Rockin’ in the Free World rocker Neil Young has been claiming for years that huge audio files sound better than digital files. So he’s created, and is now selling, a high resolution portable music player called PonoPlayer. For $400 it “promises only the highest of fidelities.”
The problem is, according to many, there is no difference in sound. According to a study published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, a double blind test comparing the two (44.1 kHz audio and “the best high resolution discs we could find”) proved there was no difference. As Gizmodo’s Mario Aguilar brilliantly writes: “The point is that you don’t need fancy hardware to make music sound good, and that no amount of hardware will make your ears hear better than the limits of biology and physics.”
