PonoPlayer

PonoPlayer is a portable music player created by Neil Young's company, PonoMusic, as the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Development and release

In September 2012, Neil Young appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman with a prototype PonoPlayer announcing his plans for the PonoMusic ecosystem. Early announcements named Meridian Audio as the development partner, but that changed in 2014 when Meridian was replaced by Ayre Acoustics. In April 2014, a successful crowdfunding campaign raised US$6.2M via preorders for the player using the Kickstarter platform. Kickstarter backers received devices starting in October 2014. The PonoMusic store opened pre-orders for PonoPlayer at the start of 2015, expecting them to ship within the month.

Hardware and capabilities

While designed for use with the FLAC format lossless audio sold by the PonoMusic online store, the device can play other common formats including Apple Lossless (ALAC), uncompressed PCM (WAV, AIFF), DSD (DSD64) and DSD2 (DSD128), and the lossy formats AAC and MP3. PonoPlayer will play DRM-free audio in these formats from any source, including FLAC from HDtracks, AAC from iTunes, and lossless audio files copied or “ripped” from audio compact discs. PonoMusic provides the PonoMusic World cross–platform (Mac/Win) application software, based on JRiver Media Center, to manage audio files on the device and on a host computer, but it is not required. Any operating system that supports USB mass-storage and the exFAT filesystem, can add or remove music from PonoPlayer. A micro USB 2.0 port provides the only connectivity.