In September 2012 Neil Young had introduced a prototype of his new PONO audio player during an interview on Late Night With David Letterman. And as an audiophile I have been awaiting updates on this new technology since.
This higher resolution audio technology promises to bring 24 bit or 32 bit recordings to consumers when most have only been exposed to the 16 bit recordings of CD or lower when it comes to mp3s. But some question whether it will sell because of the lack of sales in SACD and DVD Audio titles.
Personally I would love to have the depth of vinyl on a digital format. But even I would probably buy only a select amount of albums in this new format so I don't know if it would get beyond niche market status. And though the PONO is portable I would probably only use it at home with higher end, noise cancelling headphones because I can't stand headphones than sound like tin cans and strip the bass out of music or ear buds that don't stay in and allow so much noise in that you need to raise the volume.
An interesting article on the possible pros and cons of this technology can be found at Evolver.Fm. But the article also concedes that little is known about the specific selling points of PONO other than it promises to bring high resolution recordings to consumers. The technology is still being worked on according to mypono.com and though most of the major labels have shown interest in PONO nobody knows if it will rely on a cloud service or not.
If this technology is deemed viable it will probably take some time to get it up and working so all we can do is speculate.