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" There are a lot of things happening at SXSW this year, from Edward Snowden to Jay Z. But the thing with some of the most buzz is music legend Neil Young&amp;#039;s new digital music player, which smashed its $800,000 Kickstarter goal in less than a day. Called Pono, the triangular device is designed purely with the intention of providing the highest quality audio tracks possible. In order to achieve this, Young and his team went to the three major labels \u2014 Sony, Warner, and Universal \u2014 and gained access to the original, ultra-high-definition master recordings of their artists. What this means to the listener is that instead of hearing a song that has been sonically &amp;quot;dumbed down&amp;quot; for fitting onto a CD or crammed into the relatively small container of an MP3, they&amp;#039;re getting the full spectrum of audio originally created \u2014 and intended. While the system isn&amp;#039;t without its detractors, it is true that most of the music you&amp;#039;ve purchased in recent years has all manner of clipping: highs and lows of the spectrum trimmed to attain a manageable file size for ease of delivery. Using the Free Lossless Audio Codec, or FLAC, you receive, well, unclipped audio. Sonically, it&amp;#039;s all in there, just as it was meant to be. Can you hear the difference? In short, yes. We had a few minutes with a demo Pono unit, and, honestly, it was amazing. There was a richness and immersiveness to the experience that you&amp;#039;d be hard pressed to recreate with your standard issue MP3 device. Is this a device an iPod killer? No. But what it hopefully will do is open a conversation about the acceptable norm for music quality. Our own Andy Langer sat down with Mr. Young for a few minutes to talk about his new device, why he made it, and what it means to his legacy.       ) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a27711/neil-young-talks-pono/>