Rejoice connoisseurs of high-quality sound! Canadian rock musician Neil Young's project, the acclaimed PonoPlayer music player, has raised $6.2 million on Kickstarter. The initial goal was $800,000, but the idea was so successful that it was supported by 18,220 people. Deliveries of the device will begin in October at a price of $399.
The player boasts a large LCD display, a 128 GB flash drive and promises "unsurpassed sound quality." Talking about his brainchild, 68-year-old Young explained that the main goal was to "breathe" the unique sound of the record into a modern gadget. "We started all this for the sake of true music. We want to transfer it with the help of numbers to the XXI century, and PonoMusic will perfectly cope with this task. We are terribly worried — because we are not doing this for ourselves, but for people in whose lives music plays a big role."
Young stated that the PonoPlayer is able to play music tracks at a higher level than the iPod. Along with the launch of the device, a special PonoMusic service will also work, which will allow you to search and buy compositions from both major and independent labels. All music will be available in the PonoStore store in FLAC format, which will allow you to achieve excellent sound quality. Of course, such tracks will "weigh" much more than MP3, but the built-in 128 GB of memory, which can be expanded with memory cards, is enough to download 5000 audio files.
The project of the player "with perfect sound quality" has haunted the Canadian rock musician before. He advised Steve Jobs on the new iPod model, which will be able to please the ears of a true music lover. However, the project was at an early stage and was finally curtailed after Jobs' death.
