New Technology From — Neil Young?

I guess we shouldn't be surprised by the announcement that a new piece of music play-back technology comes from Neil Young. Young has embraced digital from day one and has continued to use the latest gadgets for decades, but now, Young has announced a new development so we can hear the music the way it's meant to be heard.

Let's face it; all the technology is great, but certain digital formats just don't sound as good as plain old vinyl. Neil Young wants us to hear the music the way it sounds in the studio.

Sound savvy – and some would say obsessed – Neil Young is hoping his music service Pono will be ready for a 2014 rollout, according to a post on his Facebook page. Young describes the download service by saying, “The simplest way to describe what we’ve accomplished is that we’ve liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to its original artistic quality – as it was in the studio. So it has primal power. PONO starts at the source: artist-approved studio masters we’ve been given special access to.”