Neil Young Rocks Out in Central Park, Also Pushes Audio Quality with Pono

Neil Young noted earlier that he was working on something with Steve Jobs before he died (as opposed to after) with regards to improving audio quality. Neil Young has spoken out about his disdain for the MP3 and the loss of sound quality for the sake of quantity and compression purposes.

Neil Young has festered this passion and is launching a service called Pono which will let you download and listen to high quality music on a portable music player made specifically for Pono (via Tech Crunch). Pono (sounds like poh no) is apparently Hawaiian for righteous.

Neil Young demoed the device on David Letterman’s late night show last week, and notes that he plans to sell 192kHz/24-bit audio files. Young is also working with music labels to transfer original master tapes so that the ‘new’ audio files will be top quality. No word on the release date just yet.

Check out Neil Young on Letterman, and scroll down for more Neil Young news from his show in Central Park.

If you haven’t heard by now, Neil Young played at the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park in New York City. The show was to raise awareness and money for world hunger. The show had pretty much every musical guest join Neil Young for his classic tune, Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World. This included the Black Keys, Foo Fighters, K’Naan, and Band of Horses. Check out the footage below.

Neil Young and everyone under the sun – Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World (live in Central Park)