According to its Kickstarter page, “Pono’s mission is to provide the best possible listening experience of your favorite digital music.” The player and service is the brainchild of legendary artist Neil Young who, like a lot of artists and audiophiles, is unhappy with the compromised music quality from today’s MP3 compression.
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Young’s player and music store will support FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) audio format as its “standard, for compatibility,” but it will also support popular high resolution formats from other sources
When the campaign launched, early contributors could get one one of the players for $200 but now it will cost $300 to be among the first to get a PonoPlayer.