Neil Yong

 showed off a prototype Pono device on the Late Show with David Letterman. From the front, it looks somewhat like a fourth-generation iPod Nano, but with only a few face buttons instead of a scroll wheel. The rear, however, forms a right triangle that allows the device to stand propped up on its side. On the top side, there appear to be two headphone jacks.

Time Tech    

This is strange

It's not like Neil to flog anything. He's stayed away from endorsing many products through his career..

I'm also surprised he's endorsing a competitor against Apple. I would have chosen a product with a less saturated market, than a digital music players..or invested in a known, established product (ie Apple) and play it from there. This is a hell of a gamble on his part...

he hates MP3

I don`t know, what he`s doing to his guitar on "walk like a giant", from his "psychedelic pill" album, but, it sounds painful.

I don’t think he is endorsing a competitor against Apple but an alternative and a different service to Apple’s iTunes.

Also the market he is going after is not saturated but a small segment of the market, the segment he is going after is maybe 2-5 percent of the market.

Neil is going after the audiophile end of the market, by creating hi-rez service and a player that will take advantage of it. This service is a different model to what Apple, Amazon, Google etc are offering.

I fear he has an uphill battle on he’s hand, why an uphill battle you may ask?

Firstly you have to convince a lot of people that are happy with crappy mp3 that hi-rez files are better and worth the extra money.

Then you have to convince them to buy a better quality player plus you need to convince them to throw away the crappy headphones they have at the moment and get better ones.

Garbage in garbage out (GIGO)

Good recorded hi-rez music + crappy player + crappy headphones = crap

Good recorded hi-rez music + good player + crappy headphones = crap

Good recorded hi-rez music + crappy player + good headphones = crap

Badly recorded hi-rez music + good player + good headphones = crap

Good recorded hi-rez music + good player + good headphones = Good

To top it all he has to convince the record companies to re-master their music so it’s good in the first place, hence it’s all pointless if the master copy is crap.

While I do agree with you Toocool. many points you share are in fact correct. I still believe this is a non starter for Neil. He would have been better to align himself with an engineer who could produce super high quality digital files and make them backwards compatible to todays player (assuming they have the sampling rates to hadle this).

When it comes to digital files, I do enjoy FLAC's.

Again like you mentioned without an equally good player / headphone combo...GIGO!

hey brutus !! rush have been nominated to the rock and roll hall of fame for 2013 ,   well lets hope they get in well over due .

Finally!!!!!!!!!

Our hometown hero's get the respect they're due

Now fingers crossed for entry.....

P.S. Outstanding band....Neil Peart on drums ...nuff said!

Thanks for the info Del!!!!!!!!!!!!

A great way to put it. I hope many people in internet land see this.