icon Neil Young has released nine of his most eclectic and distinctive albums in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos, exclusively on Apple Music. Through newly available titles like Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, On The Beach, Freedom, Harvest Moon and more, the legendary singer and songwriter brings his distinctive tenor, soulful lyrics, and musical mix of rock, folk, blues, and country to the immersive audio space for fans to experience his catalog collection in a rich, new way.

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