Music

Neil Young developing high-quality alternative to MP3s

by Nicole Villeneuve

Over the past year, Neil Young has grown increasingly vocal about his disdain for the poor sound quality MP3s offer listeners, and while some of his comments wishing for studio/analog-quality sound files might have sounded a bit olden-days purist, it looks like he really means it.

Rolling Stone has discovered documents filed by Young and his label, Vapor Records, for trademarks pertaining to the creation of a high-definition sound file technology.

No one from Young’s camp would comment, but Rolling Stone also points to some details about the project from a press release about Young’s upcoming memoir: “Young is also personally spearheading the development of Pono, a revolutionary new audio music system presenting the highest digital resolution possible, the studio quality sound that artists and producers heard when they created their original recordings.”

Young also recently claimed that before Steve Jobs’ death, the two were talking about making a portable device to carry the high-resolution audio. Something tells me we haven’t heard the last of that idea.